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  Then he said, “Three months from now the Buddha’s Parinibbana will come to pass.”

  Then he offered a brief poem for their contemplation:

  My years are now full ripe, the life span left is short

  Departing, I shall leave you, relying on myself alone.

  Be earnest then, monks, mindful and pure in virtue!

  With firm resolve guard your own mind.

  One who in this Dhamma and Discipline

  Dwells in constant heedfulness

  Shall abandon the wandering on in birth

  And make an end to suffering.

  The normally many-tongued Sangha was all quiet that evening. Few if any words were exchanged, each monk anchored to his own vision of a world without the Buddha.

  The following morning the Buddha and the Sangha left Vesali for the province of the Mallas, in the Himalayan foothills.

  At the next resting place, the Buddha again assembled his monks and addressed them on the subject of his deepest concern. And again he stood up, the better to be heard:

  “Please remember this: When I am gone you will meet those who purport to quote my words. What should you then do? You should commit those words to memory and then seek confirmation in the Vinaya or in the Suttas. If you cannot hear them there, you must assume that they were wrongly learned—or otherwise colored—by that person, and you should reject such words. The Dhamma must remain pure, and only as I have taught it.”

  He then raised his arm and pointed, first skyward, then seemingly to each and every monk and nun present.

  “Accept no teaching attributed to me that you cannot verify as existing in the Vinaya or the Suttas. I cannot tell you anything more important than this, for accepting such false teaching as my teaching will surely destroy the Dhamma.”

  :

  One night nearly three months later, the Buddha asked Ananda to follow him.

  “Where to, Master?”

  “There is a grove of sala-trees in Kusinara. I want to go there.”

  Seeing the Buddha rising with effort—though fending off Ananda’s offered hand—Ananda knew that it was now only a matter of days, if not hours.

  Once they arrived, Ananda, finding a suitable spot between two large sala trees and arranging there several thick blankets just so, made for the Buddha a couch, its head to the north. And here, as the Buddha lay down to rest, the sala trees, even though out of season, blossomed and snowed their flowers down upon him as a soft and fragrant blanket.

  Ananda sat down beside him.

  Now, other blossoms, from the heavenly coral tree and from the very clouds themselves, drifted down from the sky upon celestial music. The Buddha noticed, looked up and smiled. Then he looked at his friend.

  “Ananda,” he said. “Is it not thus, that Gotama Buddha is venerated and honored in the highest degree by greetings and gifts?”

  “Yes,” said Ananda. “That is so, and has always been so.”

  To this the Buddha answered, “Still, whatever bhikkhu or bhikkhuni, layman or laywoman abides by the Dhamma, lives uprightly in the Dhamma, walks in the way of the Dhamma, he or she venerates and honors the Buddha in a higher degree still. Truly, I ask for no higher reverence than this.”

  Ananda nodded that he agreed, while, again, silently engaging his fear and grief.

  “Do not sorrow, Ananda,” said the Buddha, as always noticing. “Have I not told you many times that everything changes and vanishes? How could something that has come into being not be destroyed? For a long time, Ananda, you have attended on the Buddha, gladly, sensitively, sincerely, and without reserve, with deeds, speech, and thoughts of loving-kindness. You have made great merit, Ananda. Keep on striving and soon you will be free from all cankers.”

  While Ananda bowed his head in acknowledgement, the Buddha went on to say, “All the Buddhas of the past had such excellent attendants, and all future Buddhas will, too.”

  Shortly after this the Buddha fell asleep, while Ananda stayed awake by his side, watching the sala tree blossoms drift to earth to kiss the Blessed One.

  Gotama Buddha slept a deep and peaceful sleep that night.

  The following day, the day of his Death, the Buddha gave some final instructions to the gathered monks. “Do not think, bhikkhu, that after I am gone you no longer have a teacher, for the Dhamma and Vinaya will be your teachers.”

  Then the Buddha said nothing for many hours while the monks waited in silence.

  Toward evening the Buddha arose once more. He looked at Ananda and smiled, then at the gathering of silent monks. Then he said:

  “Now, monks, I declare this to you: It is the nature of all conditioned things to vanish. Do your utmost. Meditate diligently and do your utmost to reach your goal.”

  And those were the last words Gotama Buddha spoke.

  At that, the Buddha laid back down, closed his eyes and entered through the four Jhanas into the formless spheres of meditative absorption, until he attained the stage of cessation of perception and feeling.

  Then he entered these nine stages of concentration in reverse order, back to the first Jhana.

  Again he rose through the four Jhanas, and during his absorption in the fourth Jhana he passed away.

  :

  The sala-tree grove glimmered below. Gotama Buddha took one last look at Ananda, mute with grief now that he knew his master had left, and told him in a small breeze of love that he would soon follow, that Ananda himself would reach Nibbana soon, and shortly thereafter his own Parinibbana.

  Ananda nodded that he had heard and that he had understood.

  Soon the sala-tree grove was nothing but a bright speck upon the Earth below, and then the Earth turned blue and white with ocean and cloud and soon it, too, was gone in the starry dust of galaxies.

