The Divine Feminine in China

The Divine Feminine
Exploring the Feminine Face of God throughout the World
Godsfield Press UK and Conari Press USA 1996
Anne Baring and Andrew Harvey
THE DIVINE FEMININE IN CHINA
Mother of all Creation
Once, in China, as elsewhere, there was a Mother who was before
heaven and earth came into being. Her image was woven into the age-old beliefs of the people and the shamanic tradition which later
evolved into Taoism. In Chinese mythology the mother goddess has many
names and titles. One legend imagined her as an immense peach tree
which grew in the Garden of Paradise in the Kun-Lun mountains of the
West and was the support of the whole universe. The fruit of this
marvellous and magical tree ripened only after three thousand years,
bestowing immortality on whoever tasted it. The Garden of Paradise
belonged to the Queen of the Immortals, the Royal Mother of the West,
whose name was Hsi Wang Mu, goddess of eternal life. Other myths
describe her as the Mother or Grandmother, the primordial Heavenly
Being, the cosmic womb of all life, the gateway of heaven and earth.
Taoism developed on this foundation.
More subtly and comprehensively than any other religious
tradition, Taoism (Daoism) nurtured the quintessence of the Divine
Feminine, keeping alive the feeling of relationship with the ground
of being as Primordial Mother. Somehow the Taoist sages discovered
how to develop the mind without losing touch with the soul and this
is why an understanding of their philosophy - China's priceless
legacy to humanity - is so important to us now.
The origins of Taoism come from the shamanic practices and
oral traditions of the Bronze Age and beyond. Its earliest written
expression is the Book of Changes or I Ching, a book of divination
consisting of sixty four oracles which is thought to date to 3000-
1200 BC. The complementary images of yin and yang woven into the
sixty four hexagrams of the I Ching are not to be understood as two
separate expressions of the one indivisible life energy: earth and
heaven, feminine and masculine, female and male, for each contains
elements of the other and each cannot exist without the other. In
their passionate embrace, there is relationship, dialogue and
continual movement and change. The I Ching describes the flow of
energies of the Tao in relation to a particular time, place or
situation and helps the individual to balance the energies of yin and
yang and to listen to the deeper resonance of the One that is both.
The elusive essence of Taoism is expressed in the Tao Te
Ching, the only work of the great sage Lao Tzu (born c. 604 BC.),
whom legend says was persuaded to write down the eighty-one sayings
by one of his disciples when, reaching the end of his life, he had
embarked on his last journey to the mountains of the West. The word
Tao means the fathomless Source, the One, the Deep. Te is the way the
Tao comes into being, growing organically like a plant from the deep
ground or source of life, from within outwards. Ching is the slow,
patient shaping of that growth through the activity of a creative
intelligence that is expressed as the organic patterning of all
instinctual life, like the DNA of the universe.”The Tao does
nothing, yet nothing is left undone.”The tradition of Taoism was
transmitted from master to pupil by a succession of shaman-sages,
many of whom were sublime artists and poets. In the midst of the
turmoil of the dynastic struggles that engulfed China for centuries
they followed the Tao, bringing together the outer world of
appearances with the inner one of Being.
From the source which is both everything and nothing, and
whose image is the circle, came heaven and earth, yin and yang, the
two principles whose dynamic relationship brings into being the world
we see. The Tao is both the source and the creative process of life
that flows from it, imagined as a Mother who is the root of heaven
and earth, beyond all yet within all, giving birth to all, containing
all, nurturing all. The Way of Tao is to reconnect with the mother
source or ground, to be in it, like a bird in the air or a fish in
the sea, in touch with it, while living in the midst of what the
Taoists called the"sons"or"children"- the myriad forms that the
source takes in manifestation. It is to become aware of the presence
of the Tao in everything, to discover its rhythm and its dance, to
learn to trust it, no longer interfering with the flow of life by
manipulating, directing, resisting, controlling. It is to develop the
intuitive awareness of a mystery which only gradually unveils itself.
