Maitreya’s rebirth in the Heaven of Joy

Then Upāli rose from his seat, adjusted his robes, bowed his head, and asked the Blessed One, “Blessed One, as there is such sublime happiness in the Heaven of Joy, when will this great being be reborn from Jambudvīpa into that divine realm?” The Blessed One replied, “Twelve years from now, on the fifteenth day of the second month of spring, Maitreya will return to the place where he took birth: the household of the great Brahmin Bāvarī, in the village of Kapāli, in the region of Vārāṇasī. There he will sit in the lotus posture, as if he were resting in utter absorption. His body’s golden luster and the red rays of light it emits will be brighter than a hundred thousand suns, reaching up to the Heaven of Joy above. His physical remains will stay still and unmoving, like a golden statue. From the sphere of light that surrounds his body, the syllables of the threefold liberation and the perfection of insight will distinctly emerge. “Gods and humans will all be drawn there to worship the precious stūpa with his physical remains. Maitreya will then be miraculously reborn in the Heaven of Joy, in that palace made of the seven precious substances. As he sits cross-legged on a lotus flower atop the lion throne within the palace, his body will shine like gold from the Jambū river. His body will be sixteen leagues tall and fully adorned with the thirty-two major marks and the eighty excellent minor marks. There will be a topknot on his head, and his hair will resemble the color of beryl. His divine crown will be adorned with jewels such as śakrābhilagna and kiṃśuka. The gems in his divine crown will shine with the colors of a billion jewels. In each of the colors there will be immeasurably many billions of emanated thus-gone ones, along with a multitude of emanated bodhisattvas who act as their servants. All the bodhisattvas from other pure lands will display the eighteen miracles and take up residence inside the divine crown as they wish. “White rays of light will then emerge from between Maitreya’s eyebrows. The light will cause the thirty-two major marks to manifest in the colors of hundreds of jewels. Within each major mark will be the minor marks, which in turn will manifest in the colors of five billion jewels. Also, within each minor mark, gods will manifest whose major and minor marks blaze in the colors of five billion gems. Each god will sit on a lotus within an orb of eighty-four thousand light rays. Maitreya will continuously turn the Dharma wheel of the nonregressing level, day and night. He will set these five billion gods toward a single destination, accomplish their aims, and make them nonregressing from unsurpassed and complete awakening. Day and night within the Heaven of Joy, he will continuously establish all gods in the Dharma wheel of the nonregressing level. Then, after fifty-six trillion Jambudvīpa years, the discourse called Maitreya’s Birth from the Heaven of Joy into Jambudvīpa will be taught.