“I see, thank you, master.”
“But there is a second, deeper answer to your question, Ananda,” I continued. “Earthquakes, you see, occur at six key moments in human life. First, when a Buddha is conceived; second, when a Buddha is born; third, when a Buddha is enlightened; fourth, when a Buddha begins to teach; fifth, when a Buddha chooses to die; sixth, when a Buddha actually does die. Does that answer your question, my friend?” (UD 6:1; MPB)
“Are you dead, master?”
“Am I—? No, Ananda, I’m not dead, I have decided to die and soon, in three months, I will be dead.”
Ananda shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t say that, master, no no no, you must live on, for the good of the entire world, you must live for EONS!”
“I’m afraid it is too late for that now, Ananda.”
“Master, please! You must live on, oh truly you must!”
At that point I’d had enough. “If you think that, Ananda, then why didn’t you beg me to live on earlier, hm?”
“What do you mean, master?”
“I made it obvious that you needed to beg me to stay, Ananda. Why didn’t you do it?”
“But … I am asking you, master.”
“Yes, but it’s too late now.”
“Why, master?”
“I don’t know why, it just is. You needed to do it earlier, Ananda, and you missed your chance!”
“Oh, master, no!”
“If you’d been persistent, Ananda, if you’d begged me three times, I would have stayed for eons!”
“Master, please …”
“I’m sorry to have to say this, old friend, but it is your fault that I am going to die.”
“Oh nooooooooo …”
“I gave you the most overt hints, Ananda, at Vulture Rock, near Serpent’s Pool, even in the Squirrels’ Feeding Ground, I practically spelled things out for you but you just stood there like a big dummy every single time and now I’m going to die and, yes, it is ALL YOUR FAULT!” (ANG 4:1)
At that point Ananda collapsed to the ground and started to weep. His body shook and shuddered through his terrible sobs. After a long moment, I sighed and spoke to him in a softer voice. “Everything dies, Ananda, that is the nature of existence, you know that. In three months, the Buddha will die, that too is natural.” Ananda stared up at me, eyes brimming with tears. “Now get up, old friend,” I said to him. “I have many people to talk to before I leave this world.”
25
“I will have the pig’s delight,” I announced to Kunda, the man whose home we were staying in a few nights later. The pig’s delight, when it arrived, was delicious, quite savory, one of the very best pig’s delights I’d ever had. When some of my monks glanced over at me as I ate, I addressed them in no uncertain terms: “No one will eat this pig’s delight but the Tathagata!”
After I finished my meal, I remember sitting back and wondering if there was anything that would make the leftover pig’s delight taste even better? An answer occurred to me: What if Kunda buried the remaining pig’s delight in a pit for a while, “aged” it, mightn’t that make it taste even more delicious? I thought it might. “Bury this leftover pig’s delight, my good man,” I instructed Kunda. (MPB 4:18–20) “The next time we are back here,” I remember thinking to myself as he exited the room with my bowl, “I have a feeling that my pig’s delight is going to be absolutely scrummy.”
Later that night I noticed Ananda looking over at me with a concerned expression on his face. “What is it, old friend?”
“I am worried that the pig’s delight you ate was tainted, master.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Fear not, old friend. The Tathagata has a superb digestive system, everything he eats is digested with perfect ease.”
“That is a relief to hear, master, because that pig’s delight looked, to be honest, slightly rotten.”
“Let me clarify something for you, Ananda. The Tathagata chews perfectly, the Tathagata swallows perfectly and the Tathagata digests perfectly.”
“That is wonderful to hear, master.”
“The Tathagata never gets sick, Ananda, and this is why: Because the Tathagata has transcended sickness.” (AVDS)
“Oh, good.”
Sadly, however, Ananda turned out to be right; the pig’s delight I’d eaten had been rotten. I woke up in the middle of the night with violent, bloody diarrhea. (UD 8:5; MPB) “I’m going to defecate myself to death,” I remember quickly grasping. That was not the exit I would have liked, to say the very least. “Shitting myself out” seemed highly undignified. (I’d kind of thought that I would eventually turn into a solid piece of gold, to be honest.) (SV) On the positive side, however, I would have looked like a fool if I’d guaranteed Mara that I was going to die in three months and then hadn’t done it. I needed something to “take me out,” and looked at that way, the tainted pig’s delight was a godsend. (If I hadn’t been poisoned, did I have a “backup plan” to end my life? Yes. I was going to throw myself under Nalagiri the killer elephant.)
Q: Did I blame Kunda, the man who had served me the rotten pig’s delight, for my dysentery? A: No, I certainly did not. “If anyone should ever hold Kunda responsible for my death,” I instructed Ananda the next morning, “if anyone should ever refer to him as ‘Buddha-killer’ or ‘Destroyer of Perfection,’ or anything like that, you must immediately correct them, Ananda. ‘No,’ you must tell them, ‘it is good that Kunda caused the Perfect One’s death, because it helped him achieve extinction. For this, Kunda is not to be criticized, but rather praised. The truth is that
