I continued to read from The Buddhist Tradition: In India, China and Japan edited by William Theodore de Bary. Every once in a while, I take this book with me when I go to lunch. I only have time to read a page or two. In this book, however, of excerpts from primary texts, that tends to be enough; it certainly was with this passage from the Discourse of the Great Passing-away, about the last days and death of the 80-year-old Buddha–in those days, presumably, an exceptionally long period to have lived.

Ānanda, (one of the Buddha’s first disciples) had approached the ailing Buddha and asked about “his instructions concerning the Order” (“Order” being perhaps another word for Sangha, or the community, essentially).

And the Buddha had replied, according to the text,

What, Ānanda! Does the Order expect that of me? I have taught the truth without making any distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrines, for … with the Tathāgata there is no such thing as the closed fist of the teacher who keeps some things back. If anyone thinks ‘It is I who will lead the order,’ or ‘The Order depends on me,’ he is the one who should lay down instructions concerning the Order. But the Tathāgata has no such thought, so why should he leave instructions?

thus perhaps anticipating the Zen koans (“a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.”) that would become part of the tradition centuries later.

He continued, anticipating Ralph Waldo Emerson:

So, Ānanda, you must be your own lamps, be your own refuges. Take refuge in nothing outside yourselves. Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for refuge to anything besides yourselves. A monk becomes his own lamp and refuge by continually looking on his body, feelings, perceptions, moods, and ideas in such a manner that he conquers the cravings and depressions of ordinary men and is always strenuous, self-possessed, and collected in mind. Whoever among my monks does this, either now or when I am dead, if he is anxious to learn, will reach the summit.