The Tree of Enlightenment

Asanga asked, ‘Where have you been all these years?’ to
which Maitreya replied, ‘I have been with you all along – it is
just that you were not able to see me. Only when you had developed
your compassion and purified your mind sufficiently were
you able to see me.’ To demonstrate the truth of this, he asked
Asanga to take him on his shoulders and walk through the village.
Nobody saw anything on Asanga’s shoulders except for one
old woman, who asked him, ‘What are you doing carrying that
sick dog?’
us, in the biographies of Asanga, we find another
important truth: that whatever we experience – the whole of
reality – depends on the condition of our minds.
In the biographies of these two founding fathers, we can see
various elements that are important to the Vajrayana tradition: the
magical or ritual element, the alchemical element, and the element
of the apparitional, or mind-dependent, nature of reality.
While Nagarjuna and Asanga are credited with being the
founding fathers of Vajrayana, the eighty-four men of great
attainment, or Mahasiddhas, undoubtedly performed the work of
disseminating the Vajrayana throughout India. ese men were
examples of a new kind of religious personality. Not necessarily
monks of orthodox Buddhism or priests of the old Brahmanism,
these figures who played principal roles in the spread of Vajryana
were laymen, naked ascetics, boatmen, potters, and kings. If we
look at the accounts of these new heroes’ lives and times, we will
appreciate the spiritual climate that existed in India during the
rise of the Vajrayana tradition. Let us look at the biographies of
two of these Mahasiddhas, Virupa and Naropa.
Virupa is responsible for the origin and transmission of many
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