This page is for the NCERT Class 10 English First Flight chapter “The Sermon at Benares” — Chapter 8 of the book. It runs to about nine printed pages, opening at NCERT page 110, and the official NCERT PDF is right below.
The same file also contains the poem “For Anne Gregory” by W.B. Yeats, which NCERT prints together with this chapter, so one download gives you both.
If you came here for The Sermon at Benares Class 10, this is the exact file NCERT publishes on ncert.nic.in — not a summary and not a third-party copy.
Download the NCERT ‘The Sermon at Benares Class 10’ Chapter PDF
Open the official NCERT Class 10 English First Flight Chapter 8 The Sermon at Benares PDF when you want the chapter exactly as printed — the same file the NCERT book is set from, with the story, every exercise, the Speaking texts and the poem “For Anne Gregory” inside.
This is NCERT’s own file from ncert.nic.in, so the text, spellings and page numbers always match the printed book.
| What the chapter holds | Count | Where it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Printed pages | 9 | |
| Figures with NCERT captions | 2 | |
| Exercise questions | 5 | answered in our NCERT Solutions |
| Activities | 1 | |
| Official NCERT PDF | Download the chapter PDF | the chapter exactly as NCERT publishes it |
Chapter at a Glance
The table below shows what is actually inside this chapter file — sections, figures and exercise questions among them — so you can decide what to open next: the story, the exercises, or the poem at the end.
The story itself carries no diagrams; the two photographs in this chapter belong to the Speaking section, where each one introduces a modern text on grief.
What This Chapter Covers: Story, Speaking Texts and the Poem
This map shows where everything sits in the chapter file. Each item names the part of the chapter and the NCERT page where it begins, so you never have to hunt.
- The Buddha’s early life and his first sermon at Benares — the chapter narrates how Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha, then gives the sermon itself (pp. 111–113).
- The story of Kisa Gotami — the woman who lost her only son and brought him to the Buddha asking for medicine; this is the chapter’s central narrative (pp. 112–113).
- Thinking about the Text — a set of questions on Kisa Gotami’s two searches and what she learned from them (p. 113).
- Thinking about Language — an exercise on old-fashioned English, plus a sentence-combining exercise using semicolons (p. 114).
- Speaking — two modern texts on grief, “A Guide to Coping with the Death of a Loved One” and Amitai Etzioni’s “Good Grief”, with a group discussion task (pp. 114–115).
- Writing — three topics for a three-paragraph piece, including how people help each other through difficult times (p. 116).
- The teacher’s material — a short note on the lesson so far, an extract from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet on joy and sorrow, and a Tagore couplet for the class to read and memorise (pp. 116–117).
- The poem “For Anne Gregory” — W.B. Yeats’s conversation-poem about hair, beauty and being loved for yourself alone, with its own set of questions (pp. 118–119).
Before You Read: The Opening Activity
The chapter does not start with the story. It starts with a question: what is a sermon? Knowing the word before you read explains what the Buddha is doing when he preaches at Benares.
A sermon is a religious or moral talk — that is exactly how the NCERT glossary defines it (p. 112). It is not the same as any lecture: a lecture informs, while a sermon teaches right living from a moral position of authority.
The word can also be used as a joke for advice you did not ask for, as in “my mother’s sermon about getting my work done on time.” The opening activity asks you to discuss that range of meanings in groups, using a dictionary or your teacher’s help (p. 111).
The activity also asks whether you have heard of the Sermon on the Mount and who delivered it. That is a class-discussion question, and the chapter does not answer it for you. The third question — who delivered a sermon at Benares — is answered by the text itself: the Buddha.
Here are plain meanings for the six words and phrases in the activity box:
- afflicted with — affected by suffering, disease or pain
- be composed — stay calm, keep your composure
- desolation — emptiness or deep sorrow; the chapter later speaks of a “valley of desolation”
- lamentation — an expression of sorrow, loud grieving
- procure — to get or obtain something
- be subject to — to be likely to experience something; here, to be unable to escape death
Key Concepts: The Buddha’s Story and His First Sermon
This section gives you the whole narrative in plain order — the Buddha’s life, Kisa Gotami’s story, and the sermon’s claims — so that you can read the original with the shape already in your head. The page numbers let you follow along in the book.
