Queen Khema listening to the Buddha's enlightening sermon. To cure her of vanity, he created a more beautiful woman then sped her through the aging process, which doubly shocked Khema allowing her to become detached and gain transcendent liberating-wisdom.
Heart of Wisdom: Khema or Kwan Yin?
Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)
As traditionally recounted, the Heart Sutra is set on Vulture Peak (one of seven hills that ring the city of Rajgir in India, which has never seen an actual vulture but has rocks that in certain light can look like vultures). This famous Buddhist city was the capital of Magadha, the country where the Buddha lived. This is where his beautiful chief female disciple foremost in wisdom, Khema, co-wife of King Bimbisara, was queen before becoming one of the earliest Buddhist nuns.
This later sutra created by the Mahayana tradition is, according to Mu Soeng (a scholar at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies trained as a monk for 11 years in Korean Zen Buddhism), the only text in the vast Perfection of Wisdom literature in which Avalokiteshvara ("the bodhisattva who looks down from on high") appears. Avalokita is a form of Kwan Yin -- and we speculate an echo of Khema, whose wisdom rivaled that of Sariputra, the Buddha's chief male disciple foremost in wisdom.
The appearance of Kwan Yin indicates that this sutra was a relatively late creation, a time when Mu Soeng points out, the sect (some might say cult) of Kwan Yin, the "bodhisattva of compassion," had become well established.
Kwan Yin has many names: Avalokita and Avalokiteshvara in India, Kuan Yin or Guanyin in China, Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan, Kwan Se Um in Korea, and Chenrezig in Tibet. She is first mentioned in the 24th chapter of Mahayana's Lotus Sutra that served as the basis for later Pure Land Buddhism's sutras.
In Sanskrit ava means "looking down" or "beholding," loka is "the world," lokita the "world's doings," ishvara is svara "sound." Mu Soeng concludes that she (although often also conceived of as male) is "the lord who beholds the doings of the phenomenal world and hears its cries with compassion."
This compassion leads her to help, and she is often called on. A common Indian motif to indicate this is showing a thousand arms (not literally 1,000 as it is often taken but rather "a large number") with an eye in each palm to skillfully offer help. In India this figure was male and became female as Mahayana Buddhism spread and developed in North and East Asia. Such was the division of masculine and feminine concepts, with compassion being decidedly feminine. Of course, both qualities and polarities are in each individual.
Mu Soeng is the author most recently of Trust In Mind: The Rebellion of Chinese Zen. He traces Mahayana Buddhism's evolution in medieval China using a Taoist model, which emphasizes harmony between the pole energies of yin and yang. The first is soft, yielding, receptive, and nurturing, the second hard, energetic, proactive, and unyielding. Kwan Yin (and Khema, too) is beloved for not only being very wise but for marrying that wisdom to compassion.
That balance was important to the later Mahayana Buddhism that saw original Buddhism as perhaps emphasizing wisdom too much. This extraordinary emphasis could distort the Buddha's teaching, which was always about compassion and nonharming (ahimsa). To make sure both aspects were developed, compassion was raised to being just as important as liberating wisdom. After all, ignorance is not the only problem in the world. Greed and hate are also sources of great suffering that can be corrected right away until mindfulness and enlightenment uproot ignorance.
The highest wisdom -- the factor that allows entrance into the gate of liberation without which such entrance is impossible -- is anatta, "not-self," called "emptiness." One is able to become a stream enterer, the first stage of enlightenment and liberation, because one has penetrated this profound teaching with insight. In brief, it means understanding that Five Conditions
although they comprise what we call the individual "being" are, in fact, devoid of an abiding self.
Because this is so profound and counterintuitive a truth, it is not debated or the subject of elaborate reasoning (although such debate and reasoning is given in Theravada Buddhism). It is to be realized.
The means of realization is practice. The practice in particular are the levels of zen (jhana, dhyana, ch'an, samten, seon, thien) serenity culminating in insight-meditation. The key is Dependent Origination, which is not a philosophy to explain existence but a practice to discover the origin of suffering.
The weak link in dependently-arisen phenomena -- particularly that of the psychophysical "being" -- is craving (tanha, desire, "thirst"). It is our means of escape.
The Heart Sutra is not so much about heart (compassion) if one reads carefully, but it is all about transcendent wisdom. The wise monk Sariputra, "Marshal of the Dharma," is schooled by the caring Kwan Yin/Khema. For there is no wisdom without compassion, only cunning. And compassion devoid of wisdom is feeble fawning. Both are necessary, preferably in equal measure.
Compassion fit much better with the folk heritage of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, (and Western) traditions that are traditionally about seeking help from religion not so much wisdom, as was emphasized in India.
If Sariputra represents the dry, scholastic approach decisive in early Buddhism, a wisdom (prajna, panna, vipassana) tradition, Khema and later Kwan Yin represent a balance. For one who sees "emptiness" (shunyata or the impersonal nature of phenomena), logic, debate, or psychology take a back seat to caring and relieving the suffering of others.
Of course, both Sariputra and Khema were very instrumental in helping the Buddha establish the Dharma in the world -- the ultimate compassion of actually establishing an enduring means to permanently lead people out of suffering. They were titular heads of the self-governing Bhikkhu and Bhikkuni Sanghas (Monk and Nun Monastic Orders).
What became of history's Khema?
Khema seems all but forgotten or reduced to a footnote in early Theravada Buddhism. But it is clear that in her day she was the equal of Sariputra. Such is the strength of ingrained patriarchy in Indian and other societies that even the Buddha could not fully overcome it.
But equality will not overthrown for patriarchy, so Mahayana (later Buddhism) resurrected the feminine ideal until Kwan Yin is almost all one hears about, far beating out any mention of the historical Buddha.
The parallel to Christianity is striking because women (the Marys, particularly the leader's wife Magdalene) played a pivotal role in the formation of the tradition, then were excluded from taking any credit (and condensed into a sort of catchall Biblical Mary), only to be resurrected in a Kwan Yin (Vir Gin) form that overshadows Christ and even God.
The largest religion in the world today is Catholicism. And the most important figure in it is the Mother Goddess in the guise of the Mother of God. Welcome back, Khema (possibly the original inspiration for Gnostic stories about an important "Mary" from Magdala/Magadha?)
This would just another in a string of astonishing Buddhist parallels from its currently more popular sister religion, Christianity.
Hard to find but a wonder to behold, Seokbulsa Temple is a [Buddhist] hermitage carved into rock. Massive boulders stretching 40m in height jut out from the mountainside to form a U-shaped enclave with three rock facings that is now a place of worship.
Hard to find but a wonder to behold, Seokbulsa Temple is a [Buddhist] hermitage carved into rock. Massive boulders stretching 40m in height jut out from the mountainside to form a U-shaped enclave with three rock facings that is now a place of worship.
