Patacara’s is a remarkable story of redemption.

Along with 72 other poems, like the poem presented below, appears in the Therigatha - literally, ‘verses of women elders’, where the earliest nuns of the Buddha’s sangha chronicle their experiences on the spiritual path in exquisite poetry.

Patacara’s is a remarkable story of redemption. She loses her husband and children, and in the ensuing emotional storm, her mind as well. In her song, she quotes the Buddha’s compassionate words that lifted the veil of insanity off her mind:

Unasked,
he (her son) came from there.
Without permission,
he went from here-
coming from where
having stayed a few days.
And coming one way from here,
he goes yet another
from there.
Dying in the human form,
he will go wandering on.
As he came, so he has gone -
so what is there
to lament?
Thig 6.1, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

These words, says Patacara, brought home to her the nature of "coming and going" and pulled out "the arrow so hard to see, embedded in my heart." Patacara not only became self-realised, she helped many other women ford the turbulence of emotionality with the raft of dharma.

Om Namah Shivay.