The Buddha’s early life (p. 111)
Gautama Buddha (563–483 BC) began life as Prince Siddhartha Gautama of northern India. At twelve he was sent away to study the Hindu sacred scriptures; at sixteen he married a princess, and the couple had a son. For ten years he lived as royalty, shielded from the world’s suffering.
Around the age of twenty-five, while out hunting, he chanced upon four sights: a sick man, an aged man, a funeral procession, and finally a monk begging for alms. Those sights moved him to leave the palace and seek enlightenment — a state of high spiritual knowledge — about the sorrows he had witnessed.
He wandered for seven years and sat down under a peepal tree, vowing to stay until enlightenment came. It came after seven days; he renamed the tree the Bodhi Tree, the Tree of Wisdom, and became known as the Buddha, meaning “the Awakened” or “the Enlightened”.
He preached his first sermon at Benares, the most holy of the bathing places on the River Ganges. That sermon is the text this chapter preserves.
Kisa Gotami’s story (pp. 112–113)
Kisa Gotami had an only son, and the boy died. Carrying the dead child, she went from neighbour to neighbour asking for medicine, and people said she had lost her senses — the boy was dead. A man told her he could not give medicine for the child but knew a physician who could: Sakyamuni, the Buddha.
Kisa Gotami repaired to the Buddha — an old-fashioned way of saying she went to him — and cried for medicine that would cure her boy.
The Buddha said he wanted a handful of mustard seed. When she joyfully promised to get it, he added the condition: the seed must come from a house where no one had lost a child, husband, parent or friend. She went from door to door, and the pitying people offered her seed — but at every house, someone beloved had died.
The common answer was: “The living are few, but the dead are many.”
Weary and hopeless, she sat at the wayside watching the city’s lights flicker up and go out, and understood that human lives do the same. In that moment she thought: “How selfish am I in my grief! Death is common to all.”
The sermon’s claims (pp. 112–113)
Then the text gives the Buddha’s first sermon. Its teaching can be compressed into four claims:
- Life is troubled, brief and full of pain. Nothing that has been born can avoid dying; old age ends in death, and that is the nature of living beings.
- Death takes everyone. Young and old, foolish and wise, all fall under the power of death — no father can save his son, no kinsmen can save their relations.
- Grieving does not help the dead. Weeping and lamentation will not bring anyone peace of mind; they only increase pain and make the body suffer, while the dead are not saved by tears.
- The wise accept the truth. Knowing the terms of the world, they do not grieve; having drawn out the “arrow” of lamentation, they become composed and attain peace of mind.
The sermon makes those claims vivid through similes — comparisons using “as” or “like”. NCERT prints three within a few lines, and each says the same thing in a different image (p. 113):
| Simile in the sermon | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ripe fruits are early in danger of falling | From the moment of birth, mortals are in danger of death, the way ripe fruit can fall from the tree at any moment. |
| All earthen vessels made by the potter end in being broken | Human life is as fragile as a clay pot — it is made to be broken, and death is its certain end. |
| Mortals are carried off like an ox that is led to the slaughter | The dead are taken one by one while relatives look on and lament — nothing a father or kinsman does can stop it. |
Kisa Gotami’s Two Journeys: What the Mustard Seed Teaches
The questions in Thinking about the Text all come back to one difference — what Kisa Gotami asked for the first time and what she asked for the second. Master the table below and most of the chapter’s questions answer themselves.
| First search (after her son dies) | Second search (after meeting the Buddha) | |
|---|---|---|
| What she asks for | Medicine that will cure her dead son | A handful of mustard seed |
| Any condition? | None — she asks everyone she meets, and finally the Buddha himself | The seed must come from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent or friend |
| What she finds | People tell her to stop — the boy is dead; there is no medicine for the dead | Every house has buried someone; the living are few, but the dead are many |
| What she learns | Nothing yet — she keeps searching for a cure | Death is common to all; her grief has turned her inward — “How selfish am I in my grief!” |
The mustard-seed request is the chapter’s most misunderstood moment, so state this clearly: it was not medicine, and it was not a trick. It was a teaching method.
