Kwan-Yin

Kwan-Yin (Chinese: 觀音, Guānyīn) is the female bodhisattva of compassion venerated by East Asian Buddhists. Another later name for this bodhisattva is Kwan-Shi-Yin (Guānshìyīn). It is generally accepted that Kwan-Yin is a Chinese version of the male Mahāyāna bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.

In Chinese Buddhism

In Chinese Buddhism, the female Kuan Yin (also Guanyin, Kannon, Kwannon), the pinnacle of mercy and compassion is synonymous with the male Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (almost exclusively called Kwan-Shi-Yin). The Buddhist canon states that bodhisattvas can assume whatsoever gender and form is needed to liberate beings from ignorance and dukkha. The "Goddess of Mercy and Compassion" is seen as the boundless salvific nature of the male Avalokitesvara.

In Theosophy

Stanza VI.1 defines Kwan-Yin as "The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge" that resides in "Kwan-Yin-Tien". In her commentaries to the sloka, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky identifies Kwan-Yin to the female Logoi:

Kwan-Yin-Tien means the “melodious heaven of Sound,” the abode of Kwan-Yin, or the “Divine Voice” literally. This “Voice” is a synonym of the Verbum or the Word: “Speech,” as the expression of thought. Thus may be traced the connection with, and even the origin of the Hebrew Bath-Kol, the “daughter of the Divine Voice,” or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, the “Heavenly Man” or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The latter was surely anticipated by the Hindu Vâch, the goddess of Speech, or of the Word. For Vâch—the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, of Brahmâ, one “generated by the gods”—is, in company with Kwan-Yin, with Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses, the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of the active forces in Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech.

In the same sloka Kwan-Yin is said to be triple, as is every female logos:

The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge is called “the triple” of Kwan-Shai-Yin because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the “Mother, the Wife and the Daughter” of the Logos.

A related term is that of Kwan-Shi-Yin. Although traditional Chinese Buddhism regards the latter as a synonymous of Kwan-Yin, Mme. Blavatsky and the Mahatmas maintained that these are two different entities.

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.

Online resources

Articles

• Kwan Yin at Theosopedia
• The Orthography of Kwan-Yin-Tien by Ingmar de Boer