Guan Yin
(Kuan Yin, J. Kannon; Chenresi in Tibetan, Kuan-em in Korean)
The goddess of compassion in Mahayana Buddhism, and arguably the most widely worshipped Buddhist deity figure, strictly speaking, Guan Yin is a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who, moved by KARUNA (compassion) for the suffering of living beings, has taken a vow not to proceed to nirvana until others are enlightened.
Guan Yin sculptures and paintings often show the goddess with a vase (filled with the holy dew of compassion), a prayer book, a willow branch used to sprinkle holy nectar, a dove, and a rosary.
Guan Yin, or Guan Shi Yin, literally "he who hears the calls of the world," was originally an Indian figure known as Avalokitesvara. This deity figures prominently in the Lotus Sutra, where in chapter 25 he is depicted as one who will respond to any person calling out his name:
If any, carried away by a flood, call upon his name, they will immediately reach the shallows. . . . Or if anyone cries who is in deadly peril by the sword, the sword will be snapped asunder. If wicked demons attack, the one who cries will become invisible to them. . . . If a woman desires a son, worships and pays homage, she will bear a son, virtuous and wise; or if a daughter, then of good demeanor and looks.
This passage reflects that Avalokitesvara was ever-ready to help those in need. In performing acts of assistance the deity would frequently transform his image. The passage also shows that Avalokites-vara was originally a male figure. over the centuries, and certainly by the 700s, the bodhisattva’s figure was depicted as female. This transformation probably resulted from a merging of worship traditions with existing practices of veneration of feminine deities. Feminine deities were prominent in early Chinese religions, a period best described as shamanistic. With the dominance of the Confucian worldview, the goddess aspects were gradually suppressed in Chinese culture. Alternative images such as the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwang Mu) reemerged during the Han period (226 B.C.E.-220 c.e.). Buddhism may have appropriated such feministic leanings in order to maintain popularity within the culture at large.
Guan Yin was in one version created as an emanation of light from the Buddha Amitabha, the Buddha of the Western Lands. Guan Yin is depicted as a small figure on Amitabha’s forehead or headpiece. Guan Yin was also later associated with the legend of Miao Shan, a princess said to have lived around 700 b.c.e.
Large painted Guan Yin figure at the True Buddhist School main temple in Taiwan (Institute for the Study of American Religion, Santa Barbara, California)
Guan Yin worship spread quickly throughout China in the Tang and Song dynasties, and it later entered Korea and Japan. In each area the broad stream of Guan Yin worship absorbed local legends and stories. In China a widely accepted account states that Guan Yin resides on Mt. PuTuo (Putuo Shan), a small mountain island near Ningbo on China’s eastern coast. This island later became identified with Potalaka, the magical island mentioned in the Hua Yan Jing (Flower ornament Sutra). As Guan Yin’s place of residence, Putuo Shan is one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism.
Gurudharma
The gurudharma are the eight special rules imposed on women by the Buddha, which have served to ensure the subordinate status of women within the sangha (monastic community) and have greatly influenced the role of women throughout Buddhism. The sangha was established by the Buddha very early in the movement. The opening of the sangha to females was in part due to the entreaties of the Buddha’s foster mother, Mahaprajapati Got-ami, who over the course of five years persuaded the Buddha to allow their entry. The rules reflect the dominant gender relationships of the time and the opinion prevalent in male-dominated societies that women are the major cause of men’s violating sexual mores.
The eight rules are summarized as follows:
1. A bhiksuni (nun) must always give precedence to a bhiksu (monk), regardless of their relative seniority; she must always offer him a place to sit.
2. Bhiksunis may not observe the annual retreat (vassa) in a district where there are no bhiksus.
3. Bhiksus will be asked to establish the dates for bhiksuni uposatha (full moon and new moon) ceremonies of renewal.
4. Every two weeks the bhiksuni sangha must send a representative to ask the sangha of bhiksus for "instructions." Such "instructions" generally entail a reiteration of the gurudharma’s eight rules.
5. Certain judicial processes in the case of bhiksunis must be undertaken by both sang-has; those for bhiksus need only take place before the bhiksu sangha.
6. The Upasampada (full ordination) ceremony for bhiksunis should take place before the bhiksu sangha as well the bhik-suni sangha.
