Stagnant Water Hides A Dragon: Buddha’s Parinirvana

Today we commemorate Shakyamuni Buddha’s parinirvana, his thoroughgoing death.

It is a good time to reflect on our own life and death, perched as we are between winter and spring, past and future.

What follows is a rich selection from Dogen’s Extensive Record. This one is much like eating double mocha cheesecake, so you would do well to chew it slowly. What taste is most striking for you in this moment?

147. Dharma Hall Discourse [Parinirvana Day, 1246]
Now our original teacher, Great Master Shakyamuni, is passing away, entering nirvana, under the sala trees by the Ajitavati River in Kushinagara.

Why is this only about Shakyamuni Buddha?

All buddhas in the ten directions in the past, future, and present enter nirvana tonight at midnight. Not only all buddhas, but the twenty-eight ancestors in India and the six ancestors in China who have noses and headtops, all without exception enter nirvana at midnight tonight.

There is no before and after, no self and others. Those who do not enter nirvana tonight at midnight are not buddha ancestors, and are not capable of maintaining the teaching. Those who have already entered nirvana tonight at midnight are capable of maintaining the teaching. Those who are already capable of maintaining the teaching are in this same family business.

…Stagnant water hides a dragon; in the entire earth there is no person.

…Today we exist, tomorrow there’s nothing.

At midnight, holding this with empty hands is called practice for three immeasurable kalpas and another hundred kalpas. With full exertion lift up this single stone, and call it the lifespan of as many ages as the atoms in five hundred worlds.

The great assembly has already seen such a principle. However, there is a more essential point. Would you like to thoroughly experience it?

After a pause [Dogen] said: On various people’s faces hang Gautama’s eyes, but still they beat their breast with fists in empty grieving. I cannot bear the heavenly demon, or the demon of life and death, who roll around on the floor with laughter seven or eight times at seeing Buddha [dying].

[Dogen] put down his whisk and descended from his seat.

Dosho’s Verse

We are all endowed with the Buddha eye
and yet grieve at Shakyamuni’s passing.
The eye cannot see itself and yet it cries for itself –
And so the demons laugh at our predicament.
As there is no separate person,
all the Buddha ancestors maintain the family business –
dropping dead, entering nirvana, blowing out the flame.
Where did it go?

After sitting, we fluff our zafu and go to work.

Stagnant Water Hides a Dragon: Buddha’s Parinirvana