Ajanta
Final Nirvavana. Among the most renowned masterpieces is this rock-carving in the caves of Ajanta (India), c. 6th centuray AD.
The Buddha's death was not like the death of unenlightened beings, for whom it is only one more stage in the cycle of rebirth and suffering. Having, after innumerable existences in divine, human and animal form, attained Enlightenment, he was released from that cycle. What happens to an enlightened person after death is a question the Buddha refused to answer. None of the categories of human thought apply to the Tathagata, the `Perfect One', and therefore this question makes no sense.The recorded sayings of early monks and nuns unmistakably show that Nirvana is experienced as a state of ineffable calm, a joyous tranquillity. The Buddha said: There is a sphere which is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor air, which is not the sphere of the infinity of space, nor the sphere of the infinity of consciousness, the sphere of nothingness, the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, which is neither this world nor the other world, neither sun nor moon. I deny that it is coming or going, enduring, death or birth. It is only the end of suffering.' (Udana 8o) It is one of the wonders of Buddhist art that painters and sculptors have succeededin conveying this ineffable state through the image of the Buddha meditating on his deathbed.
Ref: The World of Buddhism, Bechert & Gombrich, Thames & Hudson, 1984, p 23.