Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
    Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
    Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion

    By Stephen Levine and Ondrea Levine

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In his long career as a poet, Buddhist teacher, spiritual advisor, and writer, Stephen Levine has changed our understanding of death and dying. In Becoming Kuan Yin, Levine’s first new book in many years, he turns to the legend of Kuan Yin, the Bbodhistitva venerated by East Asian Buddhists for her compassion. 

    In Becoming Kuan Yin, Levine shares the tale of Miao Shan, born centuries ago to a  cruel king who wanted her to marry a wealthy but uncaring man. This is the story of how Miao Shan refused to follow the path her father had in mind and, instead, became Kuan Yin, the first acknowledged female Buddha who watches over the dying and those who work with them. 

    Levine weaves together story and practice and helps readers discover their own infinite capacity for mercy and compassion under difficult circumstances. This book will have resonance for Kuan Yin's millions of followers. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Wheel Weiser
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781609259198
    Becoming Kuan Yin: The Evolution of Compassion
    Author

    Stephen Levine

    Poet, dharma teacher, and companion to the dying and the bereaved, Stephen Levine embodied his own exhortation to “keep your heart open in hell.” Born in 1937 to a secular Jewish family, Stephen spent his adult life exploring, practicing, and sharing the traditions of the East, weaving a tapestry of seemingly disparate but ultimately harmonious elements of bhakti yoga (the Hindu path of devotion) and Vipassana (Buddhist mindfulness practice). He died in 2016 in the home he shared with his beloved wife and co-teacher, Ondrea, in the mountains of northern New Mexico. A longtime friend of iconic spiritual teacher Ram Dass, and of the pioneer of the conscious dying movement Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Stephen shifted the cultural conversation around death. By embracing both dying and grieving as opportunities for awakening, Stephen and Ondrea helped countless beings approach their own deaths as the ultimate spiritual experience and their bereaved loved ones to be blessed with transformation. Among Stephen’s many books, Who Dies?, Unattended Sorrow, and One Year to Live endure as classics and continue to serve as vital guides to those seeking support for navigating the mystery of the human condition. In their work with both the dying and the living, Stephen and Ondrea reclaimed the concept of “mercy” as an essential element in self-forgiveness, enabling people on a conscious path to leave this world unburdened by guilt, and to dispel the legacy of shame in the hearts of those left behind. These teachings, though simple, were revolutionary. Stephen’s book Becoming Kwan Yin draws on the Chinese Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion as an exemplar for this liberating practice. For several decades, Stephen and Ondrea lived in relative isolation in the high desert of rural New Mexico (where Ondrea continues to live), raising children and animals, in close connection with the land. Their solitary life in the wilderness made their outpouring of loving attention to the dying and the bereaved possible. One of Stephen’s lesser-known passions was his deep connection with animals, both domestic and wild. A consummate storyteller, Stephen conveyed his relationships with dogs and horses, his encounters with snakes and skunks, and his visitations by mockingbirds and hummingbirds with the artfulness of a bard and the insight of a Buddha.

    Read more from Stephen Levine

    Related to Becoming Kuan Yin

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      BOLT FROM The Blue

      May 12, 2020

      BOLT FROM The Blue
      5 min read

    • Article

      21st Century Samsara

      Jan 19, 2021

      21st Century Samsara
      5 min read

    • Article

      Invoking Bodhicitta

      Mar 8, 2022

      Invoking Bodhicitta
      2 min read

    • Article

      Why Meditation Isn’t Enough

      May 21, 2019

      IN THE TIBETAN tradition, the study of Buddhist philosophy is known as “learning and reflecting on the view.” Through a process of sustained inquiry, we can become free from all doubts about the true nature of reality as described by the Buddhist tea

      4 min read

    • Article

      Beginner’s Mind

      Mar 19, 2019

      WITH SO MANY lineages, practices, and unique terms, the world of Tibetan Buddhism can be confusing. Here is a short primer on the four main schools and some of their key practices. Gelugpa: Established in the fifteenth century, the Gelugpas are the n

      4 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Birth and Death

      Nov 19, 2019

      Beyond Birth and Death
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Journey to Where We Already Are

