Hidden Icons of the Blessed Virgin

A Guanyin Statue Being Restored to Its True Iconographic Meaning

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

Today I was gifted an Ironwood Guanyin/Kannon statue, the mysterious female character that Buddhism venerates as full of mercy and compassion, but that they cannot explain from their history or hagiography. 

According to Buddhist Dharma, women cannot become Buddhas or Boddhittsatvas because the female form is “impure” and cannot become enlightened without many lives and reincarnation as a man, which then can become a monk and enlightened through many lifetimes of effort. Therefore, having a female “Buddha of Mercy” does not square with Buddhist cosmology or understanding of gender. 

Nevertheless, Guanyin appears in the 7th century as an enlightened woman of mercy and compassion, often holding a male infant, and she is renowned for hearing the cries of the poor, the hopeless, the downtrodden, and the childless. Many scholars, including David Bentley Hart, believe that Guanyin was a Chinese folk religious response to the extremely successful Christian Syriac mission of the Tang Dynasty, which opened more than 600 churches and had more than seven Metropolitan Bishops at one point. This is why the iconography and hagiography of Guanyin so closely mirrors the Christian love for the Virgin Mary. 

David Bentley Hart’s “The Story of Christianity”

While the “Holy Woman of Compassion” has no backstory in Chinese Buddhism, she has a central position in the Economy of Salvation for us Orthodox Christians as the Mother of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Knowing this, I baptized the statue with holy water, blessed it, and carved out the Buddha on her forehead and replaced it with a Holy Cross. 

Now this beautiful carving is an icon of God’s love for China, where stories from the Bible and the Early Church hide in plain sight, for us to find, reappropriate, and use to declare the message of Christ’s Holy Gospel to the world!

今天我收到了一尊铁木观音/观世音像，佛教尊崇的神秘女性人物充满慈悲和慈悲，但他们无法从历史或传记中解释这一点。

根据佛法，女性不能成佛或菩萨，因为女性形态是“不纯洁的”，必须经过很多世转世为男性才能成佛，而男性则需要经过多生的努力才能出家成佛。因此，拥有女性“观世音菩萨”并不符合佛教的宇宙观或性别理解。

尽管如此，观音在七世纪以慈悲和慈悲的开悟女性形象出现，经常抱着一个男婴，她以聆听穷人、绝望者、受压迫者和无子嗣者的哭声而闻名。包括戴维·本特利·哈特 (David Bentley Hart) 在内的许多学者认为，观音是中国民间宗教对唐朝极其成功的叙利亚基督传教事业的回应，唐朝开设了 600 多座教堂，并一度拥有超过 7 位都主教。这就是为什么观音的肖像画和圣徒传如此密切地反映了基督教对圣母玛利亚的热爱。

虽然“慈悲圣女”在中国佛教中没有背景故事，但她作为我们救世主耶稣基督的母亲，在我们正教徒中占有核心地位。知道了这一点，我用圣水给雕像施洗、祝福，并在她的额头上雕刻出佛像，并用圣十字代替。

现在，这个美丽的雕刻是上帝对中国的爱的象征，圣经和早期教会的故事隐藏在显而易见的地方，供我们发现、重新利用和使用，向世界宣扬基督神圣福音的信息！

A East Asian Expression of Love for Christ's Incarnation and the Blessed Virgin