Kushinagar is where the Buddha died. Not "passed," not "attained final nirvana" — though both are true and beautiful — but died: an old man, worn out by decades on the road, lay down on his side between two trees and stopped breathing. Every pilgrim who comes to the reclining Buddha feels this, whether or not they have words for it. My counsel is: do not reach for the words. Here, of all places, sit without them.
Before you enter
The Mahaparinirvana Temple is small, and the six-metre Buddha nearly fills it. There is usually a slow clockwise flow of pilgrims, and often chanting from one group or another. Do not wait for silence in the room; it will not come. The silence you are after is not in the room. Take off your shoes, join the clockwise flow once, all the way around, simply looking. Then find a place along the wall to sit.
The practice
This is adapted from a talk given here in 1934 by a travelling Sōtō teacher, whose notes a student preserved. It has three movements and no technique to speak of.
First, watch the face. The sculptor caught the Buddha at the exact hinge between life and its ending — from one angle he seems asleep, from another already gone, from a third faintly smiling. Do not decide which. Just let your eyes rest on the face and let it be all three.
Second, breathe with him — and then let him stop. Match your breath, for a while, to the stillness of the figure. Then, on one exhale, do not rush the next inhale. Feel the small pause at the bottom of the breath, the place where breathing could simply not resume. This is not morbid. It is the most ordinary fact there is, and the Buddha lay down in full view of it so that we could look too.
All conditioned things are impermanent. Strive on with diligence. — the last words
Third, hear the last teaching. The tradition gives the Buddha a final sentence: that all formed things pass, and that we should therefore practise with care, now, without wasting the little time we have. Hold that sentence lightly at the back of the sitting. Do not analyse it. Let it be the tone of the hour rather than its subject.
When you leave
Do not talk on the way out. Walk to the Ramabhar Stupa, the cremation place, and if there are monks circumambulating at dusk, join the back of the line and walk once around in silence. Then the hour is complete. The reason we sit longest here, and speak least, is that Kushinagar is not teaching us about the Buddha's death. It is teaching us, very gently, about our own — and that is a lesson best received with the mouth closed.