Maitreya and the Thousand Buddhas

In Tibetan Maitreya is called byams-pa, and he is the Buddha of the Future among the Three Buddhas (Past, Present and Future). He will become a Buddha after 5.67 billion years, the astronomical reckoning of the length of a kalpa. Maitreya is particularly revered in Esoteric Buddhism, and all relatively large temples of each school have a hall devoted to this deity. The most famous image of Maitreya in Tibet is a large gilded bronze image cast under the direction of the Ninth Panchen Lama in 1914 at the Tashilhunpo monastery. The Buddha's body is 22.4 metres high, the pedestal 3.8 metres in height, and the Buddha's hands are 3.2 metres long. The statue is made from 115,875 kilograms of bronze alloy and 229 kilograms of gold. The urna is made of 30 large gems each the size of a finger joint and more than 300 smaller gemstones encircling a central ruby the size of a walnut.