| A Buddhist sutra, 'Book of the Great Decease' | | | | the Bo Tree after years of self-inflicted starvation and |
| preserves for us several tellings of the historical | | | | physical suffering in the hopes of achieving an esthetic |
| Buddha's life and death. Often, Buddha was referred | | | | albeit suffering enlightenment. Realizing that the middle |
| to as Tathagata – One Who Has Arrived – from | | | | path and not the extreme would lead to true |
| the root "tatha" – just coming, just going. It was | | | | awareness, Buddha ate, and it was that meal which |
| Cunda the Smith who delivered to Buddha his final | | | | allowed him to travel on the path to becoming the |
| meal, his "…just going" approximately five hundred | | | | Tathagata. |
| years before the birth of Jesus the Christ. | | | | The second meal was this meat Cunda provided. |
| We do not know how much truth or which version of | | | | Why? Knowing that he was 'tatha' – just coming, |
| the story concerning Cunda is true. However, more | | | | just going – and that he had learned and freely |
| important than a specific mundane accounting, is the | | | | taught the best he had to offer, Buddha understood |
| philosophical and spiritual concepts that the | | | | that his 'just going' time had arrived, and Cunda's meal |
| fundamental story demonstrates about Buddhist tours, | | | | opened the doors to Nirvana, as used here, means 'the |
| the man and his teachings. The schools of thought and | | | | final extinguishing of the flame'. |
| interpretation of Buddha's life, teachings, and his death | | | | Buddha wanted Cunda to understand that while it may |
| are many. I suppose all interpretations to be aspects | | | | appear that he, Cunda the Smith, was responsible for |
| of the one truth – and I only offer my own. | | | | Buddha's death, this was not so. The death of |
| Cunda delivered to Buddha a serving of boar's meat. | | | | Tathagata came in the way of the Great Chain of |
| The story goes on to say that Buddha died from | | | | Causation which expresses the true face of existence |
| dysentery shortly thereafter. During his time of | | | | in its ever coming and going. |
| suffering before death, Buddha proved himself to be | | | | We take with us from the story of Cunda and |
| truly the Tathagata – one who has arrived at | | | | Buddha's death a notion of what kind of mettle this |
| enlightenment, or the truth of the matter of life, death, | | | | man Buddha was made of, and that even on his |
| and suffering. We feel this to be so, because in the | | | | deathbed he wished to practice compassion and |
| midst of his suffering and facing his mortality, Buddha | | | | teaching, and to help others to see their way past their |
| was most concerned and showed great compassion | | | | own egoistic suffering. |
| towards Cunda the Smith; he empathized with Cunda's | | | | Buddha teachings tell us all, through Cunda, that while |
| own suffering, out of wishing to share his abode and | | | | we may struggle with life's challenges, we need not |
| his food with Buddhist destination, and without | | | | suffer the agony and pain of the false ego if only we |
| premeditation being the harbinger of his last meal. | | | | would realize that our true face is more than our |
| Calling Cunda to his deathbed, he told the poor smith | | | | individual finite self – it is the truth of the Great Chain |
| that of all the meals he had eaten in his life of eighty | | | | of Causation expressing the true face of all existence, |
| years, only two did Buddha consider to be blessed. | | | | of which we are all aspects of that one which is |
| The first meal was that food which Buddha ate under | | | | coming and going. |