Kushinigar

Reflecting on the Death of the Buddha

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Of the four main pilgrimage sites of the Buddha, where he was born, attained enlightenment, first taught, and where he died, it is the place of the Budda's death that I find most powerful.

Kushinagar, where the Buddha died, is really off the beaten path in India. There are often very few people there, no vendors selling their wares.

It is peaceful, quiet, full of grace, awe, and wonder.

It is not a sad place.

There is a transcendent quality, a silent power, that stills the mind of its everyday chatter.

Kushinagar, for me, is a place where the cycle of death is broken.

These bodies, so fragile. We all drop them like a snake shedding its skin.

We slouch towards Bethlehem.

We fall to Hades.

We look upward to heaven, clear blue sky.

Shamans sing their songs, calling us to remember.

All these dreams we take to be real.

Death is always in the room, the great equalizer.

We ignore the awareness of death at our peril.

Virtual realities, endless digital distractions, how we run, from facing our inevitable death, and what that means, and how we can so easily miss the point of life.

Yes, the point is to live and love as fully and deeply as possible, to become as vast as space, to illuminate darkness, never to abandon anyone.

Death and love. Love and death.

Yes, we return to love. That is our true home, our true refuge.

There is something more that we can't see with our eyes, that our senses can't detect.

But I remember.

Some things in life cannot be expressed in words but appear in every moment, but you must drop remembering and trying to understand.

When you try to understand, you get double suffering.

If you still your mind and do not seek to understand, the answers come from their own natural arising.

Left is such a paradox.

Bubble's floating.

The moment

Pops

PHAT 

1998 in Kushinagar, India, where the Buddha showing the truth of impermanence, passed away.