The Buddha knew that no house was free of death, so the task could not succeed — and each refusal delivered the same lesson: you are not the only one who has lost someone.
Kisa Gotami had to discover that truth for herself, because a truth you find yourself sticks, while a truth you are merely told can be argued with. The Buddha does not lecture her about death. He sets a condition that cannot be met, and lets the search itself teach. That is why she understands it only the second time.
Figure Walkthrough: Two Photographs on Grief
The Speaking section (p. 114) prints two modern texts about grief, and each opens with a photograph. NCERT captions each photograph with one line, and that line is really the thesis of the text it introduces — read the caption first and the text becomes easier to follow.
The first text, “A Guide to Coping with the Death of a Loved One” (pp. 114–115), opens with two people: Martha, who lost her husband of 26 years to cancer a month ago, and Anya, a 17-year-old whose grandmother recently died.
The caption — “Both of these individuals are experiencing grief” — makes the text’s central claim: grief is an emotion natural to all types of loss or significant change, not a sign that something is wrong with you.
The guide then lists the feelings of grief commonly experienced after a loved one’s death (p. 115): sadness (the most common, not always shown by crying), anger, guilt and self-reproach (believing you were not kind or careful enough), anxiety, loneliness, fatigue and disbelief, which is common after a sudden death.
It also explains how to help: reach out, be patient, let the grieving person know you care, and accept that some people will not want to share their grief.
The second text, “Good Grief” by Amitai Etzioni (p. 115), is a personal essay. After his wife died in 1985, a school psychologist warned him that he and his children were not mourning “in the right way” — they felt anger, when the expected first stage was denial. Years later his 38-year-old son Michael died suddenly.
Etzioni’s caption is his rebuttal: there is no set form for grief, and no “right” way to express it. The well-known stages of grief are not a script to follow. His consolation, he writes, is focusing on what survivors do for one another — calling each other, caring for his grandson Max, holding the young widow’s hand.
Comparing the sermon with the two modern texts
The Speaking task explicitly asks for this comparison. All three texts agree that death is universal and grief is natural. The sermon speaks of lamentation and a suffering body; the guide speaks of fatigue and anxiety. The difference is in the remedy.
The Buddha’s answer is composure through acceptance — draw out the arrow of lamentation, become composed, obtain peace of mind. Etzioni’s answer is community — the “what” that survivors are bound to do for one another. The guide sits between them: cope with the feelings, and help others through theirs.
That is the comparison the class discussion wants — not a verdict that one is “better”.
Definitions: Word Meanings and Old-Style English
Two vocabularies matter in this chapter: the glossary words the margins define, and the deliberately old-fashioned English the text uses for a story more than two millennia old. The first table gives you reading meanings; the second gives model answers for the Thinking about Language exercise (p. 114).
Word meanings from the chapter
| Word | Meaning as used in this chapter |
|---|---|
| sermon | a religious or moral talk (p. 112) |
| dipping places | bathing places; here, the holy bathing points of the Ganges at Benares (p. 112) |
| inscrutable | something which cannot be understood (p. 112) |
| repaired (a stylistic use) | went to — not “fixed” (p. 112) |
| valley of desolation | an area filled with deep sorrow (p. 112) |
| mortals | those bound to die, human beings (p. 112) |
| afflicted with | affected by suffering, disease or pain (p. 113) |
| lamentation | an expression of sorrow (p. 113) |
| chanced upon | came across by chance (p. 111) |
| enlightenment | a state of high spiritual knowledge (p. 111) |
| ramparts (in the poem) | the high, wide walls around a castle or fort; in “For Anne Gregory” it stands for the shape of the girl’s hair (p. 119) |
Old-fashioned English: modern equivalents
The language exercise asks you to rephrase old-fashioned phrases in current English. These are model answers — your wording may differ slightly and still be right:
| As printed in the text | Modern English |
|---|---|
| give thee medicine for thy child | give you medicine for your child |
| Pray tell me | Please tell me |
| Kisa repaired to the Buddha | Kisa went to the Buddha |
| there was no house but someone had died in it | there was no house in which someone had not died — every house had seen a death |
| kinsmen | relatives, family members |
| Mark! | Notice! / Listen carefully! |
Worked example: the semicolon sentence
The second part of the language exercise takes this sentence from the sermon and asks you to break it into three simple sentences:
“For there is not any means by which those that have been born can avoid dying; after reaching old age there is death; of such a nature are living beings.”
