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Vayadhammā saṅkhārā: the Buddha’s last words are an instruction, not a consolation

Nirmala Jayasekara Fellow
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DeathBuddhistGreek & RomanAbhidharmaThe BuddhaSocrates#dying-well#heedfulness#impermanence#last-words
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Its coordinates: 6.20 Philosophy of Death

In the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, the long discourse on the Buddha's last days, the end comes quietly. He asks the monks three times whether any of them has a remaining doubt about the Buddha, the teaching, the community or the path, so that they will not regret later that they failed to ask. They stay silent. Then he speaks his last words, usually translated as: all conditioned things are subject to decay; strive on with heedfulness.

I sit with dying people in Kandy fairly often now, as many of us do in our temple society. Families want words of comfort. And I notice that the Buddha did not give comfort. He gave a fact and a task. There is no "do not grieve", no promise about what comes next. Only: everything made comes apart, so do not waste your attention.

Socrates, at the end of the Phaedo, also ends with a task: he reminds Crito that they owe a cock to Asclepius, and asks him to pay the debt.

I have come to think that the instruction is more consoling than consolation, at least for the one dying. It treats them as still having work to do. But I am not sure it serves the family. What do others think: is the best thing to say at the end a comfort or a charge?

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3 replies

  1. Elin Hedqvist

    Fellow

    In the care home the last clear words people say are almost never wise. They are practical. "Is the window shut?" "Did someone feed the dog?" For years I thought this was sad, a life ending on trivia.

    Your post changes that for me. Perhaps those are instructions too, a person still caring for their small corner of the world to the end. The Buddha's charge is the same kind of thing, only about the whole of it. Heedfulness is just the dog and the window, extended.

  2. Nadia Haddad

    Fellow

    Epicurus is a lovely middle case. On his last day, in great pain, he wrote to Idomeneus that it was a blissful day, because the pain was outweighed by the joy of remembering their conversations. That is consolation, given by the dying man. And then he asks Idomeneus to look after the children of Metrodorus. That is an instruction.

    On the palliative unit I have seen both work. But I agree with you about the order. Families often need the dying person to still be in charge of something. Being told what to do is a way of not yet being left.

  3. Somchai Charoenwong

    Reader

    I was a novice and then a monk for nine years at a temple near Chiang Mai, and we chanted those last words at many funerals. Vayadhammā saṅkhārā, appamādena sampādetha. The old monks liked to write the second half on the board for the young ones.

    I agree that it is an instruction. But in Thailand I think families hear it as a consolation too, because the instruction is given to them. At the funeral the monks chant for the living. The message is: the one who died has finished; you have not.

    Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu said we must hear the Dhamma in two languages, the everyday one and the Dhamma one. In everyday language the last words are sad. In Dhamma language they are the most practical sentence in the canon. The skill, I think, is saying both at once to a family that is grieving.