Guanyin Bodhisattva

Master Sheng-yen’s Accounts of Guanyin Bodhisattva’s Responses and Teachings of Guanyin Bodhisattva Dharma Gates:
A Discourse that Turns “Mysterious Encounters” into Vows of Compassion Resonating with Śūnyatā

The various dharma gates of mindfulness of Guanyin Bodhisattva is one major set of practice method in Master Sheng-yen’s system of meditation. The significance of Guanyin Dharma Gates is as significant as Master Sheng-yen’s other major chan methods such as silent illumination默照and huatou話頭. In Master Sheng-yen’s teaching of Guanyin Bodhisattva Dharma Gates, he listed seven different methods related to Guanyin. In this book and Master Sheng-yen’s many other books, Master Sheng-yen’s accounts of Guanyin’s responses to his practices were recorded. In this paper, I will try to answer two questions: how did Master Sheng-yen’s responsive experiences serve as the foundation of his systematic Guanyin Bodhisattva Dharma Gates? Secondly, how did Master Sheng-yen apply these dharma gates to his daily lives?
Another purpose of this paper is to determine the significance of Master Sheng-yen’s Guanyin Dharma Gates and Guanyinresponse narration in the textual context of traditional Guanyin responsive stories. In fact, this paper will discuss if Buddhist responsive narrations really fit into the genre described as zhiguai, “strange writing” or “accounts of anomalies” in traditional Chinese literature. Accounts of Guanyin responsive stories are traditionally categorized as a type of “accounts of anomalies” because it was thought of as strange happenings beyond ordinary people’s regular experiences. However, when we take into consideration of the purpose of Master Sheng-yen’s Guanyin Dharma Gates, Master Sheng-yen’s actually aims for the strengthening or reoccurrence of Guanyin Bodhisattva response experiences. This underlying purpose is the total opposite of those of the zhiguai accounts which intended to stress “anomalies.” The purpose of Guanyin Dharma Gate is exactly to turn an unfamiliar religious experience into familiar experience that the practitioners hope to repeat and operate at every moment.
Master Sheng-yen’s Guanyin responsive accounts has several unique features such as responses cover experiences happening throughout his entire religious career, he recorded communal response experiences as well as his individual responsive experiences. Furthermore, Master Sheng-yen’s accounts of Guanyin responses stress not only Guanyin’s saving power but also his spiritual path of learning from the compassion and altruism of Guanyin Bodhisattva. Master Sheng-yen’s Guanyin response discourses, as well as his systematic Guanyin Dharma Gates, will not only redefine the nature of Guanyin responsive accounts, but also will provide a glimpse of the spiritual depth of the traditional Guanyin response accounts that appeared in Chinese literary landscape since the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

Key words: Guanyin responses, Guanyin Dharma Gates, Master Sheng-yen, Records of Responses, Heart Sūtra

This article deals with the process of adaptation of Chinese precious scrolls (baojuan) vernacular narratives in Vietnam in the period from the 18th to the early 20th centuries , with the example of the Princess Miaoshan story, which served the popular hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyin (V. Quan Âm). This story was featured in several baojuan texts of the 15th-19th centuries that were transmitted from China to Vietnam in the 18th and 19th centuries. Several Vietnamese adaptations, both in Hán văn and in the indigenous language, transcribed in Nôm characters, were circulated in the printed form. We have collected these adaptations and undertaken a comparative study of the texts, demonstrating the complex nature of the literary exchange between vernacular literature with religious themes in Vietnam and China. We examine the place of these adaptations in traditional Vietnamese culture and demonstrate the differences in the social background of the original Chinese baojuan and their Vietnamese adaptations.

This article deals with the process of adaptation of Chinese precious scrolls (baojuan) vernacular narratives in Vietnam in the period from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, with the example of the Princess Miaoshan story, which served the popular hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyin (V. Quan Âm). This story was featured in several baojuan texts of the 15th-19th centuries that were transmitted from China to Vietnam in the 18th and 19th centuries. Several Vietnamese adaptations, both in Hán văn and in the indigenous language, transcribed in Nôm characters, were circulated in the printed form. We have collected these adaptations and undertaken a comparative study of the texts, demonstrating the complex nature of the literary exchange between vernacular literature with religious themes in Vietnam and China. We examine the place of these adaptations in traditional Vietnamese culture and demonstrate the differences in the social background of the original Chinese baojuan and their Viet...

This article deals with the process of adaptation of Chinese precious scrolls (baojuan) vernacular narratives in Vietnam in the period from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, with the example of the Princess Miaoshan story, which served the popular hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyin (V. Quan Âm). This story was featured in several baojuan texts of the 15th-19th centuries that were transmitted from China to Vietnam in the 18th and 19th centuries. Several Vietnamese adaptations, both in Hán văn and in the indigenous language, transcribed in Nôm characters, were circulated in the printed form. We have collected these adaptations and undertaken a comparative study of the texts, demonstrating the complex nature of the literary exchange between vernacular literature with religious themes in Vietnam and China. We examine the place of these adaptations in traditional Vietnamese culture and demonstrate the differences in the social background of the original Chinese baojuan and their Viet...

This article deals with the process of adaptation of Chinese precious scrolls (baojuan) vernacular narratives in Vietnam in the period from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, with the example of the Princess Miaoshan story, which served the popular hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyin (V. Quan Âm). This story was featured in several baojuan texts of the 15th-19th centuries that were transmitted from China to Vietnam in the 18th and 19th centuries. Several Vietnamese adaptations, both in Hán văn and in the indigenous language, transcribed in Nôm characters, were circulated in the printed form. We have collected these adaptations and undertaken a comparative study of the texts, demonstrating the complex nature of the literary exchange between vernacular literature with religious themes in Vietnam and China. We examine the place of these adaptations in traditional Vietnamese culture and demonstrate the differences in the social background of the original Chinese baojuan and their Viet...