I

ON TO THE FINAL ACT

As a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, so a well-

employed life brings a happy death.

—LEONARDO DA VINCI

t was AD 161 and the emperor Antoninus Pius knew he was going
to die. He was seventy-four years old and he could feel the life
leaving his body. A fever had taken hold and his stomach pained him.
With his last bit of strength, he called his adopted son Marcus
Aurelius into the room and began the process of transferring the
state over to him. When this task was complete, Antoninus turned to
his royal audience and spoke his final word—a word that would echo
down through not just the life of his son but all of history, down even
to us today: aequanimitas.
A few hundred years before, in roughly 400 BC, Buddha accepted
with equal equanimity that he too would soon pass from this earth.
He was a little older than Antoninus, but he had not certified a
successor, for although he was born a prince, he’d renounced his
patrimony in the pursuit of enlightenment. Still, he could tell that his
students were worried about losing him, about how they would
continue their journey without his guidance and love.
“You may be thinking,” he said to them, “‘The word of the
Teacher is now a thing of the past; now we have no more teacher.’
But that is not how you should see it. Let the Dhamma and the
Discipline that I have taught you be your Teacher when I am gone.”