Buddha and His Dog
ASANGA gave up. Twelve long years of meditation and spiritual practices, and still no vision of the future Buddha Maitreya.
He yearned to connect with Maitreya to receive teaching directly, which would accelerate his progress on the Bodhisattva path.
Asaṅga was “one of the most important spiritual figures”of Mahayana Buddhism and the “founder of the Yogacara school” who promoted Mahayana teachings on the bodhisattva path. (Wikipedia)
“Every new Bodhisattva or initiated great Adept is called the ‘liberator of mankind,’ Helena Blavatsky explains in footnote (20) in The Voice of the Silence:
“Now bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva,” she wrote, “Compassion speaks and saith: ‘Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?’”
In footnote (34) on Gautama Buddha, Mme. Blavatsky declared:
“To be enabled to help humanity, an Adept who has won the right to Nirvâna, ‘renounces the Dharmakâya body’ in mystic parlance; keeps, of the Sambhogakâya, only the great and complete knowledge, and remains in his Nirmânakâya body. The esoteric school teaches that Gautama Buddha with several of his Arhats is such a Nirmânakâya, higher than whom, on account of the great renunciation and sacrifice to mankind there is none known.”
- H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, Fragment III, The Seven Portals
Asanga
After the first three years of spiritual practices to no avail, Asanga left his solitary cave, disheartened. But then he saw a little bird pecking a hole in a rock to build a nest in it, and he felt ashamed at his lack of persistence. He went back up to his cave.
A Rock Nest
After the next three years, Asanga gave up again. As he descended the mountain, he met a man who was grinding down a thick rod of iron with a cloth to make needles. When the man showed him some needles he’d already made this way, Asanga hung his head and went back up the mountain.
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