One compassionate bodhisattva became Guanyin in China and Kannon in Japan
Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist embodiment of great compassion, has at least 108 recognised forms. In India the figure is a lord who looks down on suffering beings; across East Asia the same bodhisattva is often worshipped as a motherly female figure, known as Guanyin, Kannon, Gwaneum or Quan Âm.
The Sanskrit name joins ava, meaning down, a form of the verb to look or observe, and īśvara, lord, fused by Sanskrit sound rules into one word. Other names include Lokeśvara, Lord of the World, and the Tibetan Chenrezig, which breaks down as eye, continuity and looking: one who always gazes on beings with compassion. The bodhisattva's mantra, Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ, is the most popular in Tibetan Buddhism.
Translation produced an interesting wrinkle. Early Chinese renderings, including that of the pilgrim Xuanzang, used Guānzìzài rather than today's Guanyin, and scholars once assumed early translators had simply misread the Sanskrit. The lord element itself is telling: īśvara was usually attached to Vishnu or Shiva as supreme ruler in Hindu traditions, so casting the bodhisattva as a lord points to strong Hindu influence, while the older sense of the name fits the Buddhist idea of a bodhisattva more closely.
Chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra, called the Universal Gate, is devoted to the figure, portraying a bodhisattva who hears the cries of living beings and works without rest to help anyone who calls. Devotion is ancient. The Chinese monk Faxian, visiting Mathura in India around 400 CE, saw monks making offerings to Avalokiteśvara, and in the seventh century Xuanzang described statues venerated by everyone from kings to monks to ordinary people.
Different schools developed their own versions. East Asian esoteric practice centres on Cundī, an eighteen-armed form, whose scripture was translated into Chinese three separate times around the turn of the eighth century. The Tiantai school defines six forms, each breaking obstacles in one of the six realms, from hell-beings to gods. One sutra even says Avalokiteśvara became a Buddha countless ages ago and remains a bodhisattva out of compassion.
Source: Avalokiteśvara
