Guanyin- Chinese GodDeity"Goddess of Mercy"

The Princess Who Refused

The Xiangshan Baojuan, a Song Dynasty text, gives Guanyin a Chinese birth. Princess Miaoshan was the third daughter of King Zhuangwang, who wanted her married to a wealthy suitor. She refused. She wanted the monastery, not the marriage bed. Her father sent her to a convent to perform impossible labor: hauling water and gathering firewood in brutal conditions. The gods sent animals to help her finish.

When the king fell ill with a disease no physician could treat, a wandering monk prescribed medicine made from the eyes and hands of one without anger. Miaoshan offered her own. The cure worked. When the king learned who had given her eyes and hands for him, he prostrated before the daughter he had tried to destroy. She was transformed into the thousand-armed, thousand-eyed Guanyin, each arm and eye a mark of her power to see and reach all who suffer.

A Thousand Arms

The Nilakantha Dharani Sutra tells a different origin for the thousand arms. The bodhisattva heard the Great Compassion Dharani from the Buddha Qianguang Jingzhu Zhuangyan, and upon hearing it leaped from the first bhumi to the eighth in a single moment. A thousand arms and a thousand eyes sprouted from her body. She vowed that anyone who recites the dharani with sincerity will be freed from suffering and reborn in a pure land.

The dharani is chanted daily in Chinese Buddhist monasteries during morning and evening services. Devotees believe water blessed with its recitation gains healing power.

The Fish Basket

In a Tang Dynasty legend, Guanyin appeared in a fishing village as a young woman carrying a fish basket. She announced she would marry whoever could memorize certain Buddhist sutras. A young man succeeded. On their wedding day, she died, and her body dissolved. The bodhisattva had used beauty to bring an entire village to the dharma.

The Indian bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara had been male. The Lotus Sutra taught that Avalokiteshvara could appear in any form to save beings, but it was Chinese devotion and Chinese stories like this one that made Guanyin a woman for good.

The Journey West

In Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, Guanyin organizes Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India. She selects his companions and equips them for the road. She gives Sun Wukong the golden circlet that Xuanzang can tighten with a sutra to keep the monkey in line.

Throughout the eighty-one trials, Guanyin appears when no other power can resolve the crisis. She tames the Red Boy with her willow branch and jade vase. She subdues the Black Bear Demon. The pilgrims call on many gods, but when the situation is truly impossible, it is Guanyin who comes.

Mount Putuo

The island of Putuoshan, off the coast of Zhejiang, is Guanyin's earthly home, the Chinese equivalent of Potalaka described in Buddhist scripture. A colossal bronze statue of South Sea Guanyin overlooks the island from its southern promontory. Millions of pilgrims arrive each year, especially during the three Guanyin festivals: her birth on the nineteenth of the second lunar month, her enlightenment on the nineteenth of the sixth, and her renunciation on the nineteenth of the ninth.

In Pure Land Buddhism, Guanyin stands alongside Amitabha Buddha in the Western Paradise. The Amitayurdhyana Sutra describes what the dying see: Guanyin descending with a lotus pedestal, adorned with a crown bearing Amitabha's image, light radiating from every pore. She carries the faithful across the boundary between this world and the next. The phrase "Namo Guanshiyin Pusa" is recited constantly by devotees. The twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the "Universal Gateway," promises that anyone who invokes her name with sincerity will be saved from every peril. This chapter circulates independently as the "Guanyin Sutra" and is recited in temples and homes across the Chinese-speaking world.