Explore the 60-Second Visual Storyline Roadmap, the Buddha’s philosophical parables, and 12-Year CBSE Solved Question Bank (2015–2026).
Download free, authoritative, and complete NCERT Solutions for Class 10 English First Flight Chapter 8: The Sermon at Benares by Betty Renshaw, alongside detailed solutions for the companion poem For Anne Gregory by W.B. Yeats. Below are full textbook answers, accompanied by authentic CBSE Board Examination questions and marking rubrics from 2015 to 2026.
1. The Sermon at Benares — Betty Renshaw (Textbook Solutions)
Thinking about the Text
Q1. When her son dies, Kisa Gotami goes from house to house. What does she ask for? Does she get it? Why not?
Answer:
In her grief-stricken madness, Kisa Gotami carried the dead child in her arms from neighbour to neighbour begging for medicine to cure him. She did not receive any medicine because people realized that the child was dead and that no medicine exists on earth capable of restoring life to a corpse.
Q2. What did the Buddha ask Kisa Gotami to procure? What realization dawned upon her?
Answer:
The Buddha asked her to bring a handful of mustard seeds from a household where no child, husband, parent, or friend had ever died. Kisa Gotami went eagerly from door to door, but everywhere she went, people wept: “Alas! The living are few, but the dead are many. Do not remind us of our deepest grief.”
Exhausted and hopeless, she sat down at the wayside watching the city lights flicker and extinguish into total darkness. She realized that human lives are like these lights, flickering for a while and extinguishing forever. She recognized that death is universal and that she had been selfish in her personal grief.
Q3. How does the Buddha compare human mortality to ripe fruits and earthen vessels? How can one attain peace of mind?
Answer:
The Buddha explained that just as ripe fruits are in constant danger of falling from trees in the morning, mortals are constantly subject to death from the moment of birth. Furthermore, just as every earthen vessel fashioned by a potter eventually breaks, so is the fragile existence of human beings.
Grief and lamentation cannot revive the departed; instead, weeping only deepens physical torment, ruins health, and causes mental despair. The Buddha taught that peace of mind is attained only when one extracts the arrow of lamentation, overcomes sorrow, and accepts death as the supreme universal law.
2. Companion Poem: For Anne Gregory — W.B. Yeats (Textbook Solutions)
Q1. What is the central debate in “For Anne Gregory” regarding inner versus outer beauty?
Answer:
The poem explores whether true love is attracted to physical appearance or inner spiritual character. The speaker asserts that young suitors fall in love with Anne Gregory because of her glorious, honey-coloured hair (“ramparts at your ear”), and not for who she truly is inside. When Anne argues that she can dye her hair brown, black, or carrot to test if someone can love her true self, the speaker quotes an old religious scholar who proved from ancient scriptures that only God possesses the divine grace to love an individual purely for their soul, whereas humans remain hopelessly swayed by external vanity.
3. CBSE Solved Board Questions (2015–2026)
Q. Why did the Buddha choose Benares to deliver his first sermon?
Answer: Benares is the holiest city on the banks of the sacred river Ganges, where millions of pilgrims arrive seeking spiritual salvation and release from suffering. The Buddha chose this supreme spiritual crossroads to share his newfound enlightenment so that his path of overcoming sorrow would reach all humanity.
Q. “Grief is selfish, but acceptance is liberation.” Analyze the journey of Kisa Gotami from blinding attachment to spiritual awakening.
Answer: When Kisa Gotami lost her only child, her attachment blinded her to the reality of death, prompting her to search desperately for medicine for a corpse. Instead of lecturing her conceptually, the Buddha assigned her an experiential lesson: to find mustard seeds from a house unvisited by death. As house after house turned her away with tales of deceased relatives, the universality of mortality became undeniable. Watching the flickering city lights, Gotami shed her selfish grief and realized that death is the shared destiny of all mortals. By surrendering to this cosmic reality, she overcame agony and attained spiritual peace.