Avalokiteshvara- Buddhist GodDeity"Lord Who Looks Down"

Born from Light

In the Karandavyuha Sutra, Avalokiteshvara emanates from a ray of light issuing from Amitabha Buddha's right eye. He was born for one task: to embody compassion and guide beings to Amitabha's Pure Land. The same sutra claims that Shiva arose from his brow and Brahma from his shoulders.

He looked upon the suffering beings in all six realms of existence and wept. From his tears, the goddess Tara was born.

The Vow and the Shattering

Avalokiteshvara made a vow before Amitabha Buddha: he would liberate every sentient being from suffering, and if he ever turned back, may his head shatter into pieces. He worked for countless ages. Then he looked out at the world and saw that beings were as numerous as ever. For every one he saved, countless more fell into misery. His head split into ten pieces.

Amitabha restored him. He gave him eleven heads so he could hear cries from every direction, and a thousand arms so he could reach every being at once. In each palm, an eye opened.

Form Is Emptiness

In the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara enters deep meditation on the perfection of wisdom and perceives that the five aggregates of experience are empty of inherent existence. He turns to the monk Shariputra: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." Then the negations begin. No eyes, no ears. No suffering, no cessation. No attainment and nothing to attain. The entire teaching fits in under three hundred words.

Into the Hell Realms

The Karandavyuha Sutra tells how Avalokiteshvara descended into the lowest hell realms carrying six syllables: Om Mani Padme Hum. The hells transformed around him. Fire cooled, torments ceased, and the beings trapped there found release. In Tibet, those six syllables are carved into mani stones along mountain paths and written on prayer flags that scatter them into the wind.

A Thousand Faces

The Lotus Sutra's twenty-fifth chapter, the "Universal Gateway," describes Avalokiteshvara taking thirty-three different forms to reach beings according to their need: a monk to one seeker, a dragon to another. The chapter makes a promise: call his name in a moment of danger, and he comes. From fire, from flood. Nothing is required beyond sincerity. Just the name.

Miaoshan

In China, Avalokiteshvara took female form and became Guanyin. The legend of Princess Miaoshan, preserved in the Xiangshan Baojuan, tells how a king's daughter refused to marry and entered a monastery instead. Her father burned the monastery. Miaoshan survived and retreated to Fragrant Mountain, where she practiced for years. When the king fell gravely ill, she was told only the eyes and hands of one without anger could heal him. She gave her own. The king recovered. When he traveled to the mountain to thank his savior, he found his daughter, eyeless and handless, sitting in meditation. By the Song dynasty, the female Guanyin had become the standard form across China, Korea, and Japan.

The Monkey on the Mountain

In Tibet, Avalokiteshvara is Chenrezig, patron of the Land of Snows. The Mani Kabum recounts how Chenrezig sent an emanation in the form of a monkey to a cave in the mountains. A rock ogress came to the monkey and demanded he take her as his mate. The monkey asked Chenrezig for guidance and was told to accept. Their children were the first Tibetans.

King Songtsen Gampo, who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the seventh century, was regarded as Chenrezig's living emanation. The Dalai Lamas after him carried the same identity. When a Dalai Lama dies, Tibet searches for the child in whom Chenrezig has returned.