The Bodhisattva Guanyin and the Virgin Mary

Abstract

One of my early childhood memories is late afternoon sunlight filtering through blue and red colored windows of a small church in Normandy, bathing statue of a black madonna and child in a mystical light. Elderly French women kneel in church benches reciting rosary: . .. Holy pray for us poor sinners, now and at hour of our death. ... Candles light a wall adorned with clutches, photographs, and countless tablets reading, has helped, Thank you Mary, child is healed, and so on. I kneel on a bench beside my father, who likes to join afternoon rosary almost every day during our summer vacation in this small Norman town. For my first Holy Communion, I was given a reprint of painting by Italian master Filippo Lippi Our Lady Adoring Child. It was hung over my bed, and I would go to sleep and wake up again feeling protected by Mary's presence. In my Catholic primary school, I was taught that month of May is dedicated to and I would happily collect first spring flowers and bring them to Mary in my room. My first encounter with Guanyin was very different from my intimate childhood experiences with Mary. At that time, I had just graduated from high school and was in Taiwan, studying Chinese language. One day a friend took me to a small Ch'an hermitage in mountains and introduced me to master there. I was taken to a small room with an altar on which was seated a female figure, clad in a white garment. When master and my friend burned incense, bowed in front of figure, and asked me to do same, I remarked intelligently, But in my book on Ch'an I learned that you do not set up images or worship idols. The master replied, smiling, is not an idol; this is you. This answer confused and scared me since at that time I had no idea what master was talking about. This paper attempts a comparison between Bodhisattva Guanyin and Virgin two figures that are of utmost importance for popular piety in Buddhist and Christian traditions, respectively. The fact that scholars of Chinese religion have called Guanyin the Buddhist Madonna and discovery of Maria-Kannon icons, secret objects of worship used by Japanese