Tuesday

Meeting Chenrezig in Sound: Understanding Chenrezig’s Name and the Meaning of the Chenrezig Mantra

by Frederick Meyer

An excerpt from the Shambhala Online Blog posted April 12, 2024

In recent years, Chenrezig—the Tibetan name for the Buddhist deity Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion—has become an important part of my spiritual practice. I have a strong affinity for sound, and much of my learning about Chenrezig has been in the form of sound and meaning: what “Chenrezig” itself means and how it relates to Avalokiteshvara’s other names, what the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions of the word compassion actually mean, and the meaning of the famous Chenrezig mantra OM MANI PADME HUM.

In this article, I want to share both what I’ve learned about Chenrezig himself, as well as my own process of exploration. I feel the process I’ve followed shows how association and meaning can unfold along the Buddhist path, especially the parts of the path that are rich in energy and iconography.

Throughout this article, I’ll be describing what I learned about Chenrezig in my explorations , as well as weaving in Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on the same topic. I only discovered Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on Chenrezig within the past month, so it’s been very interesting to compare my own independent learning with his teaching, and I hope to illustrate that dynamic as well.

Chenrezig: First Connections

I had heard of Chenrezig growing up, but I didn’t connect strongly to Chenrezig until around three years ago, when my father, a longtime Buddhist practitioner, began practicing Four-Armed Chenrezig sadhana practice with a Tibetan Lama living in Hawaii. At his suggestion, I began joining for the weekly sadhana practice.

The lama often played a YouTube video (with the sound off) during the visualization part of the sadhana. The video includes a thangka of Chenrezig that I really like—something about the eyes and facial expression, and the vibrant colors. I found that looking at it gave me a certain feeling, and I began to carry that with me.

Because of his enthusiasm for the practice, I gifted my father a Chenrezig thangka for one of his birthdays, and then later bought one for myself. When my thangka arrived (about a year and a half ago now), I found that the energy of my own interest in and connection with Chenrezig heightened significantly.

From there, I began exploring Chenrezig in earnest, and that’s where I began to learn in depth about Chenrezig’s name, the meaning of compassion, and the meaning of the Chenrezig mantra.

Chenrezig: What the Name Means

The Tibetan name Chenrezig means “continuously looking,” and has been translated as:

• “One who looks with unwavering eye”

• “Unblinking Eyes”

• “One who always looks upon all beings (with the eye of compassion)”

Trungpa Rinpoche translates Chenrezig as: “He Who Sees All Sentient Beings.”

Chenrezig is the Tibetan version of the Sanskrit name Avalokiteshvara, which means “lord who gazes upon the world.” The idea of this name (in both Sanskrit and Tibetan) is that the loving gaze of compassion—the gaze of Chenrezig, compassion itself—forever holds all beings.

Avalokitasvara: The Female Compassion Deity

What I find most interesting about Chenrezig’s name is that there is another form of the Sanskrit name Avalokiteshvara. Wikipedia does a wonderful job summarizing the history, and it felt like a major revelation to me when I read it. The other name is Avalokitasvara: “Who hears the cries of the world.”

Western scholars originally thought this name had been made up, in error, by Chinese translators from Sanskrit, who named the deity Guanshiyin, “[The One Who] Perceives the Sounds of the World,” or “who perceives the world’s lamentations.” Shortened to Guanyin (and later rendered in Japan as Konan), this is the contemporary Chinese name for Avalokiteshvara, who is represented as a female compassion deity.

Scholars later realized that Avalokitasvara is actually a correct—and older—name of the deity, which was later developed into Avalokiteshvara (adding the sense of “lord” and changing “hear” to “see”). Guanshiyin, “Who Hears the Cries of the World,” wasn’t a mistranslation at all.

As I mentioned, I have a strong affinity for sound, and learning this alternate name of Chenrezig had a profound effect on me. One who gazes (lovingly) upon the world sounds, to me, nice but a little distant—but “hearing the world’s cries” carries a strong feeling I can immediately connect with.

In fact, many of my most immediate and piercing experiences of compassion have been sound-based. As an example, I have a small dog, and this morning when I picked her up, she yelped loudly (I don’t know why, and she wasn’t hurt). I was immediately pierced by a feeling that was so immediate I didn’t have a name for it. I feel it was a strong hit of compassion—the powerful, immediate, primordial feeling that is true compassion, not the refined notion of charity and concern for others that we might often think of.

To continue reading Meeting Chenrezig in Sound: Understanding Chenrezig’s Name and the Meaning of the Chenrezig Mantra by Frederick Meyer please visit the Shambhala Online Blog webpage here.