[Buddha-l] Is Guanyin Catholic?

[Jon Weaver]

After considerable searching, I excavated the book title (thank you Alibris):
The Divine Woman-Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T'ang Literature
by Edward H. Schafer, North Point Press, 1980.

Piya - thank you for the additional "good reads." 
I find the idea of "disembodied metta" very puzzling. 
Could you say more? I understand the need to desexualize 
or degender the concept of love, but emphasizing the mother-infant 
imagery would accomplish that. 

I recall that Buddhaghosa uses imagery of the mother-child relationship
as exemplars of the 4 immeasurables. It is interesting that it wasn't literally expressed
earlier than Guanyin. Is mother-child imagery associated with metta in the Pali Canon?

Metta, JON

Message: 7
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:38:24 +0800
From: "Piya Tan" <dharmafarer at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Is Guanyin Catholic?
To: "Buddhist discussion forum" <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Message-ID:
 <f59077cc0609300138x3b369d93p9ee57b93b68e17be at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Jon,

Whatever it may be, I think that the Bodhisattva Guanyin hypostasizes 
all
that is good in (including whatever good is missing from) Chinese 
society.
Understandably Guanyin is androgynous or better "suprasexual" as 
compassion
is beyond sexuality. Perhaps one could say that Guanyin is a sort of
"disembodied metta" (to use a term from Ajahn Brahm's latest book,
"Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond" [p71].

A good read in this connection is this:

(2)   *Barbara E Reed*. "The gender symbolism of Kuan-yin Bodhisattva." 
In
José Ignacio Cabezón (ed), *Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender,* Albany, 
NY:
State Univ of New York, 1992:159-180 (ch 7).

Metta,

Piya
  
 			
---------------------------------
Get your own web address for just $1.99/1st yr. We'll help. Yahoo! Small Business.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/private/buddha-l/attachments/20061002/5f40de78/attachment.html