དམ་པའ་ཆས་པད་མ་དཀར་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.68

intro.68

Maitreya asks the Buddha how much merit is created from rejoicing in hearing the sūtra. The Buddha gives a parable of someone who hears the teaching and repeats it to someone else, who repeats it to someone else, and so on, until it is heard by a fiftieth person. Even if they only hear one line of verse, their merit is far greater than that of a person who satisfies all the beings in four hundred thousand realms with gifts for eighty years and then brings them all to arhathood. The merit such a person would accrue would not even be a quintillionth of the merit of the one who rejoiced in hearing one line of verse that had been passed on through fifty people. Those who go to a temple to listen to the sūtra even briefly will have excellent carriages in their future life. If they sit down they will have the thrones of deities and kings, and if they make someone else listen to it, even for a moment, they will have an excellent physical body in their future lives.