Buddha

Chapter 6 – Parinibbana

one afternoon, forty-five years after the Buddha’s enlightenment, King Pasenedi called on him unexpectedly in the town of Medalumpa in Sakka. He was now an old man, and had remarked recently to the Buddha that political life was becoming more and more violent. Kings were “drunk with authority,” “obsessed with greed,” and constantly engaged in “fighting battles using elephants, horses, chariots and infantry.” The Ganges basin seemed ablaze with destructive egotism. For years, Kosala had been fending off the Magadhan army, which was making a bid to achieve sole hegemony in the region. And Pasenedi himself was desolate. His beloved wife had died recently, and he had fallen into a profound depression. This was what happened when you put your trust in other moribund human beings. Pasenedi no longer felt at home anywhere in the world; in a parody of the wandering monk’s “Going Forth,” he had taken to leaving his palace and driving for miles with his army, going aimlessly from one place to another. He had been out on one of these pointless excursions into Sakka when he heard that the Buddha was staying in the vicinity. Immediately he felt a great longing to be in his presence. The, he reflected, reminded him of a huge tree: he was quiet, aloof, above the petty disturbances of the world, but you could shelter there in a crisis. Immediately, he drove to Medalumpa, and when the road became impassable, he dismounted, left his sword and royal turban with his general, Digha Karayana, and made his way to the Buddha’s hut on foot. When the Buddha opened the door, Pasenedi kissed his feet. “Why are you doing this poor old body such honor?” asked the Buddha. Because the arama was such a comfort to him, replied the king; because the peace of the Sangha was so different from the selfishness, violence and greed of his court. But above all, Pasenedi concluded: “The Blessed One is eighty and I am eighty.” They were two old men together, and they should express their affection for each other in this dark world.

When Pasenedi left the hut and returned to the place where he had left Digha Karayana, he found that the general had gone and had taken the royal insignia with him. He hurried to the place where the army had encamped and found the spot deserted; only one of the ladies-in-waiting remained behind, with one horse and a single sword. Digha Karayana had gone back to Savatthl, she told the king, and was organizing a coup to put Prince Vidudabha, Pasenedi’s heir, on the throne. Pasenedi should not return to Savatthl if he valued his life. The old king decided to go to Magadha, since he was related to its royal house by marriage. But it was a long journey, and on the way, Pasenedi had to eat coarser food than usual and drink fetid water. When he arrived in Rajagaha the gates had closed, and Pasenedi was forced to sleep in a cheap lodging house. That night, he became violently ill with dysentery and died before dawn. The serving lady, who had done her best for the old man, began to rouse the whole city: “My lord the king of Kosala, who ruled two countries, has died a pauper’s death and is now lying in a common pauper’s rest home outside a foreign city!”

The Buddha had always seen old age as a symbol of the dukkha which afflicted all mortal beings. As Pasenedi had remarked, he himself was now old. Ananda, who was far from young himself, had recently been dismayed by the change in his master. His skin was wrinkled, his limbs were flaccid, his body was bent and his senses seemed to be failing. “So it is, so it is, Ananda,” the Buddha agreed. Old age was indeed cruel. But the story of the Buddha’s last years dwells less on the aesthetic disaster of aging than on the vulnerability of the old. Ambitious young men rise up against their elders, sons kill their own fathers. In this final phase of the Buddha’s life, the texts dwell on the terror of a world where all sense of sacredness is lost. Egotism reigns supreme; envy, hatred, greed and ambition are unmitigated by compassion and loving-kindness. People who stand in the way of a man’s craving are ruthlessly eliminated. All decency and respect have disappeared. By stressing the dangers that the Buddha had tried to counter for nearly fifty years, the scriptures force us to confront the ruthlessness and violence of the society against which he had launched his campaign of selflessness and loving-kindness.

