The Deathbed Sutra of the Buddha by Adams Jr

Author:Adams Jr. [Adams, George C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78279-611-4
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2014-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The Final Teaching: The Self

Once again the Blessed One paused, and with that pause the enormity of the situation descended upon me with full force. Perhaps I had been so caught up in hearing every shocking word that the Buddha uttered that I had not fully recognized the significance of those words. Only now, in the profound and powerful silence of the pause in this, his final teaching, did I realize that I was hearing a teaching that could radically change the Sangha. In a sense, I could not believe what I was hearing – the all-wise, enlightened Buddha declaring that he had been in error and repudiating his own teachings – teachings that he had delivered over the span of four decades to tens of thousands of devotees. Such sorrow and such compassion I felt for the Blessed One, for surely this was the darkest moment of his life. Or perhaps not – perhaps this was the supreme relief, the cleansing that would free him to truly enter into his final nirvana and forever escape return to the troubled realm of samsara. But what a burden it must have been to carry those doubts within him for all those years, and with no one to share them with, no one to confide in. Perhaps I myself had been amiss at not presenting myself to the Buddha as one to whom he could speak about anything. And yet, how presumptuous it would have been for me, a devoted but lowly monk, to have thought that the Blessed One would have entered into such a conversation with me or any of the other devotees. He was seen as a supremely enlightened being, the source of pure, liberating wisdom. Surely he knew that any expression of doubt on his part about the very words that he taught would have been devastating to those who looked to him as their guide to liberation, and surely he felt a duty to meet their expectations of him as the teacher of the flawless path to nirvana. And hence, with those seeds of doubt brewing within for many years, and with utterly no one to share those doubts with in hope of dispelling them, what an agonizing existence he must have experienced behind that appearance of blissful composure and equanimity. How deeply sorrowful I felt for this, my teacher and friend, and as we sat there in the silence of his pause, I quietly wept.

And yet, I also was beginning to recognize that there was a sense to what he was saying. The subtle truth which he was communicating on this, his final night, was indeed starting to fit together. While part of me wanted to shout, “Master, stop it!” in order to release him from such pain, another part of me was slowly realizing that the words that he spoke were indeed wise and sublime, and my compassionate wish for him to stop fought with my desire to hear more.

But it was not just the Buddha’s welfare that I worried about.

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