Mother Mary And Buddhism
Mother Mary is largely unknown in the Buddhist world, the only exception perhaps being Maria Kannon. The latter is a hybrid of Mother Mary and the Bodhisattva of love and compassion whom the Japanese call Kannon, the Chinese Kuan Yin, the Tibetans Chenresig and the Indians Avalokiteshvara. In Indo-Tibetan Buddhism this bodhisattva is male, but in 8th-10th century Sino-Japanese Buddhism it gradually became female[1], at least in appearance.
This process was greatly helped along by the legend of the 6th century Princess Miao Shan. This young woman dared to reject her father’s marriage plans for her, because she wanted nothing more than to live as a Buddhist nun and dedicate herself completely to enlightenment. Angered by her disobedience, the abusive king plotted to kill her, but instead of succeeding, he fell deadly ill himself. Did she say: “He had it coming!”? Oh no! Rather, Miao Shan offered her arms and eyes for his healing. This act of extreme generosity transformed the princess into the thousand armed and eyed Kuan Yin and the male bodhisattva into a female form.[2]
A Hong Kong Chinese Buddhist woman told me that the Chinese don't actually consider Kuan Yin to have a female but a male identity underneath the female form. Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay in their book "Kuan Yin: Myths and Prophecies of the Chinese Goddess of Compassion" trace the history of the male bodhisattva of Buddhist scriptures to the female goddess of Chinese and Japanese lay people. They confirm that those who deal with sutras (Buddhist holy texts), i.e. monastics and educated lay people, know that Kuan Yin is male in the scriptures. They explain his apparent sex change with various legends and some claim that the bodhisattva will turn male again when s/he enters nirvana. They also report that the Japanese aren’t nearly as embarrassed by their goddess’s sex change as many Chinese seem to be.[3]
To the less educated, Kuan Yin is what she looks like: a goddess of compassion. As such she is loved not only by Buddhists but also by Shintoists and Taoists.[4] When people need motherly love and help, they don’t always ask to see religious passports. The same is true for Mary. In several countries she is sought out in her holy shrines by Christians and Muslims. E.g. in the 11th century monastery of Kykkos on Cyprus, in the cathedral of the Black Madonna of Algiers, and in the Holy House of Mary in Ephesus. The human need for a divine mother is so strong that people will adopt other religions’ goddesses as their own divine mother.
Because Mother Mary and Kannon have so much in common, persecuted Japanese Christians of past centuries secretly worshipped Jesus and Mary in the form of Maria-Kannon with child.
Maria Reis-Habito, wife of Ruben Habito, the founder of a Christian-Buddhist Zen Center in Dallas, Texas called "Maria-Kannon", writes: “Because of Guanyin’s promise in the Lotus Sutra to grant a healthy male child to those who implore his/her name, the boshisattva was especially worshipped by women, whose existence depended on their ability to produce a male heir.”[5]
Like Mother Mary, Kannon is an expression of the feminine aspect of the divine, a personification of love and compassion, a savior in calamity on land and on the sea, a vanquisher of evil, and a miracle worker. Maria Reis-Habito writes: “The power of intercession that Mary and Guanyin share, springs from the fact that they equally participate in the real of the human and in that of the divine. As Mater Dolorosa, Mary has shared all the struggles, fears, and sufferings of a human mother, and as queen of heaven she is the single most important spokeswoman on behalf of those who appeal for her help. Equally, the Surangama Sutra (T. no. 945) explains Guanyin’s “two unsurpassed merits” by the fact that the bodhisattva fully shares in the enlightenment and compassion of all the buddhas above and in the plea for compassion of all sentient beings below.”
Reis-Habito also tells of ferocious images of KuanYin subjugating demons,[6] comparable to Our Lady of all Graces, who is portrayed standing on the snake/Satan. The latter is in reference to Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Catholics focus on Mary as the offspring that bruises the head of Satan, protestants on Jesus.
Even when subduing Evil, these divine, protective mothers appear to their devotees as lovely, gentle ladies of heavenly beauty, sometimes exuding the scent of sweet flowers.
Much like the Virgin Mary, the Chinese Kuan Yin is said to have lived a human life of extreme self-sacrifice and holiness before she ascended into heaven and became a celestial Goddess of Mercy and Compassion. Since her ascension she has been appearing as “a woman in white” to those in need of help. Her devotees respond to her loving care by honoring her on her birthday and coming in pilgrimage to her holy places on mountains, in caves, and in temples. Here is an account of what may happen there: “Huang Kuei-nien and some companions undertook the pilgrimage to P’u-t’o Sha. They went to the Cave of Tidal Sounds and prayed with great devotion, chanting the name of Kuan Yin. Suddenly they saw a brilliant light, and Kuan Yin appeared, sitting on a rock above the cave. So moved was Huang that he vowed to dedicate his life to studying the Buddhist scriptures, eating only a vegetarian diet, and refraining from killing.”[7] All this sounds totally Marian to me.