Not even the Sangha was immune from this profane spirit. Eight years earlier, the Order had once again been threatened by schism and had been implicated in a plot to kill King Bimbisara, another old man, who had been the Buddha’s devoted follower for thirty-seven years. We find a full account of this rebellion only in the Vinaya. It may not be entirely historical, but it issues a warning: even the principles of the Sangha could be subverted and made lethal. According to the Vinaya, the culprit was Devadatta, the Buddha’s brother-in-law, who had entered the Sangha after the Buddha’s first trip home to Kapilavatthu. The later commentaries tell us that Devadatta had been malicious from his youth, and had always been the sworn enemy of the young Gotama when the two were growing up together. The Pali texts, however, know nothing of this and present Devadatta as an unexceptionally devout monk. He appears to have been a brilliant orator, and as the Buddha got older, Devadatta became resentful of his hold over the Order. He decided to build his own power base. Devadatta had lost all sense of the religious life, and began ruthlessly to promote himself. His horizons had narrowed: instead of reaching out expansively to the four corners of the earth in love, he was centered solely on his own career and consumed by hatred and envy. First he approached Prince Ajatasattu, son and heir of King Bimbisara and commander-in-chief of the Magadhan army. He impressed the prince with flashy displays of iddhi, a sure sign that he was profaning his yogic powers. But the prince became Devadatta’s patron: every day, he sent five hundred carriages to Devadatta in the arama of Vulture’s Peak, just outside Rajagaha, together with unseemly mounds of food for the bhikkhus. Devadatta became a favored court monk; the flattery went to his head and he decided to seize control of the Sangha. But when the Buddha was warned of his brother-in-law’s activities, he was not disturbed. Unskillful behavior on this scale could only bring Devadatta to an unsavory end.

Devadatta made his first move while the Buddha was staying in the Bamboo Grove outside Rajagaha. In front of a huge assembly of bhikkhus, Devadatta formally asked the Buddha to resign and hand over the Sangha to him. “The Blessed One is now old, aged, burdened with years.,. and has reached the last stage of his life,” he said unctuously. “Let him now rest.” The Buddha adamantly refused: he would not even hand the Sangha over to Sariputta and Moggallana, his two most eminent disciples. Why should he appoint such a lost soul as Devadatta to the position? Humiliated and furious, Devadatta left the arama vowing revenge. The Buddha was not much concerned about the leadership of the Order. He had always maintained that the Sangha did not need a central authority figure, since each monk was responsible for himself. But any attempt to sow dissension, as Devadatta had done, was anathema. An atmosphere of egotism, ambition, hostility and competitiveness was absolutely incompatible with the spiritual life and would negate the raison d’etre of the Sangha. The Buddha, therefore, publicly dissociated himself and his Order from Devadatta and told Sariputta to denounce him in Rajagaha. “Formerly,” he explained, “Devadatta had one nature; now he has another.” But the damage had been done. Some of the townsfolk believed that the Buddha was jealous of Devadatta’s new popularity with the prince; the more judicious, however, reserved judgment.

Meanwhile, Devadatta approached Prince Ajatasattu with a proposition. In the old days, he said, people lived longer than they did now. King Bimbisara was lingering on, and perhaps Ajatasattu would never sit on the throne. Why did he not slay his father, while he, Devadatta, killed the Buddha? Why should these two old men stand in their way? Together, Devadatta and Ajatasattu would make a great team and achieve marvelous things. The prince liked the idea, but when he tried to slip into the king’s inner sanctum with a dagger strapped to his thigh, he was arrested and confessed all. Some of the officers of the army wanted to put the whole Sangha to death when they heard of Devadatta’s role in the assassination attempt, but Bimbisara pointed out that the Buddha had already repudiated Devadatta and could not be held responsible for the deeds of this miscreant. When Ajatasattu was brought before him, the king asked him sadly why he had wanted to kill him. “I want the kingdom, sire,” Ajatasattu replied with disarming frankness. Bimbisara had not been the Buddha’s disciple for so long for nothing. “If you want the kingdom, Prince,” he said simply, “it is yours.” Like Pasenedi, he was probably aware of the unskillful and aggressive passions that were required in politics, and perhaps wanted to devote his last years to the spiritual life. His abdication did him no good, however. With the support of the army, Ajatasattu arrested his father and starved him to death.

The new king then backed Devadatta’s scheme to kill the Buddha, providing him with trained assassins from the army. But as soon as the first of these approached the Buddha with a bow and arrow, he was overcome with terror and rooted to the spot. “Come friend,” the Buddha said gently. “Do not be afraid.” Because he had seen the error of his ways, his crime was forgiven. The Buddha then gave the soldier instruction appropriate for the layman and in a very short time the repentant killer had become a disciple. One by one, his fellow conspirators followed suit. After this, Devadatta was forced to take the matter into his own hands. First he pushed a huge boulder over a cliff hoping to crush the Buddha, but succeeded only in grazing the Buddha’s foot. Next he hired a famously ferocious elephant called Naligiri, which he let loose on the Buddha. But as soon as Naligiri saw his prey, he was overcome by the waves of love that emanated from the Buddha, lowered his trunk, and stood still while the Buddha stroked his forehead, explaining to him that violence would not help him in his next life. Naligiri took dust off the Buddha’s feet with his trunk, sprinkled it over his own forehead, and retreated backward, gazing yearningly at the Buddha all the while until he was out of sight. Then he ambled peaceably back to the stables, a reformed beast from that day forth.