  The gates to the Tusita heaven swung open, and Gotama Buddha entered once more.

  :

  This should have been a time of rest for the Gotama Buddha. It should have been many a Tusita day of well-deserved contemplation of a job well done. But he could not rest, for in his heart he still feared that the Dhamma was not secure, that he had not taught it well enough, that he had not sufficiently clarified it. He feared that the Dhamma was not well enough understood, not even by his closest friends, and that it would not withstand the ravages of time.

  He well knew the frailties and follies of men. He well knew the compulsive importance they attached to the self. He knew how they valued—and sometimes even preferred—opinion above truth, guessing above looking. He knew that such men—and they were in the vast majority—would shape the Dhamma to fit their own notions of what it should be rather than seeing what it was. These men would adopt opinions—their own and others’—rather than seeing for themselves. That was the biggest threat to the Dhamma.

  Thus he worried, and could not cease to worry.

  And so it was not long before the Gotama Buddha again left for the Earth—for he simply had to see for himself how the Dhamma had fared in the troubled world below since his death as the Buddha.

  This time the Gotama Buddha took birth as an Italian: Giordano Bruno.

  :: 4 :: (Renaissance Rome)

  He had trouble breathing.

  The year was 1600, the month was February, and its third Sunday had barely risen.

  The procession making its way from his Nona Tower prison to the Campo dei Fiori was headed by the pike men guard followed by an enthusiastic trumpeter shooting fanfares into the air to let everyone know that Bruno, the heretic, was approaching.

  And after the trumpeter came he, secured to a donkey.

  He hugged the animal’s neck with difficulty, for his arms were too short for the robust neck. He was, however, not in danger of falling off, for his helpful jailors had ensured his embrace of the animal’s neck by wet leather straps linking his hands, straps now drying and tightening, shortening, and sending streams of pain his way. Not that he really cared, for these pains were as if nothing—barely whispers of those to come.

 
; Flames and death were only half a procession away.

  His feet, too, were tied by drying straps under the beast’s belly, sending sister streams of pain up his legs and sides for him to savor.

  And he had trouble breathing, for his nose was clogging with mucus and terror and the wooden block they had forced into his mouth made passage of air all but impossible.

  He could not cough.

  Nor could he talk.

  Nor could he scream.

  Each clip and each clop of donkey hooves brought him closer to death, and for a while he listened to them as if they were part of some natural clock counting down the seconds. Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Then he twisted his head a little to his left to see what could be seen.

  What he saw was that even at this hour—the sun was not yet risen—the route was lined with the curious, the awe-struck, the grinning-in-relief that this was not they tied to this donkey, heading for death.

  He was naked under the large canvas they had dressed him in, a sack painted with devils and flames of hell—his eventual destination a foregone conclusion.

  And beside him, easily keeping pace with the slowly clop-clopping donkey clock, walked the mercy men, members of the Confraternity of San Giovanni Decollato—Saint John the Beheaded—whose task it was to stage a last ditch effort to save his soul from eternal damnation by shoving crosses under his nose and urging, begging, imploring him to repent. This was a ridiculous exercise of futility, of course, since even had he wanted to—which he did not—he couldn’t speak, could hardly move, could not even meaningfully nod his head; it was too tightly forced against the pungent hide of the ass who seemed to resent being pressed into this revolting duty—it was Sunday after all, and his rightful place this day of rest was in the fields, or in the stables, helping himself to a day-long lazy meal of grass or hay.

  And here they came again, these idiots and their crosses, dancing the dance macabre to impress the abbots and priests who had gathered, too, to make sure that Filippo Giordano Bruno, also called the Nolan, did indeed suffer the ultimate indignity this morning for trying to make a fool of the Mother Church.

  He knows that all will be ready for him at the Campo. The brushwood and pine logs will be piled around the stake in a gruesome welcome, soaked with fetid oils the better to burn. On arrival they will cut him free of this animal and then, unceremoniously, as if he were some thick-skinned fruit, peel him naked of this sack for all to see before they strap him to the stake and set fire to the wood, but not before making sure the wooden wedge remained secure in his mouth: for screaming is not allowed.

  :: 5 :: (Renaissance Rome)

  It is said that a man can review his entire life between the moment he leaps—or is thrown—off the cliff and the moment he lands, heaping into life-departed flesh and broken bones on the ravine floor. Bruno had heard it said more than once, but he had never stopped to consider whether it might be true or false.

  But as the donkey grudgingly clip-clopped between the ever-thickening files of anticipating—if not salivating—celebrants, his life came rushing back and it simply made the time to be re-lived, in scope if not in detail.

  When the Pope’s tribunal finally, and officially, pronounced its sentence—the dark and pendulous thing which had hung over him as an all but certainty for over seven jailed years—he nonetheless almost fainted, his knees almost buckled, his heart almost stopped. Almost, but not quite. Not the Nolan. He refused to give them the satisfaction. Instead, he had found the will and the resources to stiffen, to gather voice, and to hurl it at the arrogant asses that had the audacity to judge him—fools to a man, slaves to the dogmatically triumphant beast of ignorance and blind doctrine they all served.

