Avalokiteśvara

is a member of the teaching faculty at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and is the founder and principal teacher at the Chin Rizik Project, a Tibetan Buddhist study and practice group with an active presence via online sangha gatherings, our regular e-magazine writings, and these Elegant Mind podcasts.

If interested, you can learn more about the Chenrezig Project at our website, www.chenrezigproject.org. That's C-H-E-N-R-E-Z-I-G, project.org. You can also send me an email at mwinwood, M-W-I-N-W-O-O-D, at gmail.com. We welcome your inquiries.

Our accompanying music, titled Watching You, was composed and performed by the San Francisco Bay Area musician Bobby Vega.

It appears on his 2017 album titled Matters of the Heart.

Self-understanding is very important for the understanding of the other person, and understanding here first is understanding ill-being, understanding suffering.

And in the tradition, there are those like Avalokiteshvara.

They know how to listen.

They know how to, to observe.

but Sumatran tantric Buddhism.

And the popularity of Avalokiteshvara, of Chandrasekhar, of the figure that the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of, is continuous down to Sumatra.

So the practice that he brought informed Tibetan Buddhism, the ideas and doctrines that he brought contributed.

So these are people who are going in both directions.

And these are beings that represent, you know, perfect encapsulations of certain elements.

So Chenrezig, The one on the end here, it's a forearm Chenrezig, which you see on the shrine over here.

I think we've got a couple thousand arm Chenrezigs.

These are representations of a being that is of pure compassion.

And so how these aid us is I may not have pure compassion.

I struggle in our current political environment to have compassion for the other side, even though I know we're largely all concerned about the same things.

But Chenrezig, if he is this embodiment of pure compassion, if I just, in my mind, pretend that I am Chenrezig, at least in my mind for a moment, I can touch that pure compassion.

I can pretend to be And that mental exercise equips me better to be more compassionate in my day.

You want somebody you can talk to.

Hence, we have the iddams, Tara, Chenrezig, Vajrayogini, Dorjipagmo, Heruka, any of the Herukas, Hayagriva, Purva, all of these and more.

I didn't like name all of them.

I just named the ones that came to mind in the moment.

Quan Yin.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

Quan Yin.

attunes her senses to the music of liberation and pervades the world.