Veneration
In Chinese Buddhist iconography, Guanyin is often depicted as meditating or sitting alongside one of the Buddhas and usually accompanied by another bodhisattva. The buddha and bodhisattva that are portrayed together with Guanyin usually follow whichever school of Buddhism they represent. In the Pure Land school, for example, Guanyin is frequently depicted on the left of Amitabha Buddha, while on the buddha's right is another bodhisattva called Mahasthamaprapta (Dàshìzhì). Temples that revere the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha usually depict him meditating beside Amitabha and Guanyin.
Along with Buddhism, Guanyin's veneration was introduced into China as early as the 1st century CE, and reached Japan through Korea soon after Buddhism was first introduced into the country in the mid-7th century. Some Taoist records claim Guanyin was a Chinese female who became an immortal during the Shang Dynasty.
More recently in Europe and America, a new wave of believers have spread a devotional cult beyond Buddhism, Taoism and traditional folk beliefs. Guanyin is not only a bodhisattva or a god but a focus of devotion by some Eastern New Age movements.
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Famous quotes containing the word veneration:
“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
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“It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.”
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