One acceptable split, in current English:
- There is no way for anyone who has been born to avoid dying.
- After reaching old age, death comes.
- That is the nature of living beings.
Which version has better rhythm when read aloud? The single sentence uses semicolons to join three claims of equal weight, so it reads as one long, slow, sermon-like movement, each clause balanced against the next. The three simple sentences make each claim land separately, like blunt statements.
There is no single right answer to “which is better”; the point of the exercise is to hear the difference — so an answer that explains the rhythm difference is always stronger than one that just picks a favourite.
Common Mistakes and Confusions in This Chapter
Each row below is a mistake students actually make in this chapter, with the correction next to it, so you can catch it before it costs you.
| Mistake | What is actually true | How to check your answer |
|---|---|---|
| Reading “repaired” as “fixed” | In the old-style English of this chapter, “repaired to” means “went to”; the glossary marks it as a stylistic use (p. 112) | Put the verb into the sentence: “Kisa Gotami went to the Buddha.” Does “fixed the Buddha” make sense? No — so “went to” is right |
| Taking the mustard-seed request for real medicine, or for a cruel trick | It was a teaching device — an impossible condition designed so Kisa Gotami would discover that death is common to all | Ask what the task achieved: it cured no one, and it was never meant to; its purpose was the discovery |
| Treating “sermon” as an ordinary lecture | A sermon is a religious or moral talk; the word can also be used jokingly for unwelcome advice (“my mother’s sermon”) | Check the tone: a lecture informs, a sermon instructs on right living from a moral position |
| Reading “selfishness” as greed | Kisa Gotami means her grief had turned her inward — “How selfish am I in my grief!” — while death touches everyone | Notice what she calls selfish: her grief, not her possessions. The opposite of selfish here is seeing yourself as one of many |
| Taking “yellow hair” in the poem only literally | “Yellow hair” stands for outward beauty; the poem asks whether anyone can love a person for themselves alone | Follow the refrain through all three stanzas: “love you for yourself alone / and not your yellow hair” — the contrast is the self versus the surface |
Exam Notes: What to Focus On in This Chapter
These notes are about what the chapter itself asks for, so you spend your revision time well. No one can promise you a particular question; what follows is the pattern the book actually sets.
- Know the two searches. Every question in Thinking about the Text traces the same movement: what Kisa Gotami asked for, what she failed to understand the first time, what the Buddha made her discover the second time, and how he changed her understanding. If you can retell the two journeys and the lesson in your own words, you can answer all of them (p. 113).
- Learn the language exercise. The old-English items are few and fixed: thee, thy, pray, repaired, kinsmen, Mark. The modern-equivalents table above covers the whole exercise; “repaired = went to” is the word most likely to trip you (p. 114).
- Practise the comparison. The Speaking section is marked as discussion, but comparing the Buddha’s sermon with “A Guide to Coping with the Death of a Loved One” and “Good Grief” is the best way to see the chapter’s theme whole: all three say death and grief are universal; the sermon prescribes acceptance and composure, while the modern texts add that grief has no set form and that community helps (pp. 114–115).
- Connect the poem to the prose. If “For Anne Gregory” is studied with this chapter, its final questions link straight back to Kisa Gotami’s “How selfish am I in my grief!” — the poem asks whether anyone can love a person for themselves alone, which is the same shift from seeing the surface to seeing the self, from grief turned inward to grief shared by all (pp. 118–119).
One honest reminder: textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical. Check the current official CBSE syllabus to see exactly what is examinable this session.