Seeing that the Buddha seemed proof against these assaults, the conspirators changed their tactics. Ajatasattu, who had succeeded in his own bid for power, dropped Devadatta and became one of the Buddha’s lay disciples. Devadatta was now on his own and tried to find support within the Sangha. He appealed to some of the younger and more inexperienced monks of Vesall, arguing that the Buddha’s Middle Way was an unacceptable deviation from tradition. Buddhists should return to the tougher ideals of the more traditional ascetics. Devadatta proposed five new rules: all members of the Sangha should live in the forests rather than in the aramas during the monsoon; they must rely solely on alms and must not accept invitations to eat at the houses of the laity; instead of new robes, they must wear only cast-off rags picked up from the streets; they must sleep in the open instead of in huts; and they must never eat the flesh of any living being. These five rules may represent the historical kernel in the story of Devadatta’s defection. Some of the more conservative bhikkhus may well have been concerned that standards were slipping and could have attempted to break away from the main Sangha. Devadatta might have been associated with this reform movement, and his enemies, the proponents of the Buddha’s Middle Way, could have blackened Devadatta’s name by inventing the dramatic legends that we find in the Vinaya.

When Devadatta published his five rules and asked the Buddha to make them obligatory for the whole Sangha, the Buddha refused, pointing out that any monk who wished to live in this way was perfectly free to do so, but that coercion in these matters was against the spirit of the Order. Monks must make up their own minds and not be forced to follow anybody else’s directives. Devadatta was jubilant. The Buddha had refused his pious request! He announced triumphantly to his followers that the Buddha was given over to luxury and self-indulgence and that it was their duty to withdraw from their corrupt brethren. With five hundred young monks, Devadatta decamped to Gayasisa Hill outside Rajagaha, while the Buddha dispatched Sariputta and Moggallana to win the rebellious bhikkhus back. When Devadatta saw them approaching, he immediately assumed that they had deserted the Buddha and come to join him. Elated, he called an assembly and addressed his disciples far into the night. Then, pleading that his back was paining him, he retired to bed, handing the floor to Sariputta and Moggallana. Once these two loyal elders began to speak, they were soon able to persuade the bhikkhus to return to the Buddha, who received them back without reprisals. Some texts tell us that Devadatta committed suicide; others that he died before he was able to be reconciled with the Buddha. Whatever the truth of these stories, they make a telling point about the suffering of old age; they also form a cautionary tale. Even the Sangha was not immune to the selfishness, ambition and dissension that was so rampant in public life.

The Buddha reflected on this danger in the last year of his life. He was now eighty years old. King Ajatasattu was by this time firmly established on the throne of Magadha and frequently visited the Buddha. He was planning an offensive against the republics of Malla, Videha, Licchavi, Koliya and Vajji, all to the east of his kingdom, who had formed a defensive confederacy known collectively as “the Vajjians.” The king was determined to wipe them off the map and absorb them into his kingdom, but before he launched his attack, he sent his minister Vassakara, a brahmin, to tell the Buddha what he was about to do and to listen carefully to his comments. The Buddha was cryptic. He told Vassakara that as long as the Vajjians remained true to the republican traditions; held “frequent and well-attended meetings”; lived together in concord; respected the older men, listening carefully to their advice; and observed the laws and pieties of their ancestors, King Ajatasattu would not be able to defeat them. Vassakara listened attentively and told the Buddha that, since the Vajjians at present met all these conditions, they were in fact impregnable. He went back to break the news to the king. Buddhist tradition, however, has it that shortly after this, King Ajatasattu did manage to defeat the Vajjians: he achieved this feat by sending spies into the republics to sow discord among the leaders. So there was a poignancy and urgency in the Buddha’s next words, after the door had closed behind Vassakara. He applied the same conditions to the Sangha: as long as its members respected the senior bhikkhus, held frequent assemblies, and remained absolutely true to the Dhamma, the Sangha would survive.

