Description
In Mahayana Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara or Avalokiteshvara is a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. Avalokitesvara is probably the bodhisattva most widely revered among Buddhists. In Vajrayana Buddhism, Avalokitesvara is also known as Padmapani, the Lotus Holder. The precise origins of religious practices associated with Avalokitesvara are unclear. Some Western scholars have proposed that the concept of Avalokitesvara, along with many other supernatural beings in Buddhism, was based on a Hindu deity that Mahayana Buddhists absorbed into their teachings. The word avalokita means "seeing" or "gazing," and īśvara means "lord" in Sanskrit. Śvara is also a nickname for the Hindu god Shiva, who may also have been an inspiration for Avalokitesvara in art. According to Mahayana doctrine, Avalokitesvara is a being who hears all the prayers of people in trouble and postpones his own Buddhahood until he has helped every person on earth attain Enlightenment. Sutras associated with Avalokitesvara include the Lotus Sutra, particularly its 25th chapter, which is sometimes referred to as the Avalokitesvara Sutra. Manuscripts from Dunhuang indicate that Avalokiteśvara (Chenrezig in Tibetan) already played an important role in Tibet in transforming pre-Buddhist funeral rites into Buddhist rituals. One of these texts, dating from the ninth century, already contains the mantra dedicated to him, Om mani padme hum. The truly great devotion to Avalokiteśvara began during the period of the second spread of Buddhism in Tibet, starting in the early eleventh century. Avalokiteśvara was then repositioned in the pantheon with new texts and forms. The text of the Mani Kabum played a crucial role in this process. In the classical Tibetan tradition, this text was written in the seventh century by Songtsen Gampo and subsequently hidden as a terma document. In fact, and strictly historically, the text of the Mani Kabum was written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with some important additions from the fourteenth century. In Tibetan Buddhism, Karma Pakshi (1204-1283), the second in the lineage of the karmapas, was the first to be considered an emanation of Avalokiteśvara. However, the Dalai Lama's position as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara is more well-known. For many devout Tibetans, the belief that the Dalai Lama is the emanation of Avalokitesvara is as fundamental as the belief that Jesus is the son of God is for an orthodox Christian. Yet, this emanationist view was only formulated in the seventeenth century by the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617-1682). He positioned Avalokitesvara not only as the bodhisattva of compassion, but especially—and unlike the Karmapa—retroactively also as the protector of Tibet and the central figure in Tibetan history. He connected this notion to a lineage in which the three great Dharma kings of Tibet (Tri Songtsen Gampo, Tri Songdetsen, and Tri Ralpachen), who are considered responsible for introducing Buddhism to Tibet, also became incarnations of Chenrezig, as did the epic hero Gāsar from the Epic of King Gāsar. On the site of an earlier fortress from the seventh century, the Fifth Dalai Lama had a new palace built, which he named the Potala, after Potolaka, the name for the mythical palace of Avalokiteśvara. In this way, the Dalai Lama institution became the human form of the bodhisattva/protector of Tibet, and a connection was established between the Dalai Lamas and Tibet's prehistoric past.
