Is Guanyin a god or a Buddha?

Neither, strictly. She is a bodhisattva: someone who postpones final liberation to help others. In everyday practice she is venerated much as a deity would be, in Buddhist, Daoist and folk temples alike.

Is Guanyin male or female?

Originally depicted as male in India, and female in East Asia from roughly the Tang and Song periods onward. A bodhisattva is held to be beyond gender and to take whatever form is needed; the female form is the one almost everyone knows.

What is the difference between Guanyin and Buddha?

A Buddha is fully awakened and no longer bound to the cycle of rebirth. A bodhisattva has the capacity and stays, in order to help. Guanyin is the bodhisattva most associated with compassion.

What do people pray to Guanyin for?

Most often for protection, for someone who is ill, for safety in travel or childbirth, and for help with a decision. The Lotus Sutra’s promise is about being heard in difficulty rather than about any particular kind of wish.

Is Guanyin the same as Kannon and Quan Am?

Yes — the same figure under Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tibetan names: Kannon, Gwanseeum, Quan Âm, Chenrezig.

Guides

Who is Guanyin?

觀音 · Avalokiteshvara · Kannon · Quan Âm · Chenrezig

The most widely venerated figure in East Asian Buddhism, and the one whose temples hold the hundred-lot oracle.

The name

The full Chinese name, 觀世音, means something like “the one who observes the sounds of the world” — who hears people calling out. 觀音 is the familiar short form; it is often explained as avoiding the character 世 from the personal name of the Tang emperor Taizong, Li Shimin.

The Sanskrit name is Avalokiteshvara. Xuanzang translated it instead as 觀自在, “the one who observes with sovereign freedom”, which is the name used in the opening line of the Heart Sutra.

The same figure is Kannon in Japan, Gwanseeum in Korea, Quan Âm in Vietnam, and Chenrezig in Tibet.

What a bodhisattva is

A bodhisattva is someone who could enter final liberation and holds back in order to help everyone else first. So Guanyin is not a Buddha and, strictly speaking, not a god — though in practice she is venerated like one, in Buddhist temples, Daoist temples, folk shrines and household altars alike.

Compassion is the particular quality she stands for. Where other figures represent wisdom or vows or healing, Guanyin represents the willingness to be interrupted by someone else’s trouble.

The Lotus Sutra and the thirty-three forms

The twenty-fifth chapter of the Lotus Sutra — known in Chinese as the Universal Gate chapter — is the text that made her popular. It says that anyone in danger who calls the name single-mindedly will be heard, and that the bodhisattva takes whatever form the person in front of her needs: a monk, an official, a child, an old woman, thirty-three forms in all.

That doctrine of changing form is part of why the next thing happened.

Why Guanyin is usually a woman

In India, Avalokiteshvara was depicted as male. In China the depictions gradually shifted, and from roughly the Tang and Song periods onward the figure is increasingly female — the form almost everyone pictures today.

Historians give several overlapping reasons: the thirty-three forms already included women; a compassionate protector who hears mothers and children was wanted; and local legends, above all the story of the princess Miaoshan, attached themselves to the figure.

Strictly, a bodhisattva is beyond gender and takes the form that is useful. In practice, Guanyin in East Asia is a she.

How she is pictured

Most often standing or seated in white robes, holding a slim vase of pure water and a willow sprig used to sprinkle it.

The thousand-armed form, each palm bearing an eye, comes from a vow to reach everyone at once; it is the form the Great Compassion Mantra belongs to.

The child-giving form is found in folk temples, and the South Sea form is tied to Mount Putuo in Zhejiang, the island that became her pilgrimage site and is still one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China.

Why people bring questions to her

Because the promise attached to her is specifically about being heard. People come to Guanyin temples with the things that have no clean answer — an illness, a decision, a person they are worried about — and the hundred-lot oracle grew up in exactly those halls.

That is also why the lots in this temple are hers.

Draw a Guanyin lot

Common questions

Is Guanyin a god or a Buddha?: Neither, strictly. She is a bodhisattva: someone who postpones final liberation to help others. In everyday practice she is venerated much as a deity would be, in Buddhist, Daoist and folk temples alike.
Is Guanyin male or female?: Originally depicted as male in India, and female in East Asia from roughly the Tang and Song periods onward. A bodhisattva is held to be beyond gender and to take whatever form is needed; the female form is the one almost everyone knows.
What is the difference between Guanyin and Buddha?: A Buddha is fully awakened and no longer bound to the cycle of rebirth. A bodhisattva has the capacity and stays, in order to help. Guanyin is the bodhisattva most associated with compassion.
What do people pray to Guanyin for?: Most often for protection, for someone who is ill, for safety in travel or childbirth, and for help with a decision. The Lotus Sutra’s promise is about being heard in difficulty rather than about any particular kind of wish.
Is Guanyin the same as Kannon and Quan Am?: Yes — the same figure under Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tibetan names: Kannon, Gwanseeum, Quan Âm, Chenrezig.