The tribal republics were doomed. They belonged to the past and would shortly be swept away by the new militant monarchies. King Pasenedi’s son would soon defeat and massacre the Sakyans, the Buddha’s own people. But the Buddha’s Sangha was a new, up-to-date, and spiritually skillful version of the old republican governments. It would hold true to values that the more violent and coercive monarchies were in danger of forgetting. But this was a dangerous world. The Sangha could not survive the internal dissension, disrespect for elders, lack of loving-kindness, and superficiality that had surfaced during the Devadatta scandal. Bhikkhus and bhikkhunis must be mindful, spiritually alert, energetic and faithful to the meditative disciplines that alone could bring them enlightenment. The Order would not decline as long as monks avoided such unskillful pursuits as “gossiping, lazing around, and socializing; as long as they have no unprincipled friends and avoid falling under such people’s spell; as long as they do not stop halfway in their quest and remain satisfied with a mediocre level of spirituality.” If they failed in this, the Sangha would become indistinguishable from any secular institution; it would fall prey to the vices of the monarchies and become hopelessly corrupt.

After the meeting with Vassakara, the Buddha decided to leave Rajagaha and travel north in order to spend the vassa retreat in Vesall. It is as though the revelation of King Ajatasattu’s plans to “exterminate and destroy” the Vajjians had momentarily repelled him and made him aware of the affinity he felt for the beleaguered republics. He had spent most of his working life in Kosala and Maghada and had fulfilled an important mission there. But now, an old man who had himself suffered from the aggression that fueled the political life of these kingdoms, he headed out into the more marginal regions of the Ganges basin.

Slowly, with a large entourage of monks, the Buddha journeyed through Magadhan territory, first to Nalanda and then to Pataligama (the modern Patna), later the capital of the great Buddhist king Asoka(c. 269-232 b.c.e.), who would create a monarchy that eschewed violence and tried to embody the compassionate ethic of the Dhamma. The Buddha noticed the great fortresses that were being built by the Magadhan ministers in preparation for the coming war with the Vajjians, and prophesied the city’s future greatness. There a delegation of lay disciples put a rest house at the Buddha’s disposal, laying down carpets and hanging a great oil lamp, and the Buddha sat up all night preaching the version of the Dhamma that had been adapted to the needs of the laity. He pointed out that the prudence of skillful behavior could benefit a virtuous man or woman even in this world, and would ensure that in their next lives they would be farther along the route to enlightenment.

Finally, the Buddha arrived at Vesall. At first everything seemed as it had always been. He lodged in a mango grove belonging to Ambapali, one of the town’s leading courtesans. She came out to greet the Buddha with a fleet of state carriages, sat at his feet to listen to the Dhamma, and invited him to dine. Just as he had given his consent, the members of the Licchavi tribe who were living in Vesall sallied forth in a body to invite the Buddha themselves, riding in a splendid procession of brilliantly colored carriages. It was a marvelous sight, and the Buddha smiled when he saw it, telling his bhikkhus that now they had some idea of the magnificence of the gods in heaven. The Licchavis sat around the Buddha, who “spurred them on, inspired and encouraged” them with talk of the Dhamma. At the end of this discourse, the Licchavis issued their invitation to dinner, and when the Buddha told them that he was already engaged to eat with Ambapali, they did I not lose their good humor, but snapped their fingers, crying I “Oh the mango girl has beaten us, the mango girl has outwitted us!” That night, at dinner, the courtesan donated the mango grove to the Sangha, and the Buddha stayed for a while there, preaching to his bhikkhus. There was the usual bustle, glamour and excitement around the Buddha and, at its heart, the constant exhortation to an intense interior life of mindfulness and meditation.

But then the picture began to darken. The Buddha left Vesali with his monks and took up residence in the nearby village of Beluvagamaka. After they had stayed there a while, he suddenly dismissed his monks: they should go back to Vesali and put up for the monsoon retreat wherever they could. He and Ananda would stay on in Beluvagamaka. A new solitude had entered the Buddha’s life, and from this point he seemed to shun the larger cities and towns and to seek out ever more obscure locations. It was as though he were already beginning to leave the world. After the bhikkhus had left, the Buddha became seriously ill, but with great self-control he suppressed the pain and overcame his sickness. It was not right for him to die yet and attain the Ultimate Nibbana (parinibbana), which would complete the enlightenment he had won under the bodhi tree. First he must bid the Sangha farewell. The Buddha, therefore, recovered, left his sickroom, and came out to sit with Ananda on the porch of the hut in which he was staying. His illness had shaken Ananda to the core. “I am used to seeing the Blessed One healthy and fit,” he told the Buddha tremulously as he sat down beside him. For the first time he had realized that his master could die. “I felt my body go rigid,” he said, “I could not see straight, my mind was confused.” But he had found comfort in one thought: the Buddha would not die until he had made some practical arrangements about the succession and the government of the Sangha, which would have to change once the master had departed. The Buddha sighed. “What does the Sangha expect of me, Ananda?” he asked patiently. The bhikkhus all knew everything he had to teach them. There was no secret doctrine for a few chosen leaders. Such thoughts as “I must govern the Sangha” or “The Sangha depends on me” did not occur to an enlightened man. “I am an old man, Ananda, eighty years old,” the Buddha went on inexorably. “My body can only get about with the help of makeshifts, like an old cart.” The one activity that brought him ease and refreshment was meditation, which introduced him to the peace and release of Nibbana. And so it must be for every single bhikkhu and bhikkhuil. “Each of you must make himself his island, make himself and no one else his refuge.” No Buddhist could depend upon another person and need one of their number to lead the Order. “The Dhamma-and the Dhamma alone-was his refuge.” How could the bhikkhus become self-reliant? They knew the answer already: by meditation, concentration, mindfulness and a disciplined detachment from the world. The Sangha needed no one to govern it, no central authority. The whole point of the Buddhist lifestyle was to achieve an inner resource that made such dependence quite ludicrous.

