When it comes to Guanyin Bodhisattva, I think the first thing that comes to mind is that the female bodhisattva in the cartoon "Journey to the West" that we watched when we were children is well known to us because of the Tang monks, and on the way to the Western Heavens, many disasters have the help of Guanyin Bodhisattva, and the four masters and apprentices can successfully pass the pass and continue to travel west.
After all, Wu Cheng'en's "Journey to the West" has some of the author's hopes, so the content in it has some legendary demons and ghosts, and as for whether Guanyin is as described in the Journey to the West, we are worth examining.
Stills from the old version of Journey to the West
For the first ancient book that mentions Guanyin Bodhisattva, some say that it is the early Mahayana Buddhist classic "Lotus Sutra", but the earliest book in China to mention Guanyin should be the "Religious Culture Series", which records that "in the fourth year of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (409), Guo Yi of Taiyuan was imprisoned, thinking of Guanyin, dreaming of seeing the bodhisattva, so he was pardoned, and after he was released from prison, he created a statue to set up a fine house", which is the first time that Guanyin Bodhisattva appeared in literature.
In Gansu Yongjing Bingling Temple, West Qin Jianhong's 169th cave, Datong Yungang 11th cave East Wall Taihe eleventh year also have Guanyin audio-visual.
From the "Religious Culture Series", we translated it into modern Chinese, and it is also very easy to understand its meaning. It was Guo Yi of Taiyuan in the fourth year of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, who was released from prison because he recited Guanyin in the center of the prison, and because he remembered guanyin's redemption, he made a temple for his statue to worship. This story is inevitably a bit legendary, if people commit crimes and recite Guanyin Bodhisattva, they can get salvation, then where in ancient times there are so many unjust, false and wrong cases, bad people can also run amok and not be punished.
From the records in the "Religious Culture Series", we can see that in people's hearts, Avalokiteshvara is a savior who can purify all sentient beings, just like Jesus in the West, and people can be forgiven by praying to Jesus for repentance.
In Buddhism, Guanyin is one of the main bodhisattvas where Amitabha Buddha sits, ranking the same as the Great Trend Bodhisattva, serving as the attendant Buddhas of the Western masters, and their three Buddhas are what we commonly call the "Three Saints". The Three Saints here are not the Three Qings we see in Journey to the West, the Three Qings described in the Journey to the West are the Taoist Three Qings, namely Yuqing, Shangqing, and Taiqing.
Statue of Guanyin
In Buddhism, the image of Guanyin is kind and dignified, holding a jade vase (that is, the bottle containing wicker in the Journey to the West, which saved the Ginseng Tree of the Five Zhuang Guandi Immortal Town Yuan DaXian), with a willow sticking obliquely inside. She has supreme wisdom and cultivates great divine powers, and her main duty is to purify all sentient beings. Whenever someone encounters danger, just need to recite her title, she will be immediately rescued by her spell, and she can go all over the world to listen to the sufferings of the common people, which is what we call Guanyin.
Guanyin in Taoism is one of the Twelve Golden Immortals of the Taoism, and her ashram is located in Luojia Cave, and her Dao number is Cihang Daoren. At that time, it coincided with the Great War of the Gods, and there were Western saints who came to help, and happened to meet her to show her great might, thinking that she was very qualified, so she was transformed into the West, and she also completed the identity transformation from Taoism to Buddhism, and became the Guanyin master in Buddhism in one fell swoop, and also changed from a male body to a daughter, so the Guanyin Bodhisattvas we see today all appear in the role of women.
In fact, whether Guanyin is a daughter or a boy, we don't care, after all, it is a god, and what you want to become is what you want, this is caused by the mana of God. Whether Guanyin is a Buddhist or Taoist person does not hinder people's belief in her in our traditional Chinese culture.
It is said that in ancient times, a strong man worked for the head of a landlord, and he earned several copper coins to supplement the family by working hard in the landlord's house every day. The man was an atheist who believed that there was no God in the world, otherwise why did he not fulfill every prayer to God? Their own lives are still so difficult, and the landlords do nothing but enjoy the fruits of their labor at the bottom!
One day he came out of the landlord's house after finishing his work, the hour was not early, it was already dark, and he was walking alone on the way home. Today he was in a bad mood, and he was reprimanded by the landlord for no reason, and the landlord did not even reward him with dinner. He was breathing heavily, and his mood was even worse.