Following the Way of Tao requires a turning towards the hidden
withinness of things, a receptivity to instinctive feeling, enough
time to reflect on what is inconceivable and indescribable, beyond
the reach of mind or intellect, that can only be felt, intuited,
experienced at ever deeper depth. Action taken from this position of
balance and freedom will gradually become aligned to the harmony of
the Tao and will therefore embody its mysterious power and wisdom.
The Taoists never separated nature from spirit, consciously
preserving the instinctive knowledge that life is One. No people
observed nature more passionately and minutely than the Chinese sages
or reached so deeply into the hidden heart of life, describing the
life and form of insects, animals, birds, flowers, trees, wind,
water, planets and stars. They felt the continuous flow and flux of
life as an underlying energy that was without beginning or end, that
was, like water, never static, never still, never fixed in separate
things or events, but always in a state of movement, a state of
changing and becoming. They called the art of going with the flow of
this energy Wu Wei, not-doing (Wu means not or non-, Wei means doing,
making, striving after goals), understanding it as relinquishing
control, not trying to force or manipulate life but attuning oneself
to the underlying rhythm and ever-changing modes of its being. The
stilling of the surface mind that is preoccupied with the ten
thousand things brings into being a deeper, more complete mind and an
integrated state of consciousness or creative power that they named
Te which enabled them not to interfere with life but to"enter the
forest without moving the grass; to enter the water without raising a
ripple.”
They cherished the Tao with their brushstrokes, observing how
it flowed into the patterns of cloud and mist between earth and
mountain peak, or the rhythms of air currents and the eddying water
of rivers and streams, the opening of plum blossom in spring, the
graceful dance of bamboo and willow. They listened to the sounds that
can only be heard in the silence. They expressed their experience of
the Tao in their paintings, their poetry, the creation of their
temples and gardens and in their way of living which was essentially
one of withdrawal from the world to a place where they could live a
simple, contemplative life, concentrating on perfecting their
brushstokes in calligraphy and painting and their subtlety of
expression in the art of poetry. Humility, reverence, patience,
insight and wisdom were the qualities that they sought to cultivate.
The Taoist artist or poet intuitively reached into the secret
essence of what he was observing, making himself one with it, then
inviting it to speak through him, so releasing the dynamic harmony
within it. He imposed nothing of himself on it but reflected the
creative soul of what he was observing through the highly developed
skills that he had cultivated over a lifetime of practice. Through
the perfection of his art, he did not define or explain the Tao
which, as Chuang-Tzu said, cannot be conveyed either by words or by
silence, but called it into focus so that it could be experienced by
the beholder. The Tao flows through the whole work as cosmic
Presence, at once transcendent in its mystery and immanent in its
form. The distillation of what the Taoist sages discovered is
bequeathed to us in the beauty and wisdom of their painting and
poetry, and in their profound understanding of the relationship
between body, soul and nature, and the eternal ground that underlies
and enfolds them all.
Standing before one of the great Taoist paintings of the
T'ng or Sung dynasties or reading a poem by Wang Wei, we are
immediately transformed by them, able to let go of the things that
normally distract the mind and exhaust the body - the preoccupation
with the ten thousand things that the Taoists called"dust". They put
us in touch with the center simply by relating us instantaneously to
the ground which unites everything. To rest in the quietness of mind
and humility of heart that the Taoist sage embodies, is to live in a
state of instinctive spontaneity that the Taoists named Tzu Jan - a
being-in-the-moment that can only exist, as in childhood, when the
effort to adapt to collective values and the need to accumulate
possessions, power or fame is of no importance. What exists is what
is. There is no need to change it by imposing the will. Change will
come about by changing the quality of one's own being. To feel what
needs to be said without striving to say it; to speak from the heart
in as few words as possible, to act when action is required,
responding to the needs of the moment without attachment to the
fruits of action, this was the essence of the Taoist vision. It was
essentially feminine, gentle, balanced, dynamic and wise.
The image of the primordial Mother was embedded deep within the soul
of the Chinese people who, as in Egypt, Sumer and India, turned to
her for help and support in time of need. She was particularly close
to women who prayed to her for the blessing of children, for a safe
delivery in childbirth, for the protection of their families, for the
healing of sickness. Their mother goddess was not a remote being but
a compassionate, accessible presence in their homes, in the sacred
mountains where they went on pilgrimages to her temples and shrines,
and in the valleys and vast forests where she could be felt, and
sometimes seen. Yet, like the goddesses in other early cultures, she
also had cosmic dimensions. Guardian of the waters, helper of the
souls of the dead in their passage to other realms, she was the Great
Mother who responded to the cry of all people who called upon her in
distress. She was the Spirit of Life itself, deeper than all knowing,
caring for suffering humanity, her child. Above all, she was the
embodiment of mercy, love, compassion and wisdom, the Protectress of
Life. Although she had many names and images in earlier times, these
eventually merged into one goddess who was called Kuan Yin - She who
hears, She who listens.
By a fascinating process which saw the blending of different
religious traditions, the ancient Chinese Mother Goddess absorbed
elements of the Buddhist image of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, the
Tibetan mother goddess Tara and the Virgin Mary of Christianity,
whose statues were brought to China during the seventh century AD.
The name Kuan Yin was a translation of the sanscrit word
Avalokitesvara and means"The One Who Hears the Cries of the World.”
At first, following the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, this
compassionate being was imagined in male form, but from the fifth
century AD., the female form of Kuan Yin begins to appear in China
and by the tenth century it predominates.
It was in the far north-west, at the interface between
Chinese, Tibetan and European civilizations, that the cult of Kuan
Yin took strongest root and it was from here that it spread over the
length and breadth of China and into Korea and Japan, grafted onto
the far older image of the Mother Goddess. Every province had its
local image and its own story about her. Taoist and Buddhist elements
were fused, creating an image of the Divine Feminine that was deeply
satisfying to the people. By the 16th century, Kuan Yin had become
the principal deity of China and Japan and is so today. Robed in
white, she is usually shown seated or standing on a lotus throne,
sometimes with a child on her lap or near her for she brings the
blessing of children to women.
Chinese Buddhist texts describe her as being within a vast
circle of light that emanates from her body, her face gleaming
golden, surrounded with a garland of 8000 rays. The palms of her
hands radiate the colour of 500 lotus flowers. The tip of each finger
has 84,000 images, each emitting 84,000 rays whose gentle radiance
touches all things. All beings are drawn to her and compassionately
embraced by her. Meditation on this image is said to free them from
the endless cycle of birth and death.
Two Chinese descriptions of Kuan Yin bring her to life, the
first from the Buddhist Lotus Sutra which imagines her as a cosmic
being devoted to saving the world through her wisdom and compassion,
the second from the 16th century:
Listen to the deeds of Kuan Yin
Responding compassionately on every side
With great vows, deep as the ocean,
Through inconceivable periods of time,
Serving innumerable Buddhas,
Giving great, clear, and pure vows...
To hear her name, to see her body,
To hold her in the heart, is not in vain,
For she can extinguish the suffering of existence...
Her knowledge fills out the four virtues,
Her wisdom suffuses her golden body.
Her necklace is hung with pearls and precious jade,
Her bracelet is composed of jewels.
Her hair is like dark clouds wondrously
arranged like curling dragons;
Her embroidered girdle sways like a phoenix's wing in flight.
Sea-green jade buttons,
A gown of pure silk,
Awash with Heavenly light;
Eyebrows as if crescent moons,
Eyes like stars.
A radiant jade face of divine joyfulness,
Scarlet lips, a splash of colour.
Her bottle of heavenly dew overflows,
Her willow twig rises from it in full flower.
She delivers from all the eight terrors,
Saves all living beings,
For boundless is her compassion.
She resides on T'i Shan,
She dwells in the Southern Ocean.
She saves all the suffering when their cries reach her,
She never fails to answer their prayers,
Eternally divine and wonderful.
from Kuan Yin by Martin Palmer, Jay Ramsay, and Man-Ho Kwok
The Divine Feminine: Mother Of All Creation
Anne Baring and Andrew Harvey
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