But Ananda had not yet achieved Nibbana. He was not a skilled yogin and had not managed to achieve this degree of self-sufficiency. He was personally attached to his master and would become the model of those Buddhists who were not ready for such yogic heroism, but needed a more human devotion (bhakhti) to the Buddha to encourage them. Ananda had another shock a few days later, when a novice brought them news of the deaths of Sariputta and Moggallana in Nalanda. Yet again, the Buddha was mildly exasperated to see Ananda’s distress. What did he expect? Was it not the essence of the Dhamma that nothing lasted forever and that there was always separation from everything and everybody that we love? Did Ananda imagine that Sariputta had taken with him the laws and insights by which Buddhists lived, or that the code of virtue and the knowledge of meditation had also departed from the Sangha? “No, Lord,” protested the hapless Ananda. It was just that he could not help remembering how generous Sariputta had been to them all, how he had enriched and aided them by his tireless exposition of the Dhamma. It had been heartbreaking to see his begging bowl and robe, which the novice had brought to the Buddha when he came to break the news. “Ananda,” said the Buddha again, “each of you should make himself his island, make himself and no one else his refuge; each of you must make the Dhamma his island, the Dhamma and nothing else his refuge.”

Far from being distressed about the deaths of his two closest disciples, the Buddha was overjoyed that they had attained their parinibbana, their ultimate release from the frailties of mortality. It was a joy to him to have had two such disciples, who were so beloved by the whole Sangha! How could he be sorrowful and lament, when they had reached the final goal of their quest? Nevertheless, for the unenlightened, there is a poignancy and sadness in the Buddha’s end. None of the inner circle was left except for Ananda. The texts try to disguise it, but there were no more excited crowds and colorful dinners with friends. Instead, the Buddha and Ananda, two old men, struggled on alone, experiencing the weariness of survival and the passing away of companions which constitutes the true tragedy of old age. That even the Buddha may have had some intimations of this and felt potentially bereft is suggested by the last appearance of Mara, his shadow-self, in his life. He and Ananda had just spent the day alone together at one of the many shrines in Vesali, and the Buddha remarked that it was possible for a fully enlightened man like himself to live out the rest of this period of history, if he wished. He was, the texts tell us, giving Ananda a broad hint. If he begged him to stay in the world, out of compassion for the gods and men who needed his guidance, the Buddha had the power to live on. But, yet again, poor Ananda was simply not up to the occasion, did not understand, and, therefore, did not ask the Buddha to remain with the Sangha until the end of this historical era. It was an omission for which some members of the early Sangha blamed Ananda-a poor reward for the years of devoted service to his master, which the Buddha himself certainly appreciated. But when the Buddha had dropped his hint, Ananda did not see its significance, made a polite and noncommittal rejoinder, and went off to sit at the foot of a nearby tree.

