There actually appear to be two dates in the solar calendar dedicated to Parinirvana, the anniversary of Gautama Siddhartha’s death. Both in February, the one on the 8th and the other, more common, I gather, date on the 15th.
Me, I plan on taking advantage to celebrate this twice.
The Mahaparinibbana Sutta is clearly, at least by my reading, a digest of his teachings composed with an eye to the continuation of the community he led. I have little doubt a fair amount of it was added by those who won the ensuing struggles for leadership. The text feels similar to that “second Paul,” the author of those letters in the New Testament like First & Second Timothy that address the young church full of institutional advice and are clearly from someone different than the ecstatic mystic who wrote or whose teachings are compiled as most of the other letters.
And then there are his last words. I suspect they had a magical quality, a halo around them, and are more likely than most things to be what he actually said. I suspect…
There are various translations of them as recorded in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta.
One version goes:
All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness.
Another has it:
Experience is disappointing. It is through vigilance that you succeed.
Still another reads:
All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.
And another:
All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation.
What we get are two points, an observation and an exhortation.
The first continues a theme he touched on throughout his ministry, things are composed of parts, and anything composed of parts will come apart. And with that any grasping will ultimately be thwarted. And with that frustration, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, dis-ease follows like night follows day.
And then the exhortation. It turns very much on volition, on his confidence that the individual, you and I, can win some victory through our sustained attention.
What that victory is he doesn’t spell out. Or, rather it is spelled out a bit differently in the various traditions that follow him.
I notice the different schools shift what that victory is a fair amount, ranging from separation and extinction to fully engaged without attaching to any result. Me, I’m not so inclined to that first view, and completely with the second.
Not that I’m attaching to the results…
In any case that old monk who gathered a small band around him and preached a lot of sermons in a land so alien it is hard to even picture it much less comprehend it, teaching in a language lost to us and so recorded centuries after his death in languages he did not speak, sparked something.
And that fire continues to burn.
In many individual hearts. Those individual hearts he called to work diligently, to see through the transience of things, and to win some great victory on the other side of our grasping at things.
And this becomes our victory. Along the way we discover our individuality is intimately connected to everyone and everything else.
And so no one can be left behind
in the great dance…
Something to celebrate…
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