      Mar 7, 2023

      The Journey to Where We Already Are
      10 min read

    • Article

      Along Came a Tigress

      Aug 13, 2019

      Along Came a Tigress
      7 min read

    • Article

      Living My Vow

      Jan 19, 2021

      Living My Vow
      5 min read

    • Article

      To See Yourself Exactly As You Are

      Jul 20, 2021

      You can’t make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that, changes will flow naturally. You don’t have to force anything, struggle, or obey rules dictated to you by some

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Three Minds of Zen

      Mar 2, 2021

      The Three Minds of Zen
      8 min read

    • Article

      2. Don’t steal

      Jan 19, 2021

      2. Don’t steal
      2 min read

    • Article

      Mahaprajapati’s Daughters

      Nov 23, 2021

      Mahaprajapati’s Daughters
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Cloud Never Dies

      Mar 22, 2022

      A Cloud Never Dies
      12 min read

    • Article

      What A Good Horse You Are!

      Jan 24, 2023

      What A Good Horse You Are!
      4 min read

    • Article

      Bringing The Buddha To Life

      Mar 22, 2022

      I FIRST MET THICH NHAT HANH in 1987 at the Ojai foundation in California. I don’t think he noticed me much during the retreat, but as we were seeing him off, he looked directly at me and said, “Bring the good buddhadharma back to India. A way of prac

      1 min read

    • Article

      Can I Love This Too?

      May 21, 2019

      DRIVING WITH MY 82-YEAR-OLD mother the other day, I was tempted to leave her by the side of the road. Not my most noble thought, but she was laying into me about everything she thought was wrong with me and the world. Earlier I had intervened when sh

      2 min read

    • Article

      Enlightenment Is a Male Fantasy

      Nov 6, 2018

      Enlightenment Is a Male Fantasy
      7 min read

    • Article

      Why I Do Not Bow

      Jul 20, 2021

      Why I Do Not Bow
      3 min read

    • Article

      Chanting

      Jan 22, 2019

      Chanting
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Dying

      Feb 4, 2019

      The Art Of Dying
      7 min read

    • Article

      Can Meditation Actually Be Dangerous?

      Dec 7, 2021

      “HOW HAS VIPASSANA changed your life?” This is a standard question on the student intake form for a Vipassana course in the S. N. Goenka tradition. For years, after taking my first ten-day retreat in 2003, I used to write a paragraph-long answer desc

      11 min read

    • Article

      What Shambhala Book Has Changed Your Life?

      Jan 22, 2019

      Right view is the foundation of the eightfold path, and no book so clearly outlines what constitutes right view as What Makes You Not a Buddhist. Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse’s humorous and direct style subverted my expectations of an introductory book

      1 min read

    • Article

      You Are Already A Buddha

      Nov 22, 2022

      My first experiences learning to meditate were with my late father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. He was a revered meditation teacher, but he lived a very simple life, spending most of his time in a small hermitage on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley.

      7 min read

    • Article

      “Other People Are the Path”

      Mar 22, 2022

      SOON AFTER I WAS ORDAINED by Thay as a novice nun in 1999 I began to have difficulties with an elder sister. This nun had gone through a lot of suffering and could sometimes be harsh in her speech. This was quite painful for me, and I struggled with

      1 min read

    • Article

      Teachers You May Not Know But Should

      Nov 23, 2021

      Ven. Bhante Suhita Dharma taught through his good deeds. “EXPERIENCE IS the best teacher when it comes spiritual practice,” the late Ven. Bhante Suhita Dharma once said, reflecting on his own life. Born into the Jim Crow South, the racism he endured

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Becoming Kuan Yin

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Becoming Kuan Yin - Stephen Levine

      Chapter 1

      KUAN YIN AND THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD

      Namo Kuan Shih Yin Pusa. Hail to Kuan Yin bodhisattva.

      To know Kuan Yin we need to let go of all that is unloved, judged, forged from old mind clingings. She is the unconditional love beyond the conditioned mind.

      Some ancient force is called forth in surrendering hindrance after hindrance of our secret wretchedness and obvious suffering, to yield to the light of our Original Heart.

      Behind most Asian temple great Buddhas, there is a curtain where a small Kuan Yin figure and an incense burner rest, and a comfortable place to sit in the dharma-field connects the supplicants' heart to the edgeless presence of her loving-kindness. And behind it all, the Buddha-nature—the foundation of our potential for liberation and the liberating of all sentient beings from suffering.

      Opening the gate of Kuan Yin, we discover parts of ourselves almost too beautiful for words. The yearning for the direct experience of our luminescent nature.

