Chenrezig- Tibetan GodDeity"He Who Gazes with Compassion"

The Vow and the Shattering

Chenrezig was once a prince who stood before the Buddha Amitābha and made a vow: he would work without rest to liberate every sentient being from saṃsāra, the grinding wheel of suffering and rebirth. If he ever turned away from this task, may his body shatter into a thousand pieces.

For countless eons he labored, drawing beings out of suffering one by one. But when at last he paused and looked down from Potala, his pure land high above the world, the ocean of suffering stretched as vast and dark as ever. Beings he had saved had fallen back. New beings suffered in their place. The enormity overwhelmed him. He wavered, and in that instant of despair, his body burst apart.

Amitābha gathered the shattered pieces and remade him. Where there had been one head, now there were eleven: nine peaceful faces to see suffering in every direction, one wrathful face to subdue those too stubborn for gentleness, and at the crown, the serene face of Amitābha himself. Where there had been two arms, now there were a thousand, each palm marked with an open eye. He could never look away again.

The Birth of Tārā

As Chenrezig gazed upon the suffering of the six realms, tears streamed from his eyes. From the tears of his right eye was born White Tārā, serene and far-seeing. From his left eye, Green Tārā, swift to act. Together they became his closest companions in the work of liberation. Wherever Chenrezig appears in Tibetan tradition, Tārā is near.

Om Mani Padme Hum

The six-syllable mantra OM MANI PADME HUM pervades Tibetan life. It is carved into mani stones piled in vast cairns along mountain paths. Some mani walls stretch for miles, each stone inscribed by a devoted hand. It is printed on prayer flags that scatter its blessings on the wind, and spun ceaselessly in prayer wheels turned by hand, by water, by breeze. Pilgrims murmur it with every step around sacred sites. The dying hear it whispered in their ears.

The most accessible practice in Tibetan Buddhism is the simple recitation of this mantra. It requires no initiation. Any person, lettered or unlettered, may take it up. Devoted practitioners accumulate millions of repetitions over a lifetime, their fingers wearing grooves into wooden rosary beads. The nyungné, a more demanding two-day fasting retreat centered on Chenrezig, strips practitioners to nothing: one meal on the first day, then no food, no water on the second, while they perform hundreds of prostrations before an image of the thousand-armed form. Elderly Tibetans undertake it year after year.

The Monkey and the Rock Demoness

A Tibetan origin myth binds the entire nation to Chenrezig's compassion. Long ago, he emanated as a monkey and withdrew to the mountains of Tibet to meditate. A rock demoness, tormented by loneliness and desire, came weeping and begged him to become her husband. If he refused, she warned, she would take a demon lover and fill the world with malevolent offspring. Moved by compassion, and with the blessing of Tārā, the monkey consented.

Their children were wild, half-monkey creatures who lived on forest fruit and chattered without true speech. As they multiplied they stripped the forests bare and began to starve. Chenrezig scattered the five sacred grains across the earth. As the children ate the grain they slowly changed: their tails shortened and vanished, their hair receded, their babble sharpened into language. Generation by generation they became the Tibetan people.

Emanations in Tibet

Tibetans believe Chenrezig returns again and again in human form. The first great king, Songtsen Gampo, who unified the Tibetan plateau and brought Buddhism there in the seventh century, is held to be an emanation of Chenrezig. His two queens, the Nepalese princess Bhṛkutī and the Chinese princess Wencheng, each carried sacred Buddhist images to Lhasa and are understood as manifestations of Tārā. The founding of Tibetan civilization was the work of bodhisattvas in human guise.

When the institution of the Dalai Lamas arose centuries later, each successive Dalai Lama was recognized as Chenrezig reborn: from Gendun Drup, the first, through the current Fourteenth, Tenzin Gyatso. Their seat was the Potala Palace in Lhasa, named for Chenrezig's celestial mountain paradise. Its towering white and red walls rose above the holy city. The pure land made earthly.