The Buddha's Dying Wish

As dreams go, my dream last night was a somewhat curious one. I saw that I was inside a grove of pipala trees in the ancient town of Kapilavastu, and in front of me on a wicker bed was the frail emaciated body of the Venerable One, Gotama the Buddha. Gotama was dying; his earthly mission had been fulfilled, his messengers despatched to the furthest corners of the world, and sentient beings were now moving towards the final liberation.

One of his disciples Ananda of the Noble Smile came up to the Venerable One and said : 'Sire, if I may make so bold as to ask you this question, 'Have you ever felt any worry since the time you attained the bliss Nirvana'?' A wan smile crossed the Old Master's broken lips, and he beckoned to all his silent disciples to come closer to him.

Then he spoke to them, for one last time, and in a voice at once calm and resolute : 'Dear Bhikkus, I have but one worry left in this world of suffering, and this is the one that I shall become famous after I die.' All his disciples replied in one voice : 'But Venerable One, you are already famous; the four ends of the world resound with your name.' The Venerable One spoke again, his voice yet calmer this time : 'Dear Bhikkus of the Noble Path, do you not see what will happen to my message if I become famous after my death? There will be some people who will argue that I was really a great man, and some who will claim that I was but an impostor, and these two groups will quarrel with each other. They will be filled with anger and overcome by their violence, and anger and violence are forms of suffering. Consequently, instead of having removed their suffering in any way, I will have only increased it through my unwanted fame. So immersed will such people become in their arguments about who I was that they will forget that I had come into this world not to manifest my greatness but to remove their suffering. That is why, my dear Bhikkus, I wish to simply sink into oblivion the very moment of my death.'

Such was what I saw. When I woke up, I looked at the distant sky stretched for miles on end into the orange horizons. For a moment, I thought that it was sunset. And then I looked more closely at the birds : no, they were flying away from home, it was sunrise.