Quick Recap: The Sermon at Benares in Five Steps
Five steps hold the whole chapter together. Read them once tonight and the story will stay in your head:
- The Buddha, once Prince Siddhartha, left a sheltered royal life after seeing a sick man, an aged man, a funeral and a monk, and preached his first sermon at Benares after his enlightenment.
- Kisa Gotami loses her only son, carries the dead child to her neighbours, and asks for medicine; people tell her the boy is dead.
- The Buddha asks for a handful of mustard seed from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent or friend — a condition that cannot be met.
- Going door to door, she finds every house has known death, and realises she is not alone: death is common to all, and her grief has made her selfish.
- The sermon’s lesson: life is brief and full of pain, no one born can escape death, lamentation only increases suffering, and the wise accept this and find peace of mind.
The chapter file does not end there. The Speaking section holds the two modern grief texts, and the poem “For Anne Gregory” asks whether anyone can love a person for themselves alone — the same movement from inward grief to seeing yourself as one among billions.
Related Resources for Class 10 English
This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.
Move through First Flight in order, or jump to the study version of this chapter:
- The NCERT Class 10 English First Flight chapters index lists every chapter of the book.
- The The Sermon at Benares class 10 notes carry revision material for this same chapter.
- The next chapter of First Flight is The Proposal class 10 notes.
- The Class 10 hub links every subject’s notes.
- The main CBSE notes page shows how the whole site is organised.
Sources and Data Verification
Reference: NCERT Class 10 English (First Flight) textbook, chapter 8, official edition on ncert.nic.in.
The page references on this page follow the current NCERT First Flight edition that the chapter PDF above is taken from. This page covers First Flight Chapter 8 only.
NCERT settles the textbook, its editions and its PDFs — you can verify the current edition on the NCERT textbook portal — while CBSE settles the syllabus and the examinations.
This listing is maintained for the current academic session using the NCERT First Flight edition available on ncert.nic.in; textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical, so check the official syllabus for what is examinable.
FAQ: The Sermon at Benares Class 10
In the Sermon at Benares, what does Kisa Gotami ask for the first time and the second time?
The first time she asks for medicine to cure her dead son — she carries the child from house to house, and finally asks the Buddha himself. She does not get it because the boy is dead; there is no medicine for the dead.
The second time, after the Buddha’s condition, she asks for a handful of mustard seed from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent or friend. She does not get that either — not because people refuse her, but because every house has known death, which is exactly the lesson.
Why does the Buddha ask Kisa Gotami for mustard seed from a house where nobody has died?
Because no such house exists, and the Buddha knows it. The request was a teaching method, not a cure: by giving her a task that could not be completed, he made her discover for herself that death is common to all.
A discovery made alone is believed; a lesson merely told can be questioned. Each door that refused her with the answer “The living are few, but the dead are many” taught the same truth, until she finally said, “How selfish am I in my grief!”
What are the feelings of grief listed in the chapter’s Speaking section?
Seven feelings are listed: sadness, anger, guilt and self-reproach, anxiety, loneliness, fatigue and disbelief (p. 115).
The text notes that sadness is the most common and does not always show as crying, that anger is one of the most confusing feelings for a survivor, and that disbelief often follows a sudden death.
What does “repaired to the Buddha” mean in the old-fashioned English of this chapter?
It means “went to the Buddha”. In modern English “repaired” means fixed, but the text uses the word in its old stylistic sense of travelling to a place, and the glossary on NCERT page 112 marks it as a stylistic use: “Kisa Gotami repaired to the Buddha” = “Kisa Gotami went to the Buddha.”
What is the poem For Anne Gregory about and how does it link to the sermon?
The poem is a conversation. A young man says no young man can love the woman “for yourself alone / and not your yellow hair” — her beauty (the “great honey-coloured ramparts at your ear” is her hair) makes them love the surface, not the self.
She says she could dye her hair brown, black or carrot; the young man answers that an old religious man once declared that only God could love a person for themselves alone. It links to the sermon through Kisa Gotami’s realisation “How selfish am I in my grief!”
— in both, the move is the same: away from seeing only yourself and the surface, toward seeing yourself as one among billions.
Explore Class 10 English Books
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