For a while, perhaps, even the Buddha may have had a fleeting wish for a companion who could understand more fully what was in his mind, as he felt his life ebbing away, because just at this point, Mara, his shadow-self, appeared. “Let the Tathagata achieve his parinibbana now,” Mara whispered seductively. Why go on? He deserved his final rest; there was no point in further struggle. For the last time, the Buddha repelled Mara. He would not enter the bliss of his Final Nibbana until his mission was complete and he was certain that the Order and the holy life were properly established. But, he added, that would be very soon: “In three months time,” he told Mara, “the Tathagata will attain his parinibbana.” It was then, the scriptures tell us, at the Capala Shrine in Vesali, that the Buddha consciously and deliberately “abandoned the will to live.” It was a decision that reverberated throughout the cosmos. The world of men was shaken by an earthquake, which made even Ananda realize that something momentous was afoot, and in the heavens a solemn drum began to beat. It was too late, the Buddha told the now contrite Ananda, for his attendant to beg him to live on. He must now speak to the Sangha and bid his monks a formal farewell. In the great painted hall of the Vesali arama, he spoke to all the bhikkhus who were residing in the neighborhood. He had nothing new to tell them. “I have only taught you things that I have experienced fully for myself,” he said. He had taken nothing on trust and they too must make the Dhamma a reality for themselves. They must thoroughly learn all the truths he had imparted, make them, by means of meditation, a living experience, so that they too knew them with the “direct knowledge” of a yogin. Above all, they must live for others. The holy life had not been devised simply to benefit the enlightened, and Nibbana was not a prize which any bhikkhu could selfishly keep to himself. They must live the Dhamma “for the sake of the people, for the welfare and happiness of the multitude, out of compassion for the whole world, and for the good and well-being of gods and men.”

The next morning, after the Buddha and Ananda had begged for their food in the town, the Buddha turned round and gazed for a long time at Vesali; it was the last time that he would ever see it. They then took the path to the village of Bhandagama. From this point, the Buddha’s wanderings seemed to be heading off the map of the civilized world. After he had stayed for a while in Bhandagama, instructing the bhikkhus there, the Buddha traveled with Ananda slowly northward, through the villages of Hatthigama, Ambagama, Jambugama and Bhoganagama (all of which have disappeared without trace) until he arrived at Pava, where he lodged in the grove belonging to one Cunda, the son of a goldsmith. Cunda did homage to the Buddha, listened attentively to his instruction and then invited him to an excellent dinner, which included some sukaramaddava (“pigs’ soft food”). Nobody is quite sure what this dish really was: some of the commentaries say that it was succulent pork already on sale in the market (the Buddha never ate the flesh of an animal that had been killed especially for him); others argue that it was either a form of minced pork or a dish of the truffle mushrooms enjoyed by pigs. Some maintain that it was a special elixir, which Cunda, who was afraid that the Buddha would die and attain his parinibbana that day, believed would prolong his life indefinitely. At all events, the Buddha insisted on eating the sukaramaddava and told the bhikkhus to eat the other food on the table. When he had finished, he told Cunda to bury what was left, since nobody-not even a god-could digest it. This could simply be an adverse appraisal of Cunda’s culinary skills, but some modern scholars have suggested that the Buddha realized that the sukkaramaddava had been poisoned: they see the loneliness of the Buddha’s end and the remoteness of the location as a sign of a distance between the Buddha and the Sangha and believe that, like the two old kings, he too died a violent death.

The Pali texts, however, do not even consider this appalling possibility. The Buddha’s request that Cunda bury the food was strange, but he had been ill for some time and expected to die shortly. That night he began to vomit blood and was gripped by a violent pain, but yet again he mastered his illness and set off with Ananda to Kusinara. He was now in the republic of Malla, whose inhabitants do not seem to have been interested in the Buddha’s ideas. The texts tell us that he was accompanied by the usual retinue of monks, but apart from Ananda, no senior member of the Order was with him. On his way to Kusinara, the Buddha became tired and asked for some water. Even though the stream was stagnant and muddy, the water became clear as soon as Ananda approached it with the Buddha’s bowl. The scriptures emphasize such incidents to mitigate the bleak solitude of these last days. We hear that on the final leg of his journey, the Buddha converted a passing Mallian, who, fittingly, had been a follower of his old teacher, Alara Kalama. This man was so impressed by the quality of the Buddha’s concentration that he made the Triple Refuge on the spot and presented the Buddha and Ananda with two robes made of cloth of gold. But when the Buddha put his on, Ananda exclaimed that it looked quite dull beside the brightness of his skin: the Buddha explained that this was a sign that he would very shortly-when he reached Kusinara-achieve his Final Nibbana. A little later, he told Ananda that nobody should blame Cunda for his death: it was an act of great merit to give a Buddha his last almsfood before he attained his parinibbana.

