14. The Buddha's Smile

Overall Teaching

Candraprabha praises the Buddha's teaching on the equality of all dharmas and its potential for rapid awakening. He asks if the Buddha will accept his offering, which the Buddha does, causing miraculous events. Maitreya Bodhisattva, seeing the Buddha smile, asks for its reason, praising the Buddha's virtues.

Summary

• Candraprabha praises the teaching of the Buddha from this sūtra: the equality of the nature of all dharmas. This teaching is equated with the Samādhi. By practising this, he says, beings can quickly attain awakening.

• Candraprabha further wishes to ask questions:

  • He begins with a praise:

    • The Buddha cultivated for immeasurable aeons to attain buddhahood, accumulating the six perfections. While doing that, he abandoned all things and practised without tiring.

    • He has fully attained knowledge of tranquillity, overcame Māra, and realised how to end suffering: his teaching will never become false, while everything else is impermanent.

    • He teaches other sentient beings that they can overcome suffering by learning his teaching of no-self and the truth. Thus, he becomes the teacher of all devas and humans, with his teaching being like the "lion's roar."

    • Beings who hear his teachings delight in them: thus, by way of metaphor, the Buddha's words sound superior to the sounds of all kinds of birds, music, and divine celestial music.

  • Candraprabha's question, after all, was just whether the Buddha would accept his offering (the feast described previously).

• The Buddha accepts the offering—knowing Candraprabha's good conduct, the Buddha smiles. When he smiled, the earth quaked, flowers bloomed, and disciples appeared on lotus flowers.

  • Maitreya Bodhisattva (the future Buddha) saw the Buddha smile and asked the Buddha to explain why he smiled. He pointed out that while it seems not to have been caused, a Buddha never smiles without good cause.

  • Maitreya praises the Buddha's remarkable ability to teach and practice and his other good qualities, repeatedly asking the Buddha for an explanation for his smile.

Commentary

Thrangu Rinpoche does not provide much commentary for Chapter 14, primarily summarising its contents. He emphasises that the Buddha's previous teachings gave Candraprabha great devotion and faith and that a Buddha never smiles without a reason.

Discussion

This chapter, being mostly narrative, does not necessarily require extensive discussion. The main takeaway appears to be that much faith was inspired in Candraprabha—thus, as we do not have a Buddha teaching us directly, we can consider to what extent we find that our faith in the Dharma is based on experiences or listening to or reading the Dharma.