      Most who recognize her name consider Kuan Yin a celestial bodhisattva in the later Buddhist pantheon, and perhaps even its muse. Some consider her an immortal in the Taoist tradition. She responds to many sacred names: Avalokiteshvara, Tara, Chenrize, Mother Mary, the angelic Bernice, Isis perhaps, Krishna of course, and generically (and even genetically) as the Beloved. The essence that reveals our undifferentiated Oneness, which is the unconditioned mind, is not other than unconditional love.

      Chapter 2

      BUDDHA COMES TO CHINA

      For many hundreds of years the quality of devotion in Buddhism was mostly reserved for a profound thankfulness for Buddhadharma and meditational practice. Indeed, devotion was otherwise reserved for a beloved teacher, but little else.

      When Siddhartha Gautama emerged as Buddha from beneath the bodhi tree, he said he taught only the cause and end of suffering, mostly through a precise mindfulness. To this day, this is the basis of every Buddhist tradition following.

      Decades after his original enlightenment and first teachings, Buddha's subsequent teachings, known as the Second Turning of the Wheel, expanded the already healthy heart of Buddhism. The extended teachings added various celestial representations of powerful states of mind, increasing people's familiarity with those same qualities mindfulness explored. These personifications of states of mind, afflictive and regenerative, were a skillful means to stay in the middle of the often strenuous path of self- and communal liberation. For instance, the image of Manjushri on the ready, sword raised to subdue ogres and wrathful deities, represents cutting through or liberating the hindrances to the heart. And Tara, Avalokiteshvara, and, of course, Kuan Yin remind us of loving-kindness and compassion, forgiveness and equanimity.

      This Mahayana school of Buddhism naturally employed the Maha Viharas, the great abodes of wisdom and service, such as mercy, gratitude, generosity, perseverance, devotion to practice, and sympathetic joy, which strengthen the liberation of the mind and the revelation of the heart.

      Spreading from northern India down the Silk Road to parts east and China, these Mahayana, or big raft teachings, expanded by the further insights and interpretations of bodhisattva adepts, became the activation of the compasionate teaching to serve, to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. The Mahayana school created some of Buddhism's most remarkable teachings, such as the Diamond Sutra, which came to be the foundation for a practice that acknowledged broader fields of awareness/reality, and deeper realms of reponsibility on which Buddhadharma was practiced. These included an intuitive mysticism, rights of empowerment, shamanic elements of healing practices, and the influence of mystery teachings, led by enlightened male and female masters that included but went beyond the earliest teachings.

      In China, Kuan Yin gave form to the formless through the open lotus of her heart, enabling her to become she who hears the cries of the world. She personifies the alleviation of suffering and became a major organizing factor in the widespread devotional element of Buddha's later teachings. The vow she took was, For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.

      Carried down the Silk Road into China, Kuan Yin became a profound spiritual and social influence that envisioned an ideal Pure Land, a perfect environment for the perfections of the practice's deepest work with increased concentration, illuminated by the heart, including an astral physical realm by some reckoning, a psychological reality certainly, and doubtlessly a matter of the heart, brought to the birth and deathbed.

      In the Lotus Sutra there is the first recognition that women are capable of enlightenment. In the earliest, Indian years of Buddhism, the bodhisattva of compassion was housed in a male body, represented as Avalokita (short for Avalokiteshvara). Thus, Kuan Yin embodies both the male and female aspects that unite the whole.

      Some say that Kuan Yin, having been male for centuries before being born in the Chinese collective consciousness in her present female form, created the perfect balance between yin and yang, anima and animus, which perfectly prepared her to be, as many believe, the Buddha of the present era. Kuan Yin is the first acknowledged female Buddha.

      It is said that a bodhisattva can manifest in whatever form those in need can most easily perceive, in whatever form the teachings in compassion might require, whether male or female, young or old, of this world or another, ghost, dragon, fish, animal, bird, or even burning bush. She came to me as Kuan Yin. Elevated to the status of goddess by many grateful millions, she is revered for the light she has brought and the sense of protection she has instilled in many. She is seen as a safe harbor for the heart. The Lotus Sutra says that anyone, even a lowly caste person, can become liberated before some old Brahman busy playing with his gold toe ring if her whole heart is turned toward the well-being of others and compassion is acted

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1