Guan Yin and Avalokitesvara

Buddhist religion as I know it as a child is about going t o Guan Yin （观音) temple and swiveled a few joss sticks around in the air in front of a statue. I have never heard of Prajnaparamita sutras or the tathagatagarbha or the lotus sutras. I suspect that most people who visit the temple don’t know that either. Or who is Avalokitesvara for that matter. Most Mahayana followers in Malaysia are no longer connected to the Mahayana buddhists that occupies the Bujang Valley and Kinta Valley during the early 6-7th century. The history that we remembered started in the 15th century. Even our National Museum I visited recently discounted the history before the 15th century as part of Malaysia’s history. While the Bujang and Kinta Valley mahayana tradition may have originated from the ancient kingdom of SriVijaya in Sumatra, the Guan Yin phenomena is from China.

Avalokitesvara was the original celestial bodhisatva mentioned in mahayana sutras. It was transformed into Guan Yin in China after some ‘evolution’. but physical appearance aside, it still serves similar function as the original Avalokitesvara. It is still the compassionate and merciful being that can grand wishes and help the suffering. Avalokitesvara was mentioned both in the Lotus Sutras and the Karandavyuha sutra. Unlike the Theravada tradition which was first written down in Pali language in Sri Langka, the early mahayana sutras are only found in Sanskrit.

The interesting thing about the name is the literal translation. Depending on how you split the word ‘Avalokitesvara’, we see different meaning. The word in Sanskrit means “the Lord who look down”. ‘Swara’ would mean “Lord”. However, ‘Iswara’ in sanskrit means ’sound’ as perhaps some scholars believed how it was translated to “yin” in chinese which also means ’sound’. ‘Guan’ in chinese means seeing or looking.

To date, there has been so many mahayana sutras written and added to the list after the death of Sakyamuni that only scholars doing religious studies would know all of them. For most mahayana followers in malaysia, I believe that they have only inherited the form and not the content of the real teaching. We just have to realise that going to visit Guan Yin temple regularly will not make you a buddhist. I stop calling myself a buddhist a long time ago. I still enjoy going to buddhist temples some times, not to burn joss stick of course. There is just this connectiveness about chinese and Buddhist temples that I can’t get rid of.