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: