Kwan-Yin
Kwan-Yin (Pinyin: Guānyīn) is the female bodhisattva of compassion venerated by East Asian Buddhists. Another later name for this bodhisattva is Kwan-Shi-Yin (Guānzìzài). 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".[1] In her commentaries to the sloka Helena Petrovna Blavatsky relates Kwan-Yin to the Hindu Vāc.
Kwan-Yin and Kwan-Shi-Yin
Mme. Blavatsky and the Mahatmas maintained that Kwan-Yin and Kwan-Shai-Yin are two different entities, and that it is the latter who is Avalokiteśvara.[2]
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.[3]
At a universal level, Kwan-Shi-Yin is the manifested Logos:
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.[4]
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.[5]
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.[6]
Kwan-Shai-yin — or the 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.” It is Kwan-yin that is the female principle or the manifested passive, manifesting itself “to every creature in the universe, in order to deliver all men from the consequences of sin” — as rendered by Beal, this once quite correctly (383), while Kwan-shai-yin, “the Son identical with his Father” is the absolute activity, hence — having no direct relation to objects of sense — is Passivity.[7]
Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 136.
- ↑ 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), ???.
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 111 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), ???.
Further reading
- Kwan Yin at Theosopedia