108. Final words

A few moments after we had finished chanting the Mahā Satipaṭṭhāna Discourse, Luang Pu began speaking about the Lord Buddha’s total nibbāna, from the beginning to the end. Here, I’ll ask just to quote his concluding remarks:

“The Lord Buddha didn’t attain nibbāna in any of his jhānic attainments. When he left the fourth jhāna, his mental aggregates all ceased at once, with nothing remaining. In other words, he allowed his feeling aggregate to cease in an awake state of mind, the normal human mental series, complete with mindfulness and alertness, with no other mental states coming to blind or delude the mind at all. This was the mind fully in its own state. You could call that state great emptiness, or the original cosmos, or nibbāna, whichever you like. That’s the state I’ve been practicing all along to reach.”

Those were Luang Pu’s last words.