If the life of the emancipated sage is a puzzle for us, his death is even more puzzling. What becomes of him when he passes away — does he exist or does he not? Both conjunctively or neither disjunctively?
This, as we saw earlier, was one of the problems which found expression in four of the ten indeterminates (avyâkata). All the four alternative propositions were laid aside by the Buddha, and again the scholars are in a quandary. Various interpretations of the Buddha’s stand on this problem have been bandied back and forth. But the reasons for laying aside those four alternatives are sometimes explained in the suttas to the satisfaction of, the respective interlocutors. The term ‘Tathâgata’ in its wider sense of the Perfect Man (uttamapuriso paramapuriso paramapattipatto, S. N. IV. 399) is applicable to the Buddha as well as to the emancipated monk (vimuttacitto bhikkhu, M. N. I. 140, 486). The four alternatives seek to categorise him in terms of existence and non-existence. We have already seen how at A. N. IV. 68 these four alternatives were
described as products of craving (taõhâgata), of sense-perceptions (saññâgata), of imagination (maññita), of conceptual prolificity (papañcita), and of delusion (vippañisâro). The implication, therefore, is that these four propositions are fallacious and misleading. This fact is clearly brought out in the Aggivacchagotta Sutta (M. N), There the Buddha exposes their fallacy to Vacchagotta with the help of the following simile of fire.
Extracted from Concept and reality – Bhikkhu Katukurunde Ñāṇananda
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