Almost everyone know what is Avalokiteśvara or otherwise famously known as Guan Yin in Chinese. So what is Avalokiteśvara? Is it a saint? A Buddha? A Bodhisattva? or merely a creation?

Here's simple explanation/background about Avalokiteśvara that I got from Bhante Dhammadhiro.

The word Avalokiteśvara is made up of Avalokita that means Looking down and iśvara that means a lord/ruler. In Pali, "a+i" read as "e", so Avalokita+iśvara is read as Avalokiteśvara. So Avalokiteśvara means "A lord/ruler who is looking/gazing down". Over here, the Chinese has wrongly translated it into Guan Yin. Guan means Looking and Yin means sound because they misunderstood the a+isvara in this case, which they assumed it was svara OR sound.

So why is there Avalokiteśvara in the first place? It was merely a creation by the Mahayana Buddhist at the time when the Hindu Religion became very strong and almost everyone changed their religion from Buddhist to Hindu.

It's widely known that in Hindu religion, they do believe in many Brahma or Bodhisattva. Hence, the Mahayana Buddhist also created the so called "Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva" in Buddhism to entice the people that "we also have one".
*note: In Buddhism we do believe there's such a thing as Bodhisattva*

So why Avalokiteśvara? In Buddhist teaching, the Lord Buddha mentioned the 3 most fundamental characteristic every person should develop, in themselves, to achieve Buddhahood is Wisdom, Purity, Loving kindness. These 3 traits are not easy to understand and develop by every person, especially to those in middle-low class, due to many reasons; some of it due to their lack of chances and resources to get some education, they had to work hard all the time to make a living hence no time to study, and etc. Another meaning of middle-low people are referred to those who don't have wisdom in their mind.

Hence, the Mahayana Buddhist created a manifestation of each of these traits to make those middle-low class people easily understand what are Wisdom, Purity and Loving kindness means.

In many Mahayana Buddhist poster, you can find easily a poster/image of 3 Bodhisattva. The Buddha will be in the middle to represent Purity. Another one (forgot the name) will be on his right side to represent Wisdom and Avalokiteśvara will be standing on his left side to represent Loving kindness.

Again, the purpose of these manifestation is merely to help the people to understand and imagine easily the 3 important basic traits that they should develop in themselves.

So why is Avalokiteśvara always being pictured as a woman? This is because many years ago, in China, when they wanted to draw/carve a statue/painting of Avalokiteśvara, they would imagine Loving kindness as a Mother. A mother's love. They imagined, loving kindness is the same as mother's love to their children. Hence, they made Avalokiteśvara as a woman, so people could easily imagine and understand what is Loving Kindness.

For those middle-low class people, developing and understanding Loving Kindness is much easier than understanding what is Purity and Wisdom. It is indeed hard to understand and develop Purity and Wisdom coz it cant be seen. However, to understand, develop and act out Loving Kindness is much easier. A parents' love to their children is loving kindness. Helping those in need is loving kindness. Not to kill a living being is loving kindness.
Hence, Avalokiteśvara became more and more famous due to that notion.

However, throughout the years, people have been mislead by the true meaning of this manifestation and Avalokiteśvara. Throughout the years and many generations, people had became lazy and assumed they could just pray to the Avalokiteśvara statue. That Avalokiteśvara is the source of Loving Kindness. That they can simply pray hard and request for anything to Avalokiteśvara. That Avalokiteśvara is a Fair Lady that helps everyone in need.

The image or statue of Avalokiteśvara is supposed to be used to remind people of Loving Kindness, that they should develop that trait in themselves. However, since people/human are plain lazy, they'd just pray hard, asking and hoping that this "loving kindness" can just come and delivered to them from the statue of Avalokiteśvara.

Not only just the statue of Avalokiteśvara, in fact there are many people who also pray hard, request and asking for anything from the statue of the Buddha. This statue of Buddha is actually just a reminder for us to always remember the sacrifices Siddhartha Gautama Prince has made to became a Buddha, the journey of Siddhartha Gautama and the teaching of the Buddha (The Dhamma).

The Lord Buddha never encouraged its people to pray to ask/request for something. In fact, pray and asking for something is actually quite wrong. Coz when we pray and ask for something, we are hoping and expecting for that pray to come true. Since we are expecting it, we have hope in our heart and we are waiting and waiting. If the pray doesn't come true/happening, we will get frustrated, mad and angry. Our heart will be filled with many defilement and ill thoughts.

In fact, the Lord Buddha encouraged us to pray for other people well being. E.g. "I hope my parents will be healthy and safe, I hope every living being will be happy and safe". That's the kind of pray the Lord Buddha encouraged us to do. By doing such pray, our heart will be light coz we are not asking/requesting something and waiting for it to happen.

I hope with this really brief and simple explanation about Avalokiteśvara, people can understand, even just a little bit, what is Avalokiteśvara all about.

I, myself, grew up thinking that Avalokiteśvara is a fair lady/Bodhisattva that I can just pray and ask for safety, requests, hope, etc. But if i asked everyone what is Avalokiteśvara, no one can give me a solid consistent answer. Mostly they'd say "Oh, it's a Bodhisattva that come down from heaven to help us the lay people". "She was once a prince". "He was once a woman". "Oh, Avalokiteśvara is not a man nor a woman. It has no gender".

If I asked what's the history of Avalokiteśvara. So many people will give me so many different versions of it. So I grew just took it blindly and except it that there's such a thing as Avalokiteśvara.

I'm not saying I dont respect Avalokiteśvara at all. I do, I still do. But not as blindly as before. I now know clearly what is Avalokiteśvara now.

It's quite sad to see there are so many buddhist who mixed the Buddha teaching with their own Chinese traditions. Thus, those who are not buddhist always assumed that Buddhist is all about praying to statue, burn a joystick, pray hard to statue. In fact, there are many those who are coldly enough to gave crude comment such as "why should i kneel down on floor? Why should I sit on floor, not on chair? Why are you praying/bowing to that bald man? Why you have such a big giant statues or many statues that you bow to?"

For those Buddhist who don't really understand the answer behind it, they would just said "That's the way it is". These are the people that grew up not understanding what a Buddhism is truly about. I have to say, I was once that person too.

In the past, if anyone asked me what is Buddhism, I'd say the same. oh, we just go vihara, chanting every week, burn joystick and pray to many different statues. And why? I dunno why.

But after I met my husband and came to LA, I've came to know that in fact that's wrong. True Buddhism is not all about that. The statues are just a reminder to us about the journey of Siddhartha Gautama, the good traits of Buddha and the teaching of Buddha.

The sutta that we chant every week/every day is basically some part of the sutta from the Lord Buddha that giving us some pointers, guidance and teaching of what we should do, know and develop. Why we chant? It's basically to remind us again and again what the sutta is all about. Chanting also helps us to focus, concentrate and meditate.

I'll write in my next blog about these more. It's whole another explanation all by itself.

Hope you enjoy reading this. And do remember this is just my own opinions and writing upon hearing the explanation from one of the monk.