7. A bhiksuni should never abuse or revile a bhiksu.
8. Bhiskus can officially admonish bhiksunis, but not vice versa.
These rules, which clearly placed the community of nuns in a subordinate position to the community of monks, were later incorporated in the bhiksuni Vinaya pitaka. However, the order of bhiksunis was allowed to become moribund. The modern revival of that order, combined with the general critique of traditional gender subordination of females, has led to widespread discussion of the guarudhamma, with several female Buddhist spokespersons questioning its relevance to the modern age.
Gyoki (Gyogi)
(668-749 c.e.) prominent Hosso monk in Japan
Gyoki was a monk at the Yakushi-ji temple in Nara, where he studied the teachings of the Hosso school. He propagated Buddhist doctrines widely and assisted the emperor Shomu’s efforts to build a huge Vairocana Buddha figure. Because of these efforts he was made chief administrator of all priests in 745 c.e.
For more than a thousand years, the Japanese Buddhist priest Gyoki has been well known for his seventh-century charitable religious activities. His biographies and hagiographies tell that not long after the "official introduction" of Buddhism into Japan, Gyoki roamed the countryside propagating the teachings together with farming techniques to oppressed people hungry for both. His activities, in defiance of secular law, were carried out in a time when the government maintained strict control of Buddhists by confining them to temple grounds for academic study. With supporters outside the capital swelling to thousands, an imperial edict was issued against his actions, and Gyoki was arrested. This attempt to quell the growth of Gyoki’s hero status backfired, however, and popular support for him increased. As a result the government reversed its stance toward Gyoki, and he was awarded the rank of high priest (dai-sojo). Meanwhile, among the masses he became known as the Bodhisattva Gyoki (Gyoki Bosatsu). Subsequently, he became the first person in Japan to be awarded the title Bodhisattva by the government as an official rank.
In 744 Gyoki built a temple at Nannou, called the Temple of Bodhisattva of Mt. Garyu. It burned in 1336, a victim of war. When rebuilt in 1700, it was renamed Gyoki’s Temple. The gate was constructed in 1820 and the main temple rebuilt separately in 1832.
Hachiman (Yawata)
As Buddhism began to grow in Japan, it met opposition from the older Shinto faith. Among its many strategies to accommodate itself to its new home was the incorporation of Shinto deities into the Buddhist worldview. one popular example of such integration is the god Hachiman, a deity who had hegemony over, among other realms, agriculture and blacksmithing. Hachiman was originally identified as the continuing spirit of the early Japanese emperor Ojin (fifth century?). He also has an alternative name, Yawata, "god of eight banderoles [ornamental banners]" He is frequently symbolized by the dove.
Hachiman seems to have entered the Buddhist world in the eighth century at the time the large bronze statue of Vairocana Buddha was being forged for the Todai-ji Shrine in Nara. During the casting of the statue, Hachiman was invoked as the god of blacksmiths. He was subsequently worked into the Buddhist pantheon as a bodhisattva. The process culminated in 781, when the Heian emperor gave him the title Daibosatsu, or Great Bodhisattva. He would later become closely associated with the Minamoto clan, which rose to power in 1185. Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun at Kamakura, believed that Hachiman was a manifestation of Amitabha Buddha and built a shrine to him in the new capital city.
Nichiren (1222-82), who settled in Kamakura as a young priest, saw Hachiman as a manifestation not of Amitabha Buddha but of the Eternal Sakyamuni Buddha. He also considered Hachi-man in terms of his traditional role of generating agricultural fertility. As such, Hachiman is one of the deities mentioned on the Gohonzon, the great object of worship for Nichiren Buddhism.
Today, the main Hachiman shrine is the usa Shrine in oita, though it is closely followed in importance by the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine on Mt. Otoko southwest of Kyoto, which dates to 859, and the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura, both attached to the Minamoto clan. An ancient Hachiman figure is housed in the Hachimangu Shrine, built near the Todai-ji Temple in Kyoto. Through the years, Hachiman became a favorite deity of the warrior class (hence one of his titles as the "Shinto god of war"). Worship of Hachiman then filtered down to the peasants. He subsequently became one of the most honored of KAMls by Shintoists as well as one of the most acknowledged bodhisattvas by Japanese Buddhists. Tens of thousands of small shrines dedicated to him now exist across the country. The Hachiman shrines are a vivid example of the japanization of Buddhism through syncretism with Shintoism.
Han Yu
(768-812) archconservative writer in Tang dynasty China
Although the Tang dynasty (618-906) is known mainly for its cosmopolitan atmosphere, heavily Buddhist-flavored Confucianism (rujia) remained an abiding presence. Perhaps the greatest proponent of Confucian thought in the Tang was Han Yu. Distinctly conservative in his social and cultural views, Han Yu saw his mission as restoring China to its earlier Confucian social and political order. His most famous work, Yuandao (Essentials of the moral way), argues against Daoist and Buddhist teachings on economic, social, and moral grounds.
Han Yu was a great essayist who reaffirmed the Confucian Classics (jing) as central to the Chinese heritage and patterned his own style of writing on them. He had a profound dislike for Buddhism (except for its focus on ethics). His famous "Memorial on the Bone of Buddha," occasioned by Emperor Xianzong’s (r. 806-820) support of a large-scale public ceremony venerating a Buddhist relic, is a classic example of a Confucian reproach to a ruler who strays from the true Way. Instead, Han Yu advocated a return to the "Way of the sages," all the way back to Mencius. According to his reckoning, the orthodox transmission of the Way (daotong) had been cut off since the Han and needed to be recovered. For Han Yu, this Confucian tradition was the true source of Chinese civilization. over time, however, Buddhism and Daoism gradually led Chinese culture astray. As part of his program of cultural recovery, Han Yu recommended forcing Buddhist and Daoist clergy back to lay life, confiscating their temples, and burning their books.
Although Han Yu and his fellow Confucians had no direct hand in it, the sentiments he expressed eventually led to the suppression of Buddhism and other "foreign daos" under the Emperor Wuzong (r. 841-846). His staunch advocacy of Confucianism and his prose style were major factors in the Confucian resurgence in the Song dynasty (960-1279).
Hariti (guizimu, jiuzimu, Kariteimo)
Hariti was a minor Hindu folk deity famous for eating human children. She was eventually converted by the Buddha and afterward became a protector of children. She is first recorded in the Hariti Sutra, a short work translated into Chinese in the third century c.e. This sutra describes how the Buddha arranged for her 1,000 children to be kidnapped and held in a monastery. He only released them after Hariti recognized her evil deeds. After this incident she became especially associated with helping childless couples.
Hariti was particularly popular in the northern India/Central Asian area of Gandhara. She is depicted in sculpture of that area as relatively plump, half-naked, and surrounded by children. She is later often depicted in paintings and sculpture, always surrounded by children or nursing a baby. In China she took on another name, jiuzimu, "mother of nine children." This image of succoring children eventually merged with that of Xiwangmu, the Mother of the West. In Japan she is known as Kariteimo and is venerated as a protector of many family activities. Because she appears in the Lotus Sutra, she is very popular among Nichiren Buddhists.
Hariti is also often depicted in violent encounter with the Buddha. Scrolls depicting this event are often called "raising the alms bowl" because one text, the Samyuktaratna-pitaka, states that the Buddha hid her favorite child under his alms bowl. These paintings depict a grand battle between demons and the Buddha.
Healing Tao
The Healing Tao, founded by Mantak Chia (1944- ), is among the best known of the popular Daoist groups in the West. It is an organization that promotes, through books and seminars, a system of breathing, visualization, meditation, and postures that streamlines the Daoist practice of inner alchemy (neidan). In Chinese Daoism, inner alchemy’s ultimate goal was the attainment of immortality through the transformation of energy within the body, but many adherents follow the Healing Tao teachings for increased health, vitality, and spiritual contentment. These exercises have all been described in Chia’s books, but the program emphasizes personal instruction. The full Mantak Chia program consists of 15 courses, the first nine introductory, the next three intermediate, and the final three advanced courses concerned with spiritual immortality.
Mantak Chia is an ethnic Chinese born in Thailand. Chia is said to have begun self-cultivation at the very young age of six with Buddhist meditation training, martial arts, Tai Chi, and Kundalini yoga. He also has some training and interest in Western medicine. of his many teachers, his most influential was a Daoist hermit living in a mountain cabin in the Hong Kong New Territories. This teacher, called one Cloud, gave him transmission and a mandate to teach and heal using inner alchemy.
In 1979, Chia moved to New York and opened the Healing Tao Center, attracting Euro-American students, who helped him organize a national seminar circuit. Around the same time as Kundalini and Tantra were becoming popularized in the West, Chia’s books about "Daoist sexual practice" circulated and his Healing Tao grew to one of the largest Western Daoist groups, today comprising over 1,000 certified instructors in many countries, who can be found by location or qualification at a central Web site.
In 1994, Chia moved back to Thailand to establish Tao Garden, an international Healing Tao Center in Chiang Mai, where Europeans and Americans train to be Healing Tao instructors. Tao Garden also functions as an alternative therapy spa. Chia’s former student Michael Winn now leads Healing Tao uSA and leads an annual retreat at Tao Mountain in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. Winn also leads three-week guided tours of sacred sites of China.
Hearn, Lafcadio
(1850-1904) influential translator of Japanese culture and Buddhism
Lafcadio Hearn was the first great sympathetic interpreter of Japan to the English-speaking world. Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkas but raised in Ireland by a great-aunt after his parents’ divorce when he was still a small child. When he was 19 he moved to Cincinnati, ohio, where he eventually found work as a newspaper reporter. He moved on to New Orleans in 1877 and emerged as an accomplished writer.
In 1889 he moved to Japan, where he found a job teaching school in Matsue. He fell in love with the country, became a Japanese citizen (1895), and assumed a Japanese name, Yakumo Koizumi. At Matsue, he also found a wife, the daughter of a samurai.
He completed his first book on Japan in 1894, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, a collection of short works about his adopted country. He would thereafter write almost a book a year exploring different aspects of life in Japan; the first one on Buddhism appeared in 1897 as Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East. Hearn was much admired for his mastery of the English language and his ability to use the language to invite readers into the sometimes exotic environment surrounding his subject.
In 1894, he also secured a job writing for the English-language Kobe newspaper, the Chronicle. The work on the Chronicle helped him secure a position teaching English literature at the Imperial university in Tokyo, where he taught for seven years. He died in 1904.
Heart Sutra
The Heart Sutra is an early Mahayana text from the Greater Perfection of Wisdom (prajnaparamita) family of texts that remains one of the most popular texts in East Asian Buddhism today. The Heart Sutra (Prajna-paramita-hrdya-sutra) is the shortest of the group. It can be interpreted as a brief compilation of Prajnaparamita (wisdom) thought, with a focus on the SUNYATA (emptiness) of all phenomena.
The Heart Sutra was originally translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva in the fourth century and later by Xuan Zang (602-664) in 649. Because of its relative brevity it is often found carved on fans and used as a subject for calligraphy. In Japan it became a favorite text for Zen and Shingon practitioners. A Sanskrit version handwritten on palm leaves, now kept in the National Museum, Tokyo, dates from 609 c.e.
Hell
As nearly all religions have, Buddhism has a well-developed concept of hell. The Sanskrit term used to refer to hell is naraka or niraya, literally "devoid of happiness." Ideas of hell were developed over many centuries within Indian culture and thus show broad similarities to those from other Indian traditions such as Jainism and Hinduism. The oldest Buddhist texts such as Verses on the Law and the Group of Discourses (Sutta Nipata, third century b.c.e.) describe hell as simply the place where those who do evil are sent. The Kokaliya-sutta chapter in the Group of Discourses, an early Indian Buddhist text, describes a monk who visits hell and witnesses such punishments as trees with blades and balls of heated iron.
The Buddhist concept of hell was eventually further refined and systematized. It is found in its complete form in the Abhidharma-kosa, that great summary of early Buddhism. The Abhidharma-kosa describes many hells, starting with the eight hot hells. These are separated from the world of everyday reality, which is traditionally called Jam-budvipa, by a layer of white clay. The eight hells are arranged from top to bottom in this order: Samjiva (reviving), Kalasutra (black string), Samghata (dashing together), Raurava (weeping), Maharau-rava (great weeping), Tapana (heating), Pratapana (greatly heating), and Avici (no release).
Naturally, individuals receive different punishments in the various hells. In Samjiva they are killed with blades, revived by a wind, and killed again in a self-perpetuating cycle. In the lowest hell, Avici, individuals receive no respite at all: the torture is constant. In Kalasutra (black string) people lie on boards and are marked with black lines before being cut along the lines. In Samghata (dashing together) the inhabitants endure various forms of smashing and cutting. Raurava (weeping) and Maharaurava (great weeping) accurately describe the extent of the people’s agony, while Tapana (heating) and Pratapana (greatly heating) indicate the extent of thermal discomfort.
