In the translation of Book of Dzyan, stanza 6, verse 1, Kuan-yin is distinguished from Kuan-shih-yin: \u201cBy the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge \u2014 Kwan-Yin \u2014 the \u201ctriple\u201d of Kwan-shai-Yin, residing in Kwan-yin-Tien, Fohat, the Breath of their Progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth, from the lower abyss, the illusive form of Sien-Tchang and the Seven Elements:*\u201d (The Secret Doctrine<\/i>, vol. 1, p. 32). Note that the spellings Kwan-Yin and Kwan-shai-Yin were adopted by Blavatsky from Samuel Beal\u2019s 1871 Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese<\/i>, before the Wade-Giles system of transcription for Chinese became standard, in which the spellings are Kuan-yin and Kuan-shih-yin (today the pinyin system has become standard, in which the spellings are Guanyin and Guanshiyin, although the Wade-Giles system is still used in many books and for many words). Then in a chapter titled, \u201cOn Kwan-Shi-Yin and Kwan-Yin\u201d (The Secret Doctrine<\/i>, vol. 1, pp. 470-473), Blavatsky further distinguished Kuan-yin from Kuan-shih-yin, concluding: \u201cTo close, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
As is well known, Kuan-yin and Kuan-shih-yin are Chinese translations of the name Avalokite\u015bvara, taken as Avalokita-svara. On Avalokite\u015bvara versus Avalokita-svara, this is another question for another time. The Chinese word kuan translates the Sanskrit word avalokita, \u201cseen,\u201d and the Chinese word yin translates the Sanskrit word svara, \u201csound.\u201d The Chinese word shih in the longer name, Kuan-shih-yin, means \u201cworld.\u201d Thus, Kuan-yin means \u201cPerceiver of sounds,\u201d and Kuan-shih-yin means \u201cPerceiver of the sounds of the world.\u201d The reason for the addition of the word shih to the name of this bodhisattva is obvious, to make clear what sounds are perceived; namely, the cries of the world. The names Kuan-yin and Kuan-shih-yin, then, refer to the same bodhisattva, being no different than Helena Blavatsky and Helena P. Blavatsky. These have been used interchangeably from the earliest translations of the Sanskrit Buddhist texts into Chinese, starting near the end of the second century C.E., right up to the present in China.<\/p>\n
No one doubts that the male bodhisattva Avalokite\u015bvara transformed into a female deity in China. This occurred around the beginning of the second millennium C.E., as can be traced in his\/her representations in art or iconography and in written texts. No one knows why or how this happened. About four theories for this have been proposed, and are described in what is now the standard work on this subject, Ch\u00fcn-fang Y\u00fc\u2019s 2001 Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokite\u015bvara<\/i>. However, it is not the case that the name Kuan-shih-yin was and is used for the male deity, while the name Kuan-yin was and is used for the female deity. They are both names of the same deity, whether first as a male, or later as a female. As stated in Ch\u00fcn-fang Y\u00fc\u2019s opening sentence of her Introduction, \u201cKuan-yin (Perceiver of Sounds), or Kuan-shih-yin (Perceiver of the World\u2019s Sounds) is the Chinese name for Avalokite\u015bvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who has been worshiped throughout the Buddhist world.\u201d Then in her chapter on Scriptural Sources (p. 36), \u201cKuan-yin and Kuan-shih-yin, therefore, were names used interchangeably in the earliest translations.\u201d The fact that the male and female forms or aspects of the deity are to be distinguished is not in question. There is, however, a significant error in the terms used by Blavatsky to make this distinction. Her use of the name Kuan-shih-yin for the male and Kuan-yin for the female is erroneous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the translation of Book of Dzyan, stanza 6, verse 1, Kuan-yin is distinguished from Kuan-shih-yin: \u201cBy the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge \u2014 Kwan-Yin \u2014 the \u201ctriple\u201d of Kwan-shai-Yin, residing in Kwan-yin-Tien, Fohat, the Breath of their Progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth, from the lower abyss, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,37,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avalokiteshvara","category-book-of-dzyan","category-kwan-yin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}