Kwan-Shi-Yin
Kwan-Shi-Yin (Chinese: 觀世音, Guānshìyīn) literally means "he who perceives the world's lamentations" -- wherein lok was read as simultaneously meaning both "to look" and "world" (Skt. loka; Ch. 世, shì). The name seems to derive from Guanzizai (Chinese: 觀自在), a direct translation of the Sanskrit name Avalokiteśvara.
Traditionally, Chinese Buddhism regards Kwan-Shi-Yin as a synonymous of Kwan-Yin. However, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and the Mahatmas maintained that these two terms refer to two different entities:[1]
Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin are the two aspects (male and female) of the same principle in Kosmos, Nature and Man, of divine wisdom and intelligence. They are the “Christos-Sophia” of the mystic Gnostics—the Logos and its Sakti.[2]
In Theosophical literature, when interpreted at a universal level, Kwan-Shi-Yin (sometimes spelled as Kwan-Shai-Yin) is the Logos, as the highest principle in the manifested cosmos:
Hence the “Kwan-shi-yin”—“the golden Dragon in whom are the seven,” of Stanza III—is the primordial Logos, or Brahmâ, the first manifested creative Power.[3]
Kwan-Shai-Yin is identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit Avalokitêshvara, and as such he is an androgynous deity, like the Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi of antiquity. It is only by some sects in China that he is anthropomorphized and represented with female attributes, when, under his female aspect, he becomes Kwan-Yin, the goddess of mercy, called the “Divine Voice.[4]
At the level of human beings, it is the seventh principle, while Kwan-Yin is the sixth:
In symbology the central point is Jivātma (the 7th principle), and hence Avalokitesvara, the Kwan-Shai-yin, the manifested “Voice” (or Logos), the germ point of manifested activity.[5]
Kwan-shai-yin — or the universally manifested voice "is active — male; and must not be confounded with Kwan-yin, or Buddhi the Spiritual Soul (the sixth Pr.) and the vehicle of its "Lord." . . . Kwan-shai-yin, the "Son identical with his Father" is the absolute activity, hence — having no direct relation to objects of sense is — Passivity.[6]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 471.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 473.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 452.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 72.
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence No. 111 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 379. See Mahatma Letter No. 111 page 16.
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence No. 111 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 377. See Mahatma Letter No. 111 page 16.