For six
years Asanga meditated in extreme hardship but did not even have one
auspicious dream. He was disheartened and thought he would never succeed with
his aspiration to meet the Buddha Maitreya, and so he abandoned his retreat and
left his hermitage. He had not gone far down the road when he saw a man rubbing
an enormous iron bar with a strip of silk. Asanga went up to him and asked him
what he was doing. "I haven't got a needle," the man replied,
"so I'm going to make one out of this iron bar.” Asanga stared at him,
astounded; even if the man were able to manage it in a hundred years, he
thought, what would be the point? He said to himself: "Look at the trouble
people give themselves over things that are totally absurd. You are doing
something really valuable, spiritual practice, and you're not nearly so
dedicated." He turned around and went back to his retreat.
Another
three years went by, still without the slightest sign from the Buddha Maitreya.
"Now I know for certain," he thought "I'm never going to
succeed." So he left again and soon came to a bend in the road where
there was a huge rock, so tall it seemed to touch the sky. At the foot of the
rock was a man busily rubbing it with a feather soaked in water. "What are
you doing?" Asanga asked. "This rock is so big it's stopping the sun
from shining on my house, so I'm trying to get rid of it." Asanga was
amazed at the man's indefatigable energy and ashamed at his own lack of
dedication. He returned to his retreat.
Three more
years passed, and still, he had not even had a single good dream. He decided,
once and for all, that it was hopeless, and he left his retreat for good. The
day wore on, and in the afternoon he came across a dog lying by the side of the
road. It had only its front legs, and the whole of the lower part of its body
was rotting and covered with maggots. Despite its pitiful condition, the dog
was snapping at passers-by and pathetically trying to bite them by dragging
itself along the ground with its two good legs.
Asanga was
overwhelmed with a vivid and unbearable feeling of compassion. He cut a piece
of flesh off his own body and gave it to the dog to eat. Then he bent down to
take off the maggots that were consuming the dog's body. But he suddenly
thought he might hurt them if he tried to pull them out with his fingers, and
realized that the only way to remove them would be on his tongue. Asanga knelt
on the ground and looking at the horrible festering, writhing mass, closed his
eyes. He leaned closer and put out his tongue. The next thing he knew, his
tongue was touching the ground. He opened his eyes and looked up. The dog was
gone; there in its place was the Buddha Maitreya, ringed by a shimmering aura
of light.
"At
last," said Asanga, "why did you never appear to me before?"
Maitreya
spoke softly: "it is not true that I have never appeared to you before. I
was with you all the time, but your negative karma and obscurations prevented
you from seeing me. Your twelve years of practice dissolved them slightly so
that you were at last able to see the dog. Then, thanks to your genuine and
heartfelt compassion, all those obscurations were completely swept away and you
can see me before you with your very own eyes. If you don't believe that this
is what happened, put me on your shoulder and try and see if anyone else can
see me." Asanga put Maitreya on his right shoulder and went to the
marketplace, where he began to ask everyone: "What have I got on my
shoulder?" "Nothing," most people said and hurried on. Only one
old woman, whose karma had been slightly purified, answered: "You've got
the rotting corpse of an old dog on your shoulder, that's all.” Asanga, at last, understood the boundless power of compassion that had purified and transformed
his karma, and so made him a vessel fit to receive the vision and instruction
of Maitreya. Then the Buddha Maitreya, whose name means "loving-kindness," took Asanga to a heavenly realm, and there gave him many
sublime teachings that are among the most important in the whole of Buddhism.
(As told by Sogyal Rinpoche in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
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