Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her ... - Khamkoo

4 Introduction
Guanzizai (The lord who contemplates), but despite his scholarly
authority this rendering never displaced the earlier translation. 7
Very little is known about the early veneration of Avalokiteśvara in
India before his cult was introduced into China. One theory holds
that Avalokiteśvara started out as a protective deity of horses, a
theory that would explain the existence of later images in which
Avalokiteśvara is crowned with a horse head. 8
When Buddhism was introduced into China by way of Central
Asia from the first century CE onward, it arrived largely in its Mahayana
Buddhist form, which had come into being in northern
India in the second and first centuries BCE. 9 Buddhism of earlier
centuries may have focused on the historical Buddha Śākyamuni
(sixth century BCE?) and his teaching of a method to liberate oneself
from suffering by one’s own efforts. Buddhism accepted the ancient
Indian worldview that every living being is subject to saṁsāra,
the endless cycle of reincarnation and retribution. According to this
belief, one’s life as a demon or a god, an animal or a human being, a
man or a woman, on earth or in one of the many heavens and hells
is determined by one’s deeds (karma) in an earlier existence. 10 Buddhism
stressed that each and every existence, even a life as one of
the gods, is marked by suffering. The cause of suffering is the attachment
to the impermanent phenomenal world by our ‘‘ego’’ or
self, which believes itself to be permanent but actually is as impermanent
and empty as all other phenomena, as it is only a temporary
bundle of elements (dharmas). Once the ephemerality of all phenomena
is realized, one is freed from attachment, liberated from
suffering, and enters into nirvana (extinction/annihilation), never
again to be reborn. Those who followed the Buddha’s teaching
(Dharma) and achieved this superior insight were called arhats.
Early Buddhism taught that, if one was truly serious about achieving
enlightenment, one had to cut off all social ties to one’s family
by ‘‘leaving the household’’ and joining the saṅgha, the monastic
community of monks and nuns (tradition held that the Buddha
had only reluctantly agreed to the establishment of the order of
nuns). Although the Buddha condemned extreme forms of ascetic
behavior, monks and nuns were expected to relinquish all worldly
possessions, adhere to a strict code of moral conduct and physical
behavior, and engage in meditation and other religious exercises.
Pious laymen and laywomen were encouraged to lead a moral life
so as to achieve a better rebirth, in which they might join the mo-