Quan Yin Water and Crescent Moon Statue

The widely loved Quan Yin is the goddess of mercy, great compassion, kindness and love here in a stunning white marble finish statue with the Heