CHAPTER IV.

LAST DISCOURSES AND DEATH OF BUDDHA.

Buddha's immortality in his teaching--Death real and final--Object of Nirvana teaching--Buddha visits the Tau-li heaven--Descends again by Indra's staircase--The first images--Death of Buddha's aunt--Death of Shariputra--Buddha at Kushinagara--Between the Sala trees--Last instructions--Kashiapa made patriarch--Flesh prohibited--Relieves the king of Magadha--Sends for Ananda--Answers to four questions--Brahma comes--Buddha's last words--Death--Gold coffin--Maya comes--Cremation--His relics--Pagodas.

THE fifth period of development in the discourses of Buddha embraces those books which belong to the "Lotus of the Good Law," and the "Nirvana." They close his public life as a teacher, and are regarded as the mellowest and richest of his productions. They were adapted to excite the longing of his disciples for higher attainments. This was his meaning when he said, "I am not to be destroyed, but shall be constantly on the 'mountain of instruction' (ling-shan, 'efficacious mountain')." This, says the writer, is what is intended by Buddha entering the Nirvana, where there is neither life nor death. He is not dead, because he lives in his teaching.

Thus interpreted, the claim of the Northern Buddhists on behalf of their sage amounts to an immortality in the results of his instructions. This is the Buddhist non omnis moriar. It is consistent with much scepticism, and may amount by implication to a denial of the future life, and the continued existence of the soul in any form.

We must not forget that the enthusiastic Buddhists

who wrote the treatises we are now examining belonged to the same actual waking, moving world with ourselves. They fell back, not seldom, from a state of metaphysical reverie into the condition of common men under the dominion of the senses. Then they took a firm grasp of the world. Metaphysics vanished. Death they looked on as a real death. The destruction of the material organisation is real. As for the soul, it lives in its actions. A great hero like Buddha lives only in the results of his life work. Perhaps our Sung dynasty author of six centuries ago felt satisfaction occasionally in resting the truth of his philosophy, as an expounder of the Mahayana, on the reality of visible things. In this case he finds the Nirvana of Shakyamuni in the unbroken continuance of the results of his teaching.