Maitreya, 'the loving one', is the next Buddha of this world-age, now said to be teaching in the Tusita heaven and predicted to descend when the dharma has been forgotten; the prediction is given in the Maitreyavyakarana sutra and, for Metteyya, in the Pali canon. Because he is expected rather than arrived, his cult has taken two shapes: devotion aimed at rebirth in Tusita in order to study under him, and millenarian expectation of his coming, which has repeatedly become the language of social reform in East Asia. The Yogacara tradition holds that Asanga received five texts from him, and Tibetan monastic universities still study those works as Maitreya's. In Chinese folk religion the laughing Budai is widely called 'the Maitreya', and in Japan he is Miroku, a figure of distant hope.
Modern Practice
Practitioners take rebirth in Tusita as a devotional aim, recite his mantra, and keep the loving-kindness the name means; the Tibetan aspiration for future buddhahood is often framed as Maitreya's path. The temptation to treat him as a scheduled event, or to identify a living person with him, is old and has produced some of the tradition's most painful corrections.