PREAMBLE
Lately I have been reflecting more often about a salient fact of Buddhist history; or it could be myth - whichever it finally turns out to be, perhaps we'll never know, the ramifications are the same. Siddhartha supposedly became a Buddha, a perfectly enlightened being, at the moment of greeting the morning star in the pre-dawn twilight under the Bodhi tree on a full moon May morning in some year round-about 528 BCE. To become perfectly enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria; an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not to be invested by some God with the final word, a message to believe in and to promulgate. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula that can control reality. Rather it is supposed to be an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevant object of knowlege. A Buddha should know everything that matters and the precise nature of it all - that is how he or she is defined. Upon attaining this realization, the story is that Buddha smiled!
Fortunately for all concerned! The point is he could have frowned. Or he could have remained passive and inert. Or he could have beamed away like a Star Trek officer, turned into little sparkles - then to be no more. But the Buddha of our story smiled a cheerful smile. What a relief!
"Buddha" is the designation for a person who comes to the peak of sentient evolution, beyond the stages and states of humans and even gods. It is defined as "awakened" from the sleep of misknowledge, and as "blossomed" into the omniscience and competence of universal compassion. This stage of being has many other names: "Bhagavan" - "Glorious," "Tathagata" - "Transcendingly Realized," and most important in our context today, "Sugata" - "Blissful," sukham - gata, "having become bliss". Such a being is described as The Buddha's Smile having three bodies, bodies of Truth, Beatitude, and Emanation. In any sort of Buddhism, it seems beyond question that "Buddhahood" is a synonym for supreme happiness. To state my thesis succinctly, from the Buddhist perspective enlightenment is happiness. So naturally a Buddha smiles.
In the Individual, Monastic, or Early Buddhist Vehicle, Buddha is called Sugata, Blissful One, he is said to have attained both Nirvana and Parinirvana, all suffering blown out and utterly blown out, to have reached the supreme happiness (paramasukha), to have gone beyond the Gods in joy, to have become the God of the Gods. In the Universal, Messianic, or Social Buddhist Vehicle, Buddhas are said to enjoy a Beatific Body (Sambhogakaya), to experience nonduality of Nirvana and the world, and are depicted as theistically capable of producing whole universes of bliss, buddhaverses (buddhakshetra) of Bliss (Sukhavati), Intense Delight (Abhirati) and so forth. And in the Lightning, Diamond, or Apocalyptic Vehicle, ultimate reality as expeiencedin enlightenment is described as bliss-void-indivisible (sukhashunya-avinirbhaga). So the overall Buddhist view must be that supreme enlightenment and true happiness are one and the same.
graciously donated by the author