38
From the Collection of Long Sayings
Although he recovers from this illness, he soon afterwards renounces the possibility of living longer, even until the end of the aeon; having informed Māra that he will die in three months’ time, he makes his announcement to the assembled monks of Vesālī. Continuing his journey northwestwards he reaches Pāvā, where he eats a meal offered to him by Cunda the smith which is the cause of his final sickness. On the way from Pāvā to Kusināra he meets Pukkusa and accepts him as his last lay disciple. Outside Kusinārā he asks Ānanda to prepare a bed for him between two sāl trees. In one of the most poignant episodes of the sutta, after a conversation with the Buddha about how his body should be treated after his death, the reality of his teacher’s imminent death is brought home to Ānanda, the Buddha’s faithful attendant, who has yet to reach the final goal of arahatship. Ānanda withdraws and breaks down in tears. He is summoned again by the Buddha, who encourages him to make the effort to achieve the final goal. Ānanda then urges the Buddha not to die in the tiny, insignificant town of Kusinārā, at which the Buddha recounts how in ages long past Kusinārā was a fabulous royal capital. This tale itself becomes a mythic meditation on impermanence that, when expanded, forms a sutta in itself, the Mahāsudassana-sutta, which follows the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta and is also included in the present volume. Having ordained his last monk, Subhadda, a wanderer from another school, the Buddha addresses the monks for the last time and attains final nibbana. There then follow accounts of the arrival of a group of monks headed by Mahākassapa (destined to become the master of ceremonies at the communal recitation at Rājagaha), and of the Buddha’s funeral and the distribution of his relics. The sutta and its various parallels in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan have been the subject of considerable scholarly discussion; see, for example, D. Snellgrove, ‘Sākyamuni’s final Nirvāna’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 36 (1973), 399– 411; for further references and discussion of the Buddha’s funeral and his relics, see John Strong, Relics of the Buddha (Princeton: 2004), 98 –123, and Rita Langer, Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth (London, 2007), 99 –115.
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[First section for recitation] This is what I have heard. Once the Blessed One was staying at Rājagaha, on the mountain called Vultures’ Peak. Now at that time King Ajātasattu of Magadha, son of the princess of Videha, wishing to wage war on the Vajjis, declared: ‘I will attack