THE GODDESS OF MERCY

(Guanyin or Guanshiyin)

This is one of the principal Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) School of Buddhism, originally called Avalokitesava in Sanskrit.

It is believed that when Buddhism was introduced to China, this deity was probably blended with a goddess of a certain Chinese faith or legend and assumed the form of a woman in people's minds as well as in statues and portraits. She came to be called "Guanshiyin" or "Guanyin". Later, as a free translation, she was known popularly among the foreign communities and Western visitors as the Goddess of Mercy.

Like the Bodhisattva Mahasthamaprapta, she is placed by the side of Amitabha Buddha on the dais of a Buddhist temple. The trio are called "The Three Saints from Western Paradise".

According to a Chinese sutra, she has great compassion for human suffering; men and women will be relieved of their distress provided only that they appeal to her name. She is said to have appeared in any one of 32 forms: with willow branches, with a halo, dressed in white, lying on a lotus, on the moonlit water, with a kindly expression, with palms pressed together, with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes, and so on.

As a religious statue, artisans in the old days preferred to mould her into a sedate, benevolent goddess with no anomalies.

She figures in many a classical novel and drama as a divinity full of mercy and compassion, ready to render help to an one the least bit deserving. She is usually depicted as possessing a holy beauty, with a fair complexion and crimson lips, elegant eyebrows and graceful eyes, an attractive hairdo and flowing garments, holding a horsetail duster in her right hand and a vase of sweet magic dew in her left. With a flick of the willow twigs she sprinkles the dew over the human world, relieving all mortal beings of their sufferings.

Her power undoubtedly emanated from the imagination of a world constantly troubled by natural disasters and social injustices, in which the distressed sought some divinity on whom to pin their hope.

As a work of art, she is portrayed as riding, sitting or standing on various animals: a tortoise, an elephant, a lion, a dragon or some other mythical beast. This stems from the various episodes in fiction and folklore, which have been wove about her personality.