The Story of Kuan Yin- Avalokiteshvara

[Music] whining is the Bodhisattva of compassion and a bodhisattva is something like a lesser deity or an angel if you will like that and so I'll tell one of the many stories of Quan Yin but this is considered to be one of the primary stories the origin stories of Avila tester are actually so one of the main stories of Kuan Yin so Quan Yin the name Quan Yin is a mandarin name she originally shows up in China actually interestingly enough Quan Yin was originally a male but around seconds early second century AD she becomes a

female so very quickly after the male Quan Yin maybe less than a hundred years later Quan Yin starts to take on the female form probably due to the Taoist influence in Buddhism because Taoism has that emphasis on the female male balance and so because Buddhism was coming up in China with the Taoist practices we see the emergence of poignant as a female and that's culture which is quite wonderful there's actually another great story with Quan Yin the one that I'm not going to tell but I'll just tell a brief synopsis of the end Quan Yin

is her job is to go around the world and the universe alleviating suffering and so she does that in this one occasion but she is now a woman and one of her students shows up and says Quan Yin why are you now a woman and Quan Yin says well why does it matter which is really great for a second century AD China and and and then she says I will show up in whichever gender best serves the present moment beautiful so and that's her job and I'm gonna get more into that later but to go

back to where I digressed from Quan Yin Snape as a mandarin name it means to hear the sounds of the universe but in Buddhist thought we recognize that her name means to hear the cries of the universe like that so a very a very empathetic and very emphasizing compassion that's the word emphasizing compassion so this story takes place between Quan Yin and her teacher the Buddha Amitabha so it's a mythological tale between two mythological characters now as all Mahayana Buddhist students do and all later Buddhist schools all of the students will have to do Quan

Yin was asked to take a bodhisattva vow that's a tradition and the Mahayana school of Buddhism to take this vow and the vow is the same in all of the Mahayana schools but it always has a personal touch to it the vow generally reads something like I vow to return lifetime after lifetime to alleviate suffering that's generally that what the vow looks like and then there's always a personal flair to it now Quan Yin personal valve was I vowed to return lifetime after lifetime to help alleviate suffering and never to fall into despair that was

her touch was never to fall into despair like that and there's plon Yin a beautiful statue there that I took this was in Georgetown in Malaysia Quan Yin is often depicted with one hand up like that that's the hand symbolizing wisdom and one hand either pouring of Oz or a hand down like that the hand down is the hand of compassion so she symbolizes the marriage of wisdom and compassion and in many schools of Buddhism that marriage is equivalent to enlightenment the marriage or the blend of wisdom and compassion like that in this depiction in

many others she's pouring of Oz that vows is meant to be carrying an elixir which can wash away the suffering of all beings it's a beautiful iconography so when you go to a monastery or temple particularly there's one here a beautiful Quan Yin temple there's many depictions of Quan Yin holding Avaaz holding her hands like that now you'll know what it means so I just wanted to show this slide I know it's not photo time with Kris but it's a brief digression because I've never seen the male and female forms of Quan Yin together and

so this is at a temple in Vietnam it's the only time I've been to many many temples around the world never see them together so I wanted to show that picture there they are together Quan Yin male and female holding the same pose they're beautiful iconography there so okay back to the story back to our scheduled program so Quan Yin she's working on the human realm alleviating suffering all across the globe the suffering of the present moment being different from what humans want as we just discussed and she's working with that type of suffering for

eons and eons and she never falls into despair arguably that's pretty admirable all right if we could all agree to that then she fought then she rather goes to the hell realm and she starts working with the devils and the demons and the tormented souls in the hell realm working to alleviate their suffering you can kind of imagine what that might have been right and then maybe she gets you know tired of that whatever and she goes to heaven and starts working with the gods and the angels in the heavenly realm alleviating the suffering of

the gods and the angels now I often get the question what kind of suffering do gods experience right that seems kind of weird and apparently will do to cause Buddhist cosmology the gods experience the fear of change hmm they're so cushy and in their godlike life but they always have this undercurrent or underlying fear that it can all be taken away from them and so gods where the gods and the Buddhist thought suffer from this fear of change like that so Quan Yin is there working with the gods and the angels on their fear of

change and she happens to glance down at earth and she sees that there's more division more anger more conflict more racism more hatred than when she left and she throws her arms up and she says oh what's the point and as soon as she exclaims what's the point her head explodes into ten thousand pieces and with the her head exploding with the inertia of that blast she's cast out of heaven and sent down to earth falling down to earth and she lands on the ground dumped unconscious lying there on the ground of Earth now eventually

she regains consciousness and she opens whatever she has left of an eye and she sees her teacher standing at her feet the Buddha Amitabha the Buddha looks Santa kuan-yin says what happened everything was going so well well what what's going on the point is his I I don't know I I must have blown it I think I fell into despair and the Buddha says yeah yeah I guess you broke your vow maybe what what can we do how can we repair this together teacher and student and Quan Yin says well I would really want to

return to my work alleviating suffering all across the plains it was so rewarding and the Buddha says fair enough let's let's see how we can repair this so together in a really it's a really kind of a touching part of the story that they they work together student and teacher repairing the damage and moulding the arms back or molding the pieces of her head rather into arms and that's why you see the thousand armed Bhutto the ten thousand on Buddhist its Avila cash para the incarnation of Quan Yin now IV Lokesh para she retakes her

vow and says I vow again to return lifetime after lifetime never to fall into despair the ten thousand arms each one has an eye in the palm of the hand representing a different way of seeing the truth again pointing at that teaching nobody has a monopoly on the truth right so ten thousand ways of seeing the truth represented in all of the arms the other arms are carrying swords spears different forms of weaponry those weapons are said to be able to cut away human delusion and our habituated patterns so we can live a life free

from our patterned suffering like that so that's one way that Avila cash bar alleviates our suffering like that it's done some of the other statues you'll see ovulate are are carrying a book it's a teaching a book of wisdom like that so another way that we alleviate our suffering is through our wisdom now IV lota shuara has twelve heads traditionally i'm gonna try to get them all right yeah so it's a loving kindness compassion joy and equanimity or the bottom foreheads the brahma vihara z' but above that r is the ability to see north east

south and west so all all of the directions as eight heads then the ability to see in the past the present in the future that's eleven heads above that is the buddha of is her teacher the buddha amitabha and this statue actually this icon has 13 heads as if you needed another one and the top one there in this depiction is the historical Buddha the Buddha Sakyamuni and we know that because of the large earlobes and the domed head and everything like that the snail helmet icon that's the historical Buddha looking down on everything making

sure nobody falls back into despair so that's the legend of Avila - Farah and the real there are many many many nuggets of wisdom in that story and it's it actually is quite a bit more detailed than I went into tonight but I just gave kind of a brief skim over the whole legend but for me the real takeaway of that story is the not falling into despair parked and it's so easy to do right we turn on the news and it's just this grim grim grim grim after Graham after Graham you know and so

it's easy to fall into that so we counter that with the practice pardon me with the practices of compassion with the practices of generosity and gratitude we counteract the tendency to fall into despair so the practices of gratitude and generosity and compassion balance out our tendencies to fall into despair the reason why that's quite important is because we when we come to a situation where there's suffering yet we're in despair at the same time our energy is going into that despair and not serving the present moment so when we can really come to the present

moment fully we're what much more effective in resolving that situation and not fighting back our despair at the same time so that's for me the real takeaway of The Legend of onion and nagato freshman [Music]