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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Any Jewelry, post: 230036, member: 2844&quot;]You&#039;re right of course. But I didn&#039;t really want to go into the whole Avalokiteshvara origin, and the fact that it is not even a God/Goddess, but a Bodhisattva, an aspect of the Buddha essence. When I have done before, some Chinese people got very upset. In a way they are right, because Guanyin is an amalgamation of Avalokiteshvara and a pre-Buddhist local Chinese Goddess, which also accounts for the many Guanyin legends.</p><p>Buddhism in the strictest, widespread, sense has no concept of God, let alone multiple Gods. That is the whole point of Buddhism. Aspects, by the way, have no gender, but can be explained or represented to the public as being more feminine or more masculine. This is, however, never the true essence of an aspect.</p><p>As the teaching traveled, it got adapted to local traditions, local beliefs were incorporated. And strangely, the concept of God, sometimes multiple Gods/Goddesses, was introduced into a non-theist philosophy. Again, I am not going to go into this further, it is a minefield. But since you brought it up, as a theologian I did want to explain it a little bit.</p><p>So, not to tread on sensitive feet, with popular depictions of Guanyin, like this one, I tend to stick with the popular story.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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