What was this parinibbana? Was it simply an extinction? And if so, why was this Nothingness regarded as such a glorious achievement? How would this “final” Nibbana differ from the peace that the Buddha had attained under the bodhi tree? The word nibbana, it will be recalled, means “cooling off” or “going out,” like a flame. The term for the attainment of Nibbana in this life in the texts is saupadi-sesa. An Arahant had extinguished the fires of craving, hatred and ignorance, but he still had a “residue” (sesa) of “fuel” (upadi) as long as he lived in the body, used his senses and mind, and experienced emotions. There was a potential for a further conflagration. But when an Arahant died, these khandha could never be ignited again, and could not feed the flame of a new existence. The Arahant was, therefore, free from samsara and could be absorbed wholly into the peace and immunity of Nibbana.

But what did that mean? We have seen that the Buddha always refused to define Nibbana, because we have no terms that are adequate for this experience that transcends the reach of the senses and the mind. Like those monotheists who preferred to speak of God in negative terms, the Buddha sometimes preferred to explain what Nibbana was not. It was, he told his disciples, a state

where there is neither earth nor water, light nor air; neither infinity or space; it is not infinity of reason but nor is it an absolute void… it is neither this world or another world; it is both sun and moon.

That did not mean that it was really “nothing”; we have seen that it became a Buddhist heresy to claim that an Arahant ceased to exist in Nibbana. But it was an existence beyond the self, and blissful because there was no selfishness. Those of us who are unenlightened, and whose horizons are still constricted by egotism, cannot imagine this state. But those who had achieved the death of the ego knew that selflessness was not a void. When the Buddha tried to give his disciples a hint of what this peaceful Eden in the heart of the psyche was like, he mixed negative with positive terms. Nibbana was, he said, “the extinction of greed, hatred and delusion”; it was the Third Noble Truth; it was “Taintless,” “Unweakening,” “Undisintegrating,” “Inviolable,” “Non-distress,” “Non-affliction,” and “Unhostility.” All these epithets emphasized that Nibbana canceled out everything that we find intolerable in life. It was not a state of annihilation: it was “Deathless.” But there were positive things that could be said of Nibbana too: it was “the Truth,” “the Subtle,” “the Other Shore,” “the Everlasting,” “Peace,” “the Superior Goal,” “Safety,” “Purity, Freedom, Independence, the Island, the Shelter, the Harbor, the Refuge, the Beyond.” It was the supreme good of humans and gods alike, an incomprehensible Peace, and an utterly safe refuge. Many of these images are reminiscent of words that monotheists have used to describe God.

Indeed, Nibbana was very much like the Buddha himself. Later Buddhists of the Mahayana school would claim that he was so wholly infused by Nibbana that he was identical with it. Just as Christians see what God might be like when they contemplate the man Jesus, these Buddhists could see the Buddha as the human expression of this state. Even in his own life, people had intimations of this. The brahmin who could not classify the Buddha, since he no longer fit into any mundane or celestial category, had sensed that, like Nibbana, the Buddha was “Something Else.” The Buddha had told him that he was “one who had woken up,” a man who had shed the dreary, painful limitations of profane humanity and achieved something Beyond. King Pasenedi had also seen the Buddha as a refuge, a place of safety and purity. When he had left home, he had experimented with his human nature until he discovered this new region of peace within. But he was not unique. Anybody who applied himself or herself seriously to the holy life could find this Edenic serenity within. The Buddha had lived for forty-five years as a human without egotism; he had, therefore, been able to live with pain. But now that he was approaching the end of his life, he was about to shed the last indignities of age; the khandha, the “bundles of firewood” that had blazed with greed and delusion in his youth, had long been extinguished, and could now be thrown away. He was about to reach the Other Shore. So he walked feebly but with great confidence toward the obscure little town where he would attain the parinibbana.

The Buddha and Ananda, two old men, crossed the Hirarinavati river with their crowd of bhikkhus, and turned into a grove of sal trees on the road that led into Kusinara. By now the Buddha was in pain. He lay down and the sal trees immediately burst into flower and dropped their petals upon him, even though it was not the season for blossom. The place was filled with gods, the Buddha said, who had come to witness his last triumph. But what gave a Buddha far more honor was the fidelity of his followers to the Dhamma he had brought them.

As he lay dying, the Buddha gave directions about his funeral. His ashes were to be treated like those of a cakkavatti; his body should be wrapped in a cloth and cremated with perfumed woods, and the remains buried at the crossroads of a great city. From first to last, the Buddha had been paired with the cakkavatti, and after his enlightenment had offered the world an alternative to a power based on aggression and coercion. His funeral arrangements drew attention to this ironic counterpoint. The great kings of the region, who had appeared to be so potent when the young Gotama had arrived in Magadha and Kosala, had both been snuffed out. The violence and cruelty of their deaths showed that the monarchies were fueled by selfishness, greed, ambition, envy, hatred and destruction. They had brought prosperity and cultural advancement; they represented the march of progress and benefited many people. But there was another way of life that did not have to impose itself so violently, that was not dedicated to self-aggrandizement, and that made men and women happier and more humane.

