WHO CAN CONQUER DEATH?The Story of the Monk “Marichi Karma Sthanik”, Who Contemplates The Body as a Mirage (Verse 4.3:46)

WHO CAN CONQUER DEATH?

The Story of the Monk “Marichi Karma Sthanik”, Who Contemplates The Body as a Mirage (Verse 4.3:46) 

Place: Jétavana

Once a monk obtained a meditation topic from the Buddha and entered the forest for the purpose of practising meditation. But when, after striving and struggling for quite some time, he was unable to attain arahatship. He thus said to himself, “I will ask the Buddha to give me another meditation object that may better suits his needs.” With this thought in mind he set out to return to the Buddha. 

On the way he saw a mirage. He thus said to himself, “Even as this mirage seen in the season of the heat, appears substantial to those that are far off, but vanishes when one approach near, so also is this existence unsubstantial by reason of birth and decay.” 

Thus like this, upon fixing his mind on the mirage, he started meditating on the mirage. On his return, although wearied with the journey, he bathed in the Aciravati River and seated himself in the shade of a tree on the river bank near a waterfall and took bursting water’s impermanence (Dhamma) as his meditation object. Dhamma, as object of meditation, may be anything past, present or future, corporeal or mental, conditioned or not, real or imaginary. 

As he sat there watching the white water bursting from the force of the water striking against the rocks, he said to himself, “Just as this existence produced and just so does the burst of water.” Thinking this way, the monk's inner eyes opened and he gained the arahatship. 

In this way, the monk reached Tathagata Buddha while meditating. Buddha explained to him “He who understands that this life is like a mirage and that the body is like a bubble of foam, he understands the truth of life. He breaks the arrows of the flower of 'Mar' and he never sees the emperor of death."

Since that monk had attained spiritual enlightenment through a mirage, other monks started calling him 'Marichikarma Sthanik'.The Buddha, seated in his perfumed chamber, saw the elder and said, “Monk, it is even so. Like a bubble of foam or a mirage is this existence. Precisely thus is it produced and precisely thus does it pass away.” And when He had thus spoken the Buddha pronounced the stanza. 

Explanation: (Verse 46) 

This body of ours is like froth, a bubble, or foam. It disintegrates quickly. The nature of life is like a illusionary mirage. Therefore, one must give up unrealities. To achieve that one must destroy Mara’s flower-arrows by which he tempts men and women. It is necessary that the truth-seeker should go beyond Mara’s realm, to areas unseen by him. Mara knows, only the realm of death. The truth seeker goes beyond that region to the ‘deathless’ (Nibbana) — a domain Mara has never seen. 

The Dhamma (dharma), is the liberating law, discovered by the Buddha, and summed up in the Four Noble Truths. It forms one of the three Gems and one of the ten Recollections.