Quan Yin

  This is Quan Yin. She is a deity in the Buddhist tradition, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. She represents that aspect of the creation that is about awakening. The water she is pouring into the dragons mouth has the power to transform suffering into the bliss of enlightenment. It is carried by the dragons because they have the power to keep these waters from those who are not ready to drink of them and who would be driven insane should they encounter them. But for those who are ready and can see the the dragon for whom he really is, the waters are freely given and the suffering is transformed. The water is, of course, the knowledge of how it all is and who it is that comes to know how it all is.

  To experience yourself as separate from everything else in the universe. This is what it means to be human. It is what differentiates us from all other living entities. It is self awareness and it is an illusion into which we are born. A necessary illusion because, without it, the universe has no way to experience itself.

  But an illusion nonetheless and this illusion exists in a reality that is whole, undivided and complete. The illusion of the two exists in a reality that is just the one. What this means for us as human beings is simply this, there is nothing in the universe that we can experience that is not, at every moment, speaking to us of this undifferentiated oneness.

  To believe in the reality of the illusion is what stands between us and the awakened states of being that the universe longs for us to know. To transcend this illusion of separateness is the journey we embark upon  when we finally come to see that the place we long to be can only be glimpsed by making the world around us as we would like it to be.