your bridge home
The Great Arguments
He is one step from the end of twelve wasted years, and there is something lying in the road.
He sat in a cave for twelve years to meet a buddha, failed, and got what he wanted by stopping for a dog.
That is the story. The philosophy underneath it is one of the two great systems of Mahayana Buddhism, and both halves belong to the same man.
Asanga flourished in the fourth century CE. The sources disagree about where he was born, some say Purushapura, modern Peshawar, others central India, and the disagreement is not resolvable.
He had a half-brother, Vasubandhu. The finest technical philosopher of the age.
And he thought the Mahayana was not the Buddha's teaching at all. Asanga eventually changed his mind, and between them they shaped the next thousand years of Buddhist thought.
Which is worth registering at the start.
The two great systems of Mahayana philosophy came out of one household. And one brother spent years publicly attacking the other's work. Before he came round.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.