  Hurling it thus, with severity, loudly, clearly, “You, I can see, pronounce sentence against me with a fear greater than that with which I receive it.”

  And he was pleased that even with death now a certainty, his voice had held firm, without even a trace of quiver.

  It had fallen upon Flaminio Adriano, the Notary of the Inquisition, to do the final honors: the putting into words what long since had already been decided by the Pope, and so by the tribunal as well; and it was not without relish that the absurdly self-important little man almost sang in high-pitched Latin from the document he held high before him for all to see:

  Having invoked the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his most Glorious Mother Mary ever Virgin, in the cause of the aforesaid causes brought before this Holy Office between, on the one hand, the Procurator Fiscal of the said Holy Office, and on the other hand, yourself, the aforesaid Giordano Bruno, the accused, examined, brought to trial and found guilty, impenitent, obstinate and pertinacious; in this, our sentence, determined by the counsel and opinion of our advisers, the Reverend Fathers, Masters in Sacred Theology and Doctors in both laws, we hereby, in these documents, publish, announce, pronounce, sentence, and declare you, Brother Giordano Bruno, to be an impenitent heretic, and therefore to have incurred all the ecclesiastical censures and pains of the Holy Canon, the laws and constitutions, both general and particular, imposed on such confessed impenitent, pertinacious and obstinate heretics, wherefore as such we verbally degrade you and declare that you must be degraded.

  And we hereby ordain and command that you shall be actually degraded from all your ecclesiastical orders, both major and minor, in which you have been ordained, according to the Sacred Canon Law; and that you must be driven forth, and we do drive you forth from our ecclesiastical forum and from our Holy and Immaculate Church of whose mercy you have become unworthy.

  And we ordain and command that you must be delivered to the Secular Court, that you may be punished with the punishment deserved, though we earnestly pray that it will mitigate the rigor of the laws concerning the pains of your person, that you may not be in danger of death, or of mutilation of your members.

  Cursed with nearly perfect memory, he could hear sentence drone on while little echoes confirmed and confirmed it from among the walls and windows as the little man continued his pompous singsong, to in the end even officially wash the hands of the Holy and Immaculate Church of the fate that was to befall him; “though we earnestly pray…” what gibberish. What play-acting and pretense, since they all knew that once he was handed over to the Secular Court, the Holy Standing Order was but one: to enforce as strictly as possible “the rigor of the laws concerning the pains of your person,” and the lay court would certainly ensure that he was put in danger of death, if not, in this particular instance, of mutilation of his members.

  And so, in vivid memory—as it continued to make its own time atop the donkey, the little man droned on, now taking aim at all his writings:

  Furthermore, we condemn, we reprobate and we prohibit all your aforesaid and your other books and writings as heretical and erroneous, containing many heresies and errors. We ordain that all of them which have come, or may in future come, into the hands of the Holy Office shall be publicly destroyed and burned upon the Square of Saint Peter, before the steps, and they shall be placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.

  And as we have commanded, so shall it be done.

  And thus we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, degrade, command, and ordain, we chase forth and deliver, and we pray in this, and in every other better method and form, that we reasonably can and should.

  Thus pronounce we, the Cardinal General Inquisitors, whose names subscribe this document.

  And then there was silence.

  Down to the last scurrying echo, echo, gone. Silence.

  The little man done braying, and now sitting down, Bruno took solace and strength from his anger, from his detestation of farce, and that kept him erect and standing, that let him find his voice, and his words, and quiver-free retort.

  But within: the final traces of hope took dark wing, for now only the Pope could halt the rush of this deathly river, and Bruno knew that Pope Clement VIII would do nothing to slow, much less halt, the onrush of his death, that the Pope had in fact made it a
bundantly clear that he wanted Bruno erased, not only from the annals and memories of the Holy Church, but from the Earth. Bruno was to die, he, the Pope, willed it so.

  And so he recalled—cursed memory atop the donkey—the prediction he had made in his own De Monade so many years prior:

  I fought a lot; I thought I could win, but fate and nature repressed my study and my efforts. But it is already something to be on the battlefield because to win depends very much on fortune. But I did as much as I could and I do not think anyone of the future generation will deny it. I was not afraid of death, I never gave in to anyone, I chose courageous death instead of a coward’s life.

  I chose courageous death instead of a coward’s life. This was not exactly true, but a fine sentiment nonetheless, and an even finer prediction— uncanny, in fact.

  For he had in fact recanted and repented and apologized and retracted as much as his conscience allowed, and he would most likely have—though now somewhat relieved that this was never actually put, or would never be put to that test—he would most likely have retracted everything, would it have made a difference. But he had seen, known in his battered heart, that no matter what he said, no matter what he did, no matter what books or comments or view he recanted he would burn, so why give these asses the satisfaction. That was the truth of the matter. He saw that, acknowledged that, knowing self-deception to be man’s deepest vice.

  Truthfully, courageous death was not his choice. Here, strapped to the donkey, he’d rather live, anything to live, anything to continue as the Nolan, in whatever shape or circumstance. Death was not a pleasant prospect, and he could not accept it peacefully.