Friday, 4 January 2008

significance


Three months before he reached the age of eighty, the Buddha renounced his will to live at the Capala Shrine in Vesali. Travelling in stages via Pava where he ate his last meal, offered by the smith Cunda, he reached the final resting-place at the Sala grove of the Mallas by the bank of the Hirannavti river in Kushinagar. There, on the full-moon day of Wesak in 543 BC, the Buddha passed into Mahaparinbbana, the passing away into Nibbana wherein the elements of clinging do not arise...no more rebirth. The Buddha was lying on his right side between two Sala trees with his head to the north when he breathed his last.