འཕགས་པ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱ་རང་བཞན་མཉམ་པ་ཉད་རྣམ་པར་སྤྲས་པ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་གྱ་རྒྱལ་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.80

intro.80

In this chapter, one of the longest in the sūtra, there is no mention of Candraprabha. Instead, Ānanda requests teaching from the Buddha, and the Buddha states that a bodhisattva must have equanimity and not cease in his progress to enlightenment, no matter what suffering he endures. The Buddha gives the example of Supuṣpacandra. In an eon long ago, Buddha Ratna­padma­candra­viśuddhābhyud­gata­rāja attained enlightenment, liberated countless beings, and passed into nirvāṇa all in one day. During the last five hundred years of his teaching, all bodhisattvas had been exiled to Samantabhadra Forest. Supuṣpacandra was with them as their teacher, but saw that the time had come to teach other beings, even if it cost him his life. In the story, he leaves alone and eventually reaches the capital, where, in the course of a week, he establishes countless beings on the path to enlightenment, including King Śūradatta’s harem of eighty thousand queens, and all his thousand sons. On the seventh day, when the king is in a large procession heading to a park, he witnesses the devotion of the populace, and his own family, to a bhikṣu who is standing by the road. Consumed with jealousy, he orders his executioner to slay the bhikṣu. The executioner cuts him up into eight pieces. When the king is returning to his capital after a week he sees that the body parts have not decayed. Also the townspeople and the bodhisattvas of the forest have come and discovered the death. Filled with remorse, the king arranges a cremation and the building of a stūpa for the relics, and for thousands of years makes offerings, confesses his crime, and keeps perfect discipline. Nevertheless, he is reborn in hell and for millions of eons experiences various mutilations and sufferings as a result of his action. The Buddha then states that King Śūradatta was one of his own previous lives, and Supuṣpacandra subsequently became Buddha Padmottara.