The funeral arrangements were just too much for Ananda. His plight during these last days reminds us of the immense gulf that separates the unenlightened from the Arahant. Ananda knew all about Buddhism intellectually, but this knowledge was no substitute for the “direct knowledge” of the yogin. It could be of no help to him when he started to experience the pain of the loss of his master. This was infinitely worse than the death of Sariputta. He understood the Noble Truth of Suffering with his mundane, rational mind, but he had not absorbed it so that it fused with his whole being. He still could not accept the fact that everything was transient and would pass away. Because he was not a proficient yogin, he could not “penetrate” these doctrines and make them a living reality. Instead of feeling a yogic certainty, he felt only raw pain. After he had listened to the Buddha’s uninipassioned directions about his ashes, Ananda left his master’s bedside and fled to one of the other huts in the grove. For a long time, he stood weeping, resting his head against the lintel. He felt a complete failure: “I am still only a beginner,” wept the elderly bhikkhu. “I have not reached the goal of the holy life; my quest is unfulfilled.” He lived in a community of spiritual giants who had reached Nibbana. Who would help him now? Who would even bother with him? “My Teacher is about to attain his parinibbana-my compassionate Teacher who was always kind to me.”

When the Buddha heard about Ananda’s tears, he sent for him. “That is enough, Ananda,” he said. “Don’t be sorrowful; don’t grieve.” Had he not explained, over and over again, that nothing was permanent but that separation was the law of life? “And Ananda,” the Buddha concluded, “for years you have waited on me with constant love and kindness. You have taken care of my physical needs, and have supported me in all your words and thoughts. You have done all this to help me, joyfully and with your whole heart. You have earned merit, Ananda. Keep trying, and you will soon be enlightened too.”

But Ananda was still struggling. “Lord,” he cried, “do not go to your Final Rest in this dreary little town, with mud walls; this heathen, jungle outpost, this backwater.” The Buddha had spent the greater part of his working life in such great cities as Rajagaha, Kosambi, Savatti, and Varanasl. Why could he not return to one of these cities, and finish his quest surrounded by all his noble disciples, instead of dying here alone, among these ignorant unbelievers? The texts show that the early Sangha was embarrassed by the obscurity of Kusinara and the fact that their Teacher died far away in the jungle. The Buddha tried to cheer Ananda, pointing out that Kusinara had once been a thriving city and the great capital of a cakkavatti. But the Buddha’s choice of Kusinara almost certainly had a deeper reason. No Buddhist could ever rest on past achievements; the Sangha must always press forward to bring help to the wider world. And a Buddha would not see a dismal little town like Kusinara in the same way as would an unenlightened man. For years he had trained his conscious and his unconscious mind to see reality from an entirely different perspective, free from the distorting aura of egotism that clouds the judgment of most human beings. He did not need the external prestige upon which many of us rely in order to prop up our sense of self. As a Tathagata, his egotism had “gone.” A Buddha had no time to think of himself, even on his deathbed. Right up to the last, he continued to live for others, inviting the Mallians of Kusinara to come to the grove in order to share his triumph. He also took the time to instruct a passing mendicant, who belonged to another sect but was drawn to the Buddha’s teaching, even though Ananda protested that the Buddha was ill and exhausted.

Finally, he turned back to Ananda, able with his usual sympathy to enter into his thoughts. “You may be thinking, Ananda: ‘The word of the Teacher is now a thing of the past; now we have no more Teacher.’ But that is not how you should see it. Let the Dhamma and the Discipline that I have taught you be your Teacher when I am gone.” He had always told his followers to look not at him but at the Dhamma; he himself had never been important. Then he turned to the crowd of bhikkhus who had accompanied him on this last journey, and reminded them yet again that ‘All individual things pass away. Seek your liberation with diligence.”

Having given his last advice to his followers, the Buddha fell into a coma. Some of the monks felt able to trace his journey through the higher states of consciousness that he had explored so often in meditation. But he had gone beyond any state known to human beings whose minds are still dominated by sense experience. While the gods rejoiced, the earth shook and those bhikkhus who had not yet achieved enlightenment wept, the Buddha experienced an extinction that was, paradoxically, the supreme state of being and the final goal of humanity: