Thus the Blessed One was equally minded to Devadatta, the conspirator, and to Rahula, his own worthy son. Devadatta was regarded by the members of the Order as a typical “fool.” Each enlightened Bhikshu understood and believed that Devadatta will come again as a Buddha, knowing that all things are the same in Supreme Reality of
Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi
(Highest Perfect Wisdom).
Young King Ajatasutru, seeing the dismal failure of his foolish heretical hero, suffering greatly from the pangs of conscience, sought peace in his distress by going to the Blessed One and learning the way of salvation.
Jealousy rose in the hearts of other heretical leaders owing to the Master’s massive popularity and the gifts which pious laypeople were bestowing on the disciples of the Buddha. These leaders sought to drag the Blessed One’s reputation through the mud and discredit him in the eyes of the people. A false nun belonging to a heretical sect was persuaded to accuse the Blessed One of adultery before the entire assemblage. Chincha’s callous lie was exposed. The heretics made another attempt to blast the Master with calumny. They got a woman called Sundari to spread a rumor that she had passed the night in the bed-chamber of the Teacher. This slander was also repudiated, but meanwhile the conspirators had Sundari killed by a band of drunks bribed for the purpose. The vicious fools threw the corpse in the bushes near the monastery in the Jeta Park. The heretics wanted it to look like an attempt on the part of Gotama’s followers to cover up a scandal, and that they had lost their heads in so doing. Consequently loud voices were raised demanding legal steps to be taken against the Lord Buddha. But the drunken murderers fell out and began fighting in the tavern, accusing one another and so the secret leaked out. They were arrested that night and brought before the king’s tribunal. On questioning, they admitted their guilt and revealed the names of their employers. On still another occasion, Narasu writes:-“The heritics instigated Srigupta to take the life of the Master by poisoning his food and misleading him into a pit of fire, but by pity and calm forgiveness the Holy One saved Srigupta from spite and crime and showed how mercy conquers even a foe, and thus he taught the rule of forgiveness sublime, freeing his followers from the woe of the world.”
Elated and believing, perceiving the serenity, the moral earnestness, the sweet reasonableness of the Master, more and more disciples joined the Brotherhood. Of his Twelve Great Disciples, 500 years before Christ and His Twelve, the Blessed One said: “Save in my religion the Twelve Great Disciples, who, being good themselves, rouse up the world and deliver it from indifference, are not to be found.”
One day while staying in the southern district the Buddha visited the Brahman village of Ekanala. A wealthy Brahman, cane in hand, was overseering his laborers who were sweating with oxen in the field. The Buddha, begging-pot in hand, calmly approached the harassed and vexatious squire. Some of the humble laborers came to the Blessed One and made obeisance with palms pressed together, but the millionaire was annoyed and rebuked the Holy One with these words: “O you Quiet One, I plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat; it would be better if you were in like manner to plough and sow, and then you would also have food to eat.”
“O Brahman,” replied the Blessed One, “I too plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat.”
“But,” said the Brahman, “if you are a farmer, where are the signs of it? Where are your bullocks, the seed, and the plough?”
Then the Teacher answered: “Faith is the seed I sow; devotion is the rain that fertilizes it; modesty is the plough-shaft; the mind is the tie of the yoke; mindfulness is my ploughshare and goad. Truthfulness is the means to bind; tenderness, to untie. Energy is my team and bullock. Thus this ploughing is effected, destroying the weeds of delusion. The crop that I harvest is the Ambrosial fruit of Nirvana, and by this labor all sorrow is brought to an end.”
Whereupon this Brahman, ignoring his servant who stood beside him, himself poured milk-rice into a golden bowl and handed it to the Lord Buddha saying: “Eat, O Gotama, the milk-rice. Indeed, thou art a farmer; for thou, Gotama, accomplishest a ploughing, which yields the fruit of immortality.”
To the assembled pious clan of Likkhavi princes the Blessed One said:- “To gain the end of wisdom first banish every ground of ‘self ’; this thought of ‘self ’ shades every lofty aim, even as the ashes conceal the fire, treading on which the foot is burned.
“Pride and indifference shroud this heart, too, as the sun is obscured by the piled-up clouds; supercilious thoughts root out all modesty of mind, and sorrow saps the strongest will.
“As I am a conqueror amid conquerors, so he who conquers ‘self ’ is one with me.
“He who little cares to conquer ‘self,’ is but a foolish master; beauty, of earthly things, family renown and such things, all are utterly inconstant, and what is changeable can give no rest of interval.
“This right apprehension once produced then there is deliverance from greedy desire arising from ‘self,’ for a false estimate of excellency produces a greedy desire to excel, while a false view of demerit produces anger and regret, but this idea of excelling and also of inferiority both destroyed, the desire to excel and also anger are destroyed.
“Anger! how it changes the comely face, how it destroys the loveliness of beauty!”
As when a snake subdued by charms glistens with shining skin, so the Likkhavi warriors were appeased by the Blessed One’s words and prospered in peace in their lovely valley. They found their joy in quietness and seclusion, meditating only on religious truth.
“What monk, O monks, adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood?” spoke the Buddha to Sariputra, to Maudgalyayana, to Ananda, to Anuruddha, to Revata, and to Kasyapa, on a cloudless night wafted with fragrance in the heavenly Wood. “It is the monk, O monks, who, having turned from his begging round and partaken of his meal, sits down with crossed legs under him, body upright, and brings himself to a state of recollected-ness, ‘
I will not rise from this spot
,’ he resolves within himself, ‘
until freed from clinging, my mind attains to deliverance from
all Bane.
’ Such is the Monk, O monks, who truly adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood.”
The truth is older than the world, heavier than history, a greater loss than blood, a greater gift than bread.
In his 80th year as Nirmanakaya Buddha walking upon the terrace of the earth, yet like all of us a spiritual ghost in the Divine Ground, he suddenly said: “The time of my complete deliverance is at hand, but let three months elapse, and I shall reach Nirvana.”
Tathagata, seated beneath a tree, straightaway was lost in ecstasy, and willingly rejected his allotted years, and by his spiritual power fixed the remnant of his life.
Buddha rising from out of his ecstasy announced to all the world:-
“Now I have given up my term of years: I live henceforth by power of faith; my body like a broken chariot stands, no further cause of ‘coming’ or of ‘going,’ completely freed from earth, heaven and hell, I go enfranchised, as a chicken from its egg.
“Ananda! I have fixed three months to end my life, the rest of life I utterly give up; this is the reason why the earth is greatly shaken.”
Cried Ananda: “Have pity! save me, master! perish not so soon!”
The Blessed One replied: “If men but knew their own nature, they would not dwell in sorrow. Everything that lives, whatever it be, all this is subject to destruction’s law; I have already told you plainly, the law of things ‘joined’ is to ‘separate.’”
And as Ananda wept in the dark wood, the Blessed One spoke to him these sad, true words:-
“If things around us could be kept for aye, and were not liable to change or separation, then this would be salvation! Where can this be sought?
“That which you may all attain I have already told you, and tell you, to the end.
“There is love at the center of all things and all things are the same thing. Svaha! I am resolved, I look for rest. The one thing needful has been done, and has long been done.
“Adoration to all the Tathagatas, Sugatas, Buddhas, perfect in wisdom and compassion, who have accomplished, are accomplishing, and will accomplish all these words of mystery. So be it!
“Ananda, prepare quietly a quiet place, be not moved by others’ way of thinking, do not compromise to agree with the ignorance of others, go thou alone, make solitude thy paradise; the Brotherhood of the Gentle Eyes, the white-souled tranquil votaries of good, will support thee.
“The mind acquainted with the law of production, stability, and destruction, recognizes how again and once again things follow or succeed one another with no endurance. The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‘self.’
“The wise man had nothing to do with form before his birth, has nothing to do with form now, shall have nothing to do with form after he dies, free from anxious thoughts about relationships. And how will he die, knowing that being and not-being of his form are the same?
“Ananda, weep not. My purpose is to put an end to the repetition of birth of form. Unfixed, unprofitable, under the nailer, without the marks of long endurance, constantly blowing and changing and agonized with restraint and restlessness, all things are in a branch of torment because of form.
“Unconsoled, all things that are formed, come to ultimate decay.
“Receive the Law as it explains itself.”
To the Likkhavis of Vaisali who came with grievous faces after having heard of his decision to die, the Blessed One said:- “In ancient days the Rishi Kings, Vasishtha Rishi, Mandhatri, the Kakravartin monarchs, and the rest, these and all others like them, the former conquerors, who lived with strength like Isvara (God), these all have long ago perished, not one remains till now; the sun and moon, Sakra himself, and the great multitude of his attendants, will all, without exception, perish; there is not one that can for long endure; all the Buddhas of the past ages, numerous as the sands of the Ganges, by their wisdom enlightening the world, have all gone out as a lamp; all the Buddhas yet to come will also perish in the same way; why then should I alone be different?
“I too will pass into Nirvana; but as they prepared others for salvation, so now should you press forward in the path, Vaisali may be glad indeed, if you should find the way of rest!
“The world, in truth, is void of help, the ‘three worlds’ not enough for joy—stay then the course of sorrow, by engendering a heart without desire.
“Give up for good the long and straggling way of life, press onward on the northern track, step by step advance along the upward road, as the sun skirts along the western mountains.”
In his last preaching tour the Master came to the town of Pava, and there in the house of Chunda, the blacksmith, he had his last repast. The Blessed One understood that the pork offered by Chunda was not fit to eat and very bad;
Sukaramaddava
, it has been established, a kind of poisonous truffle; he advised his monks not to touch it and in conformity with the Buddhist rule of accepting all alms from the faithful no matter how poor and lowly, he ate it himself. After this he became mortally ill of dysentery and moved to Kusinagara in the eastern part of the Nepalese Terai.
To Ananda he said: “Between those twin Bala trees, sweeping and watering, make a clean space, and then arrange my sitting-mat. At midnight coming, I shall die.
“Go! tell the people, the time of my decease is come: they, the Mallas of this district, if they see me not, will ever grieve and suffer deep regret.”
He warned his disciples never to accuse Chunda, the blacksmith, of being responsible for his death but rather to praise him for bringing Nirvana nigh to the Leader of men.
To the Mallas who came in tears he said: “Grieve not! the time is one for joy. No call for sorrow or for anguish here; that which for ages I have aimed at, now am I just about to obtain; delivered now from the narrow bounds of sense, I leave these things, earth, water, fire, and air, to rest secure where neither birth or death can come.
“Eternally delivered there from grief, oh! tell me! why should I be sorrowful?
“Of yore on Sirsha’s mount, I longed to rid me of this body, but to fulfil my destiny I have remained till now with men in the world: I have kept this sickly, crumbling body, as dwelling with a poisonous snake; but now I am come to the great resting-place, all springs of sorrow now forever stopped.
“No more shall I receive a body, all future sorrow now forever done away; it is not meet for you, on my account, for evermore, to encourage any anxious fear.
A sick man depending on the healing power of medicine, gets rid of all his ailments easily without beholding the physician.
“He who does not do what I command sees me in vain, this brings no profit; whilst he who lives far off from where I am, and yet walks righteously, is ever near me!
“Keep your heart carefully—give not place to listlessness! earnestly practice every good work. Man born in this world is pressed by all the sorrows of the long career, ceaselessly troubled—without a moment’s rest, as any lamp blown by the wind!”
In his last moments the Blessed One received a monk Subhadra, a heretic, showed him that the world is cause-produced and that by destruction of the cause there is an end, a bowing-out, explained to him the Noble Eightfold Path, and converted him to the true faith of the Brotherhood of the Tender and Loving and Sad, announcing, “This my very last disciple has now attained Nirvana, cherish him properly.”
The Blessed One gave final instructions under the trees, sitting up to do so, as Ananda, out of his mind with despair, longed to place the frail sad head of his Lord in his lap to support and protect him from pain’s mindless indecency in this hour of death.
Said the Lord Buddha: “Keep the body temperate, eat at proper times; receive no mission as a go-between; compound no philteries; abhor dissimulation; follow right doctrine, and be kind to all that lives; receive in moderation what is given: receive but hoard not up; these are, in brief, my spoken precepts.