The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

"Yet let us hear, O Publius, if so please
Thee and so please Krishna likewise, the rest
Concerning Buddha's death. We shall at least,
Sorrowing with wholesome sorrow for his case,
Learn from such high example how far short
The highest human and the best, unhelped,
Must fall of helping helpless humankind."

The tone of just authority in Paul,
Felt to be not assertion of himself
But fealty to his Lord effacing self,
Was mixed so with a suasive gentleness
In manner and even a certain deference
To other as that other's right from him,
All without harm or loss allowed to truth,
That Krishna was both charmed and overawed
While discomposed not, and he thus went on:
"Ânanda was concerned to know what dues
Of honor should be paid to the remains
Of the Tathâgata when he was gone.
But Buddha said: 'Ye must not wrong yourselves
To honor the Tathâgata's remains;
Others will honor these. Be zealous ye,
I pray you, on your own behalf. Devote
Yourselves to your own profit. Earnest be
And eager and intent for your own good.'
Yet Buddha taught that the Tathâgata
Was to be honored after his decease
By rites of reverence to his remains
Like those accorded to a king of kings,

"Now Ânanda the Venerable was weighed
To heaviness with sorrow at the thought:
'Alas, I still am but a learner, much
To me remains of labor, ere I reach
Nirvâna; and my master, he so kind,
Is on the point to pass away from me.'
So, leaned against the lintel of the door,
Ânanda stood and thought and thinking wept.
But Buddha sending called him to himself,
And said: 'Enough, O Ânanda, weep not,
Nor let thyself be troubled. Have I not
Oft told thee that it deep inheres in things
The nearest and the dearest unto us,
That we must leave them, rend ourselves away,
Sever ourselves from them? How could it be,
Ânanda, otherwise than thus? For know,
Whatever thing is born, whatever comes
Into existence, holds within itself
The seed of dissolution and decay;
Such being therefore needs must cease to be.
Long time thou, Ânanda, to me hast been,
By many offices of love, most near,
Unchanging love and without measure large.
Thrice say I this that thou mayst know it well:
Long time thou, Ânanda, to me hast been,
By many offices of love, most near,
Unchanging love and without measure large.
Long time thou, Ânanda, to me hast been
By many offices of love, most near,
Unchanging love and without measure large.
Thou hast well done, O Ânanda. Faint not,
Thou too shalt soon Anâsava become'—
Whereby our lord meant his disciple soon
Should touch the wished-for goal himself was now
Nigh touching, blest nirvâna, last surcease
Of all the ills that sum up human life.

"At length lord Buddha said to Ânanda:
'Go now for me into Kusinârâ
And tell them the Tathâgata is here,
Close on the point to pass forever away.
Say: Leave no room to chide yourselves too late:
Alas, and he in our own village died,
He, the Tathâgata, and we then failed
To come and visit him in his last hours.'
So all the dwellers in Kusinârâ
Came and did honor to the Blesséd One.

"Then to the brethren of the order he
Said: 'If in mind perchance to any of you
Doubt or misgiving lurk concerning aught,
The Buddh, the truth, the path, the way, inquire
Freely before I pass, that afterward
Ye have not to reproach yourselves that ye
Being face to face with him failed to inquire.'
With one accord, the brethren held their peace.
The second and the third time those same words
Did the Tathâgata to them address;
But even the third time they were silent all.
Then with much pitiful concern for them
The Buddha said: 'It may be out of awe
Of me, your master, ye keep silence thus.
Speak therefore ye, I pray, among yourselves.'
But all the brotherhood were silent still.
Then Ânanda the Venerable spoke up
And said: 'A wonder and a marvel, lord,
I truly think there has not one of us
A doubt or a misgiving in his mind
As to the Buddh, the truth, the path, the way.
The Blesséd One made answer: 'Ânanda,
Thou from the fulness of thy faith hast spoken;
But the Tathâgata for certain knows
Not one of these five hundred brethren all
Doubt or misgiving has concerning aught,
The Buddh, the truth, the path, the way. No one
Of all but guarded is from future birth
To suffering; your salvation is secure.'
He added: 'Brethren, I exhort you, know,
Decay inheres in whatsoever is,
Of parts composed, since these may be dissolved.
Inflame your zeal, make your salvation sure.'
The last word that of the Tathâgata.

"Yet did he not with that last word expire,
But enter into a state ineffable.
From stage to stage, four stages, he advanced,
Of meditation more and more withdrawn.
A fifth stage followed, one of vacancy
Compact: all seeming substance, seeming form,
Abolished to the mind, and naught but space,
Pure space, empty and formless, colorless,
Spun out to infinite on every side.
The next degree abolished also space,
Replacing that with reason infinite.
But reason infinite then passed away,
Dispersed into a sense of nothingness.
Then sense of nothingness, that yielded too,
And neither anything nor nothing was
A presence in sensation to the soul.
But beyond that he passed into a state
Between unconsciousness and consciousness;
Whence next he issued in a farther stage
Wherein no trace of consciousness remained.
Then of two venerables there watching, one
Said to the other, 'The Blessèd One is dead;'
But, 'Nay,' that other made reply, 'not dead,
Only beyond where thought or feeling is.'

"Then by regress the Blesséd One returned
The way that he had traversed, stage by stage,
Till, having reached the first stage, now the last,
That of deep meditation, he expired.

"So our lord Buddha having all the depths
Sounded unto their nethermost, and scaled
Unto their topmost all the soaring heights,
Of thought and being, like a weaver's shuttle
To and fro passing, and found naught at all
The substance and the basis of the world,
Himself at last absorbed in the abyss
Escaped existence and sank into peace."

The lamps had burned to low, and some of them
Had flickered to a fall, while Krishna spoke—
Their fumy flames meanwhile blurring the air
To dimness deepened with the deepening night.
The stillness of the room was audible,
Accented by the murmurous monotone
Of Krishna's muffled, bland, and inward voice.
The strange, far-off, unreal, unthinkable
Last things he told involved the laboring mind
Too, in a sense confused of cloud and dark.
When he ceased speaking, with that word pronounced,
"Peace," like a hollow sphere of sound, no core,
It was as if, with that for spell outbreathed,
Nirvâna softly would engulf them all.

But one was there to whom such spell was naught.
"'Peace,'" Publius said, reechoing the word,
As pondering what the purport of it was,
"'Peace,' I should think must be a euphemism,
As the Greeks say when they avoid a name,
The right name, for a thing to be avoided.
There is no peace, unless there be some one
To have the peace; but Buddha then was not,
Had vanished like a breath breathed on the air,
If of his end I have understood thee right."
"Thou hast not misunderstood," said Krishna; "yet
We shrink from saying of Buddha, 'He is not.'
We sheathe the sense, and softly say instead,
'He has ceased to suffer,' 'He has touched the goal.'
Himself he would not say, 'I shall not be;'
But if he taught us true that life is woe,
Then not to suffer, needs is not to live:
Save not to live, salvation there is none."