During the Seven-year Systematic Study of Buddhism (1991-1998) at the Tibetan Center in Hamburg with Geshe Thubten Ngawang, I heard the story of the Buddhist teacher Asanga for the first time. Asanga meditated for 12 years in a cave in the Himalayas. It left a deep impression on me and has stayed with me over the years.
His goal was to see the Buddha Maitreya or to come into contact with him. Again and again, he is close to giving up and leaves the cave. However, the experiences he has in the process give him new strength and he begins to meditate in the cave again.
He meets someone who is grinding needles out of a huge boulder and is proud to have already ground a huge mountain of needles, even though the boulder is still incredibly large.
Or he sees another rock being hollowed out by continuous drops of water. Even the water seems to have more perseverance, Asanga gets the impression.
Or he sees how a rock has been polished bare by the stroking of a wing on the flight path to a nest that birds fly to again and again over the years.
When he still has no success after 12 years, Asanga leaves the cave in frustration. There he sees a dog that is already half-dead, eaten by maggots and suffering terribly. Full of compassion, he wants to save the dog, but he realizes that if he removes the maggots with his fingers, he could injure them and they would starve to death. They are also sentient beings. So he cuts a piece of meat from his own body for the maggots and then bends down to the poor dog to remove the maggots from the chewed-up body with his tongue. He closes his eyes to suppress his disgust. But even that doesn’t work.
So he opens his eyes again and in front of him sits Buddha Maitreya instead of the dog.
He learns that the Buddha was there the whole time. He just wasn’t aware of it. To prove this, Maitreya tells him to carry him into the village on his shoulders to see if anyone sees him. And indeed, everyone believes that the crazy man who was meditating in the mountains has now gone completely insane, as he is carrying a half-dead dog around with him. Only an old woman sees the legs of Buddha Maitreya sitting on Asanga’s shoulders.
Over the years, I kept looking for a thangka with this story. I couldn’t find one. I realized I had to put the story into a picture myself.
2025, acrylic, canvas, 30×40 cm