Eugene begins by saying that he is going to talk about the last thing we might say before death. When the Buddha was dying, his disciples asked him for a final teaching, a ‘special secret’ perhaps? His reply was, “I am not he of the closed fist,” and then he died. A second example is of a wise, old rabbi. Again, the disciples gathered around him and asked for a final message. This was: “Life is a bowl of cherries.” His followers could not understand and eventually went back to him for an explanation. This time he said: “Life is not like a bowl of cherries,” and then he died.
Eugene asks the audience for explanations of these riddles. There are many suggestions but none that do so adequately. Eventually, he begins to explain and says that the two riddles are pointing at the same thing. That of the Buddha to his disciples, is saying that his, the Buddha’s way, is not that of the ‘closed fist’. A closed fist is used for thumping, it is aggressive, non-discriminating. ‘Buddha’ means ‘intellect’, and the intellect is used for discriminating. The open hand, by contrast with the closed fist, indicates discrimination in the spread fingers. His teaching was an analytical method of extricating us from desire, from the ‘thirst for life’. “It was an intellectual solution to the problem of desire. The answer is to give it up.”
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