Metteyya
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Metteyya (Pali) or Maitreya (Sanskrit) means ‘The Loving One’ or ‘The Friendly One’ and is the name that the Buddha of the next era will be known by (D.III,76).
At present, Metteyya is a bodhisatta abiding in the Tusita heaven, practicing the spiritual qualities that will lead to his enlightenment in the distant future. In most Buddhist iconography Metteyya is depicted as a beautiful young prince with a stupa in his crown. In late Chinese art he is often depicted as a rotund smiling figure, so as to emphasize his approachability and his warm friendly nature, and is inelegantly and incorrectly dubbed ‘Laughing Buddha’ by some Westerners.
The Mahayana and some of the Theravada commentaries place the arrival of Metteya at approximately 5,000 years after the passing of Buddha, which would make it somewhere around the year 4517 which is about 2,500 years from now. The early Theravada discourses hold that there is no set date and that it depends upon when the Dhamma disappears from the world and when the conditions are right, which could be that far off or even longer.
See also: 28 Buddhas