Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion

One morning at a pagoda, a small child held tight to their mother's hand, looked up at the tall statue in the main hall and asked softly, "Why does Mother have so many hands?" From the statue's two shoulders, arms spread out in ring after ring. Each open hand had a small eye in the middle of its palm. The mother smiled, drew her child down onto a mat and began to tell a story.

That statue was Mother Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. Her full name is Bồ Tát Quán Thế Âm.

That name holds a whole vow. In Sanskrit the bodhisattva is called Avalokiteshvara, usually understood as the compassionate One who looks down on the world. In Sino-Vietnamese, the name became Quán Thế Âm. Quán means to observe, to look deeply. Thế is the world we live in. Âm is a cry. Put together, it names the bodhisattva who sits in stillness and hears every cry of suffering in the whole world.

In any single moment, so many cries rise up across the face of the earth. A mother worries about her child. Someone at sea meets huge waves. A sick person lies awake through the night. The vow of Quan Âm is to hear every one of those cries, and to leave no one out.

This is why the statue of Mother Quan Âm has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. It is among her most familiar forms, called Thiên Thủ Thiên Nhãn, the Thousand Hands and Thousand Eyes. The thousand eyes are there to see suffering everywhere at the same moment. The thousand hands are there to reach out and help everywhere at the same moment. Many of the hands hold different things, and each of them is a way of helping the world. One hand holds a willow branch, another a vase of cool water. Some hands simply lie open, ready to lift someone up.

People tell of her in many forms. There is Bạch Y Quan Âm, wrapped in a pure white robe. There is Quan Âm Tống Tử, holding a baby in her arms. Every form is gentle and kind, as if she were bending down to look toward people.

Then the mother in the pagoda told her child an old story. It was a folk legend handed down through the years, she said, not a scripture. Still, the people of Vietnam love it dearly and never tire of telling it.

Long ago there lived a princess named Diệu Thiện, known in Chinese as Miao Shan. She was the youngest daughter of a king, and she lived among golden palaces and halls of jade. When she came of age, her father wanted to marry her off, so that the family line and its wealth would carry on. But she begged again and again to become a nun, to learn how to love others and ease their suffering. The king was furious and blocked her path in every way he could. Even so, she left her silks behind and went alone to the pure quiet of the mountains to practice.

Many years later, the king fell gravely ill, and no physician could cure him. People said that only the eyes and hands of someone who gave them freely could save him. When she heard this, Princess Diệu Thiện did not hesitate for a moment. Of her own will, she gave her eyes and her hands to save the father who had once stood in her way.

And then a wonder happened. Her compassion was so great that it turned her into the Bodhisattva Quan Âm, with a thousand eyes and a thousand hands. It was as if heaven and earth wanted to say that whoever dares to give their own eyes and hands for another will be given a thousand eyes and a thousand hands in return, to help all living beings. Here the mother paused for a moment, so that her child could look up at the hands on the statue.

Then the child asked why people called her Mother. The mother went on. In the early Buddhist scriptures of India, Avalokiteshvara was male. But as the stories of this bodhisattva traveled through China and on to Vietnam, people gradually came to worship the figure in the form of a mother. Perhaps that is because, in Vietnamese hearts, nothing feels closer to shelter and protection than the figure of a mother. So the people of Vietnam call her by one very warm word. Mẹ, which means Mother.

The Phổ Môn Sutra is part of the Lotus Sutra. It says that Quan Âm does not appear to everyone in the same form. To someone who needs a child, she appears as a child. She comes in the form each person needs most, so that no one ever feels alone.

That is why, across Vietnam, almost every pagoda has a statue of Mother Quan Âm. In the pagoda courtyard, under a tree, or standing quietly in the middle of a lotus pond, she always bows her head and looks down. And every morning and every evening, the words of the Phổ Môn Sutra rise again through the incense smoke, and they remind people of compassion.

The story in the pagoda was over. The child looked up at the statue once more, and this time for a long while. The thousand hands were still spread open gently, and the thousand eyes still looked toward people. Wherever in this world a cry of suffering still rises, people believe Mother Quan Âm is there, still listening.