Each hell has four doors, one in each direction, and each door leads to four subhells, called utsadas. Each of the four types of utsada contains a special horror. For instance, in the Kukula (heated by burning chaff) subhell, people are forced to walk over hot ashes. There are thus 16 subhells associated with each major hell, for a total of 128 subhells.
The list of hells is not yet complete without the cold hells. There are eight cold hells, arranged below the surface of the world parallel to the hot hells. Each of these produces a unique effect on the skin: In Arbuda (abscess) the skin erupts in frostbite. In Nirarbuda the skin cracks open. The names of the Atata, Hahava, and Huhuva hells refer to the quality of the sound of the cries of the sufferers. The final three, utpala, Padma, and Mahapadma, refer to colors of three lotus types— blue, red, and deep red—indicating perhaps a strong association of those colors with fear and discomfort, perhaps as they relate to the skin.
Adding the 128 subhells to the eight hot hells and the eight cold hells, one arrives at 144 hells in the traditional Buddhist conception of the universe. There are in addition "minor" hells that are created for certain classes of people or even single people. This realm of suffering, developed in India but spread with Buddhism throughout Asia, was described with some care.
LATER MAHAYANA CONCEPTS OF HELL
The traditional images of hell expressed in the Abhidharma-kosa are still widespread in all Buddhist cultures, including the Mahayana areas of East Asia. However, there were significant additions. Most important, a king of hell, Yama, was added. Originally a god living above Mt. Sumeru, Yama is a very ancient Indian deity, one of the twin progenitors of the human race. As the first man, Yama lived in a heavenly realm after dying.
Gradually Yama’s heavenly realm was shifted to a subterranean place and became less than a paradise. This shift may have reflected the difference between funerary practices of cremation (associated with the Aryan culture of the Indian Rg Veda, an ancient religious text) and burial. Regardless, by the time Yama’s realm was associated with the underworld it was a place of discomfort. In particular, hell was a place for hungry spirits, PRETA, including those who did not leave behind any descendents. In the Abhidharma-kosa, Yama was the deity who decided which individuals are thrown into hell. After the period of the Abhidharma-kosa, Yama was seen to reside in the lower hells himself, one of a staff of 10 warders. Yama was, in effect, the judge who oversaw who was sent to hell and how long they stayed. Thus the role of Yama in Mahayana ideas of hell reflects the idea of judgment of the deeds of the living.
The concept of the 10 kings, each presiding over a different stage of purgatory, probably developed in China. one early source to reflect this structure was The Scripture on the Ten Kings, a text collected before 908 c.e., during the Tang dynasty (618-906 c.e.) in China. In this text, Yama and nine other "kings" preside over their own jurisdictions and act as judges for the dead. Yama is here simply the fifth of the 10 kings, called in Chinese Yanlo Wang. The text describes how the Buddha explains that King Yama will eventually become fully enlightened as the bodhi-sattva Samantabhadra. Below ground, King Yama and the other kings performed good deeds for the benefit of the suffering individuals; they acted out of compassion.
Individuals move through each department in a fixed cycle of days, spending seven days in each of the first seven departments, 100 days in the eighth, one year in the ninth, and three years in the realm of the 10th king. After this period the individual is assigned a new place within the six realms of existence. Thus the 10 kings ruled over a transitional space in the individual’s journey from one existence to another. This medieval Chinese conception of purgatory was clearly correlated with ritual approaches to death.
In Mahayana Buddhism the 10 kings were also supplemented with the image of the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha. This figure became associated with hell and those suffering there. His bodhisattva vow in fact promised not to proceed to nirvana until all beings in hell had attained enlightenment. Kshitigarbha finally became the dominant deity figure in hell. Paintings often show the 10 kings arranged in a circle with the larger image of Kshitigarbha in the background.
Individual cultures took the idea of hell and purgatory in new directions. In Japan, for instance, the idea of a "riverbank of suffering" (Sai no kawara) developed. This probably had a real-world referent in a burial ground at the intersection of two rivers in Kyoto, a place referred to in sources from the ninth century c.e. The Sai no Kawara then became a kind of boundary point between the living and the dead. In Japanese Buddhist thought the Sai no Kawara was particularly a place of torture of children. They were forced to build stone mounds without ceasing, only to have them knocked down by the guards of hell. The cries of the children are said to disturb the parents who still reside in the world of the living. The parents then turn to the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha (in Japanese, Jizo), who visits the children and holds their hands. Kshitigarbha thus represents the face of compassion, an exalted being who softens the brutal impact of judgment.