All the way home with the wind, when he was about to reach his village, he found how there was a statue of Guanyin at the entrance of the village, and he saw it through the moonlight. Thinking that these gods were just eating the offerings of the world every day, but regardless of the sufferings of the world, the strong man was more and more angry the more he wanted, kicked the statue of Guanyin to the ground, and continued to rush home.
When I entered the village and arrived at home, I looked at my daughter-in-law and children, and I also had a sad face. The family is surrounded by walls, and the thin field reclaimed is not enough to feed a family of five, all relying on their own landlord's family to earn some spare money to survive, and sometimes they have to rely on some wild vegetables to survive.
The wife saw her husband returning from work and quickly prepared hot water for the man to wash. The strong man looked at his wife and said busily: He has not yet eaten dinner, first get himself some food to fill his stomach, do an afternoon's work and rush all the way home, his stomach has long been empty. The wife didn't say anything, and quickly went to the kitchen, adding water to the pot for her husband to get a mouthful of batter to eat.
The wife went to cook, and the strong man was in the house with the child, but before the wife could finish the meal, the strong man was already in the house with a stomachache and sweating. The children, seeing that their father was in such pain, hurried to the kitchen and called their mother. The wife came into the house to look at her husband who was rolling in pain on the kang, and she panicked and hurried to her husband to ask, what was going on, how could this happen? Is it eating a bad stomach and eating something unclean.
After some inquiry, the husband said that he was no different from what he ate yesterday, and today he did not know how to make the landlord unhappy, and he actually did not let himself eat there for dinner. Seeing that her husband's abdominal pain was like a hanging, the wife quickly took the little pain-relieving herbs left at home to boil, hoping to alleviate her husband's pain.
However, after the husband ate the herbs, there was still no relief for half an hour, and it hurt even more. The wife quickly got her husband to the board and pulled her husband with the child, planning to pull her husband to the medicine shop to see the doctor. The family had just arrived at the entrance of the village, and the husband squinted at the statue of Guanyin that had been kicked down by himself, so that his wife quickly stopped the car, ran home to get incense candles, and brought all the good things that could be eaten at home.
The wife did not know, so she asked why, the husband endured great pain, let her not ask, quickly do as she wanted, the child and herself will stay at the mouth of the village to wait for her to return. The wife is a country woman working liso, since the husband does not let her ask, she did not continue to ask, pulled her leg and ran home, to get what her husband wanted, the speed is also very fast, less than a burning time to take the husband's wanted things.
With the help of his wife, the strong man got out of the flatbed cart with great pain, covered his stomach and moved to the guanyin statue step by step, straightened the guanyin statue with all his strength, and asked his wife to put the incense candles and food in front of the Guanyin statue. The strong man took out a flint stone from his arms and lit the incense candle, and bowed to Guanyin Niangniang's devout prostration, and kept chanting in his mouth: The disciple is guilty, I hope that Guanyin Niangniang will not be angry with the disciple, the disciple should bow to you sincerely, and ask Guanyin to forgive the disciple's unreasonableness. After speaking, the strong man prostrated his head three times at the Statue of Guanyin.
In less than a moment or three, the strong man's stomach no longer cramped, the wife looked at her husband's behavior strangely, asked him what he was doing, the strong man only said that in the future, when he saw Guanyin Niangniang, he would bow down religiously and well, and then pulled a few children home with a flat cart.
Xiaobian is a materialist, for the story of what happened to the strong man, personally believe that it is not the punishment of Guanyin, it should be that this strong man did an afternoon of work and then did not eat dinner, all the way home plus a bad mood a stomach gas, so it caused intestinal colic. Ancient herbs and our modern Chinese medicine after extraction and boiling must be a lot worse in efficacy, so the strong man after eating medicine plus the slow absorption of the body, the slow response to the medicinal effect, so the time of intestinal colic pain is relatively long, just after he prayed to Guanyin, the medicinal effect played a role, so his intestinal colic is also good.
The editor has a saying: The ancients believed in gods, which is actually a kind of spiritual sustenance. After all, in feudal society, people lived in difficulty, poor conditions, and many things could not be done by manpower, so they hoped that the gods could come down to help themselves. And in such a society, there is no entertainment program that can regulate people's mood, and people always want to relieve their mental pressure and spiritual needs through their prayers to the gods.