The Virgin Mary is a bit more earthy than Kuan Yin, but both Mothers nourish and heal their children. Mary often with milk from her breasts, Kuan Yin with “sweet dew” from her finger tips.
Some trace the striking similarities between Mary and especially the White Clad Kuan Yin back to the historical influence of Christians in China. Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay tell the story of Nestorian Christians coming to China in the early 600’s.[8] Nestorius was a deposed Archbishop of Constantinople who died around 450 C.E. It is ironic that part of his heresy consisted of refusing to call Mary the "Mother of God" and yet his influence in China helped elevate Kuan Yin to a quasi-divine status. God/dess works in mysterious ways indeed! The Nestorians did venerate the Mother of Jesus (just not as the "Mother of God") and imported images of Madonnas all over Persia, Arabia, along the Silk Road, into Mongolia, China, Tibet, and India. At the time the Chinese were longing for the divine feminine, and Chinese Buddhism needed someone who could compete with the powerful Taoist goddesses. So the Madonna with child struck a cord and merged with Kuan Yin, the one women prayed to for babies, baby boys to be precise. Hence Kuan Yin as the child giver came to be depicted with a baby boy either in her arms or beside her.
Child giving Kuan Yin with baby boy
Kuan Yin with Child
Loving Mother Kuan Yin
Maria Kannon
In the photos above we can trace the development from Kuan Yin to Maria Kannon and from a relatively detached female bodhisattva who delivers babies to others, to a “loving Mother” (Jibo Kannon) as the Japanese call Kuan Yin when she holds a baby close in her arms. Other forms of Kannon reminiscent of Mary are called Koyasu Kannon (child giving and rearing) and Juntei Kannon (pure one). For great photos and more information click on Mark Schumacher’s article "Virgin Mary & Kannon, Two Merciful Mothers" He says that one can sometimes tell a Maria Kannon from a loving mother Kuan Yin statue when a Christian cross was hidden somewhere on the work. But often it is up to the observer whether s/he sees a statue as a representation of Mary or Kannon. E.g. the Kuan Yin in photo 3 looks like a Chinese Virgin Mary to me.
Ever since the 14th century Maria Kannon and loving mother Kuan Yin have become almost indistinguishable. This development began when Catholicism finally made it to China (7 centuries after the Nestorians), bringing with it white porcelain Madonnas. Chinese artisans immediately imitated these and mass produced white clad Kuan Yins. This is remarkable because in China white is traditionally the color of death. Nonetheless, through Mary and Kuan Yin it came to be accepted also as a symbol of purity. To this day White Clad Kuan Yin is the most popular deity of China.[9]
Both in Europe and in Asia there was some hesitation about worshipping an image of the divine feminine under patriarchal rule. It often took divine intervention showing up either as a genuine miracle or as an inspired legend that justified worship of the feminine. Two miracle legends that closely resemble each other are those of Hangchow, China and Caltabellotta, Italy. Whether they are “true” or not isn’t as important as what they accomplished with help from above.
Both recount that a devoted monk was divinely led to a piece of wood that later turned out to contain an image of the divine mother.
The Chinese story is this: In the year 939 C.E. in a Buddhist monastery in Hangchow, a monk called Tao I was meditating when he saw a strange glowing light coming from a nearby stream. Going to see what was causing this, he found a piece of beautiful wood, some two feet long and giving off a rare fragrance. Hauling the piece from the stream, he gave it to a famous local sculptor called Kung, whom he asked to carve it into a statue. Kung took the piece to his workshop and split the wood open. He found inside a perfectly formed statue of the female Kuan Yin. A set of strange dreams in which a white-robed woman appeared and commanded that the statue be worshipped convinced the people to do so, even though female representations of Kuan Yin were still rare at the time.[10]
A similar story is told in Caltabellotta, Italy: One day a Father Paolo (Pallu, in Sicilian dialect), one of the Augustinian monks, (who died with a reputation of sanctity December 30, 1847), found in the rock garden under the cliff Gogala a piece of fig wood that drew his attention. He thought it might be useful for baring the door of the church and so he picked it up and put it to that use. When he went to open the church the next morning he saw that the piece of fig wood was gone. He asked the other monks if they had seen or taken it, but no one had. Some time later he went to perform his ministry at the Mother Church, and with great astonishment, saw that the block of wood was near the crucifix (the miraculous crucifix of the black Jesus that now resides above the altar in the church of St. Augustine). Dismayed, he asked who brought that piece of wood to the Mother Church, but no one knew anything about it. So he took the thing back to his church and that evening used it again to bar the church door. By the next morning it was gone again. Now he accused his fellow monks of playing a bad tasteless joke on him. But seeing that they were quite bewildered by his accusations, he wondered what was going on. So he checked back at the Mother Church and saw, with astonishment, that the piece of wood was again lying near the crucifix. He took the piece of wood back to St. Augustine Church, placed it as before, and stood watch. When Night came, suddenly, he saw that the piece of wood took off from where it was placed, and moved on the road to the Mother Church. Arriving there it went as before to the crucifix. It was the Mother going to see her Son! Presumably she was hidden in the wood already and just had to be released by a sculptor, which was promptly accomplished.
My Personal Experience with Being a Rather Buddhist Devotee of Mary
Although Buddhism hasn’t directly commented on Mother Mary, it prepared me personally in many ways for following Our Lady in her many apparitions.
First of all, the practice of Tibetan Buddhism familiarized me with the notion that the Absolute appears to sincere seekers in many forms, be they celestial visions or temporary human forms. It is always understood that these forms the Absolute takes on – while as real as our own forms – are not absolute in themselves. Rather, the Absolute manifests them temporarily for our benefit as an image portraying and transmitting divine qualities. Just as our essence transcends our forms, so the divine also transcends any image or form and is said to be “the union of emptiness and clarity”. According to Buddhism, we too are mere apparitions. Our true nature goes far beyond what our bodies make us believe. So when someone asks me: "How can an intelligent person like you believe in apparitions?!" I always answer: "But we are all apparitions in this dream we call life!"
It seems to me that Mary often points towards this reality of matter forming out of "emptiness and clarity" or energy and spirit. Again and again people describe her apparitions as starting with a light gathering in the sky. Gradually the light turns into a human form. It seems that Christians largely ignore this part. I’ve never heard anybody comment on it. They seem to imagine that Mary sits in heaven in the form that they saw her clothed in. But the Queen of Heaven can clothe herself in anything. In the Bible she is seen “clothed in the sun” (Revelation, 12:1), in her apparition in Tre Fontane, Rome she was seen clothed in the love of the trinity. It seems to me that what Christians are witnessing here is the omni-present God/dess clothing herself in a human form so that we can learn to “clothe ourselves in God”. (To compare what Paul says about clothing ourselves in God read Gal. 3:27, 1 Cor. 15:53-54, Eph. 4:24)
I guess Christians don’t know what to make of the Virgin Mary forming out of light, because they are to believe in the resurrection of the body and the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven. But I think their notion of what “body” means in heaven is too worldly. The Buddha’s “body of truth” (dharmakaya) for example, is the limitless expanse of the universe, present everywhere.
Second, Buddhism helped me prepare for what in Christianity is called “consecrating yourself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”. It has significant parallels to Tibetan Buddhist initiations or “empowerments”. Both are about merging with a celestial person and then with the divine essence it represents. In 1992-‘93 Mother Mary presumably appeared in Colorado (though these apparitions are not yet accredited by the Church). There she said: “My dearest children, I come to offer you my greatest gift – to give you my love in a most special exchange, my heart for yours. In this exchange, you shall make the Act of Consecration to my Immaculate Heart, thus partaking in my triumph.”[11] – This strikes me as very Buddhist, because she is calling us to let go of our separate selves in order to become divine instead.
Part of the Christian consecration as well as the Buddhist initiation is a spiritual commitment to do a certain practice every day for the rest of ones life. This is a hard thing to do in a society where no one seems to commit to anything for life anymore. My Tibetan guru Kalu Rinpoche taught me about commitment. I took my first initiation without a clue about what I was doing or that it entailed a commitment. After that, I went to him on three separate occasions with some question completely unrelated to the initiation. Each time he apparently took one look at me and could tell that I wasn’t keeping my commitment. So each time he asked: “Are you keeping your commitment?” The first time I said: “What commitment?”, the second time: “Can I do it in English or in my own words?”, the third time: “Well, yes, sort of, more or less.” Since he had asked me three times I figured he was really serious about this and that this was an issue of much greater importance than my unenlightened mind could fathom. So I started to keep the commitment strictly. (It only entails a short prayer repeated seven times every day.) He never asked me again, didn’t have to, he could “see” with the eye of enlightenment that I was keeping it.
Nothing less could have convinced me of the importance of strictly keeping my present commitment to Mother Mary which entails three fairly long meditation sessions a day, including praying three rosaries, and generally obeying Our Lady’s wishes as much as possible.
Speaking of obedience. That’s the third thing I wouldn’t even have considered without a Buddhist understanding. It’s a big topic among Mary’s devotees and a training in ego-detachment. If you understand that a separate self with a separate will is ultimately an illusion that leads to nothing but suffering, it makes sense to practice letting go of that self by being obedient to God/dess. When you know that obeying God/dess leads to the ultimate peace and happiness of nirvana or divine union it is a little easier to accomplish.
Fourth, Buddhist meditation practice also helps with the rosary. For details see my article “Praying the Rosary: a Different Approach"
Fifth, from a feminist perspective I’m always suspicious when I hear people say how Mary is not to be the goal of our path but only the way to the male trinity. But from a Buddhist point of view I understand that all forms of celestial persons (not just Mary) are a doorway to the formless, the ground of all being, which Christianity calls God Father. So in that sense, yes, Mary leads us to the Father, not to herself as a separate form. Nonetheless one could express the same truth in a less patriarchal way, by saying that Mother Mary as well as Jesus lead us beyond forms to the essential, ultimate truth which transcends any words and concepts.
On the other hand, the Heart Sutra teaches us that: “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form; form is not different from emptiness, nor emptiness different from form.” (Christians would say: “God is immanent and transcendent.”) So the form of Mother Mary leads us to the formless Father, but then the formless Father also leads us back to Jesus and Mary, because they are all one.
I once heard a priest in the cathedral of Santa Rosa, California preach about Jesus and Mary’s oneness in a very beautiful and simple way, saying: “Whenever we say, ‘Mary!’ she says, ‘Jesus!’, and whenever we say, ‘Jesus!’, he says, ‘Mary!’“
Sixth, Buddhism also helps put things into a philosophical perspective. When you start reading about Marian apparitions, it can be a bit disconcerting. What kind of a world is that where a lady appears in the sky, makes the sun dance, writes messages in the clouds, unlocks prison doors, stops battles, lets a river of fire appear in the sky……..? If you believe all those things, you are no longer in a stable, material world; you’ve entered a fluid, divine realm where anything is possible and nothing is “cast in concrete” anymore. You may feel like you are loosing ground. Here’s what the Mary who appeared in Colorado says about that: “Remember, it is when you find no ground beneath your feet, you shall realize you are in flight to my embrace.”[12]
Buddhism acknowledges that the apparent stability of our material world is an illusion. In reality everything is energy, constantly changing, and impermanent. Natural laws are in effect only as long as one is under the spell of worldly illusions. Once one is completely freed from them, especially from the notion of a separate self, a much more large and beautiful universe opens up.
Let me warn you though, in order to “loose the ground beneath your feet” safely, you need a true master for a teacher. Mother Mary is one such master.
Footnotes:
[1] Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay with Man-Ho Kwok, Kuan Yin: Myths and Prophecies of the Chinese Goddess of Compassion, Thorsons Publishers, London: 1995, pp. 8-9 and 25.
[2] Maria Reis-Habito, The Bodhisattva Guanyin and the Virgin Mary, in Chinese Buddhism and Christianity, Vol. 13, 1993, p. 66: “Guanyin was predominantly portrayed as female after the circulation of the Miao-shan legend.”
[3] Ibid. p. 25, etc.
[4] Ibid. p. 49
[5] Maria Reis-Habito, op. cit. p. 62
[6] Maria Reis-Habito, op. cit. p. 67
[7] Gill Farrer-Hall, The Feminine Face of Buddhism, Quest Books, 2002, p.62
[8] Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay, op. cit. pp.22-25 + 38
[9] For more information on the cultural exchange between Chinese and Western iconography see: Lauren Arnold, "Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and its Influence on the Art of the West", Desiderata Press, 1999
[10] Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay, op. cit. p. 28.
[11] In the End my Immaculate Heart Will Triumph: Consecration Preparation for the Triumphant Victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queenship Publishing Co., (800) 647-9882, p.10. The martial language in this booklet is sometimes hard to take, but the rest is well worth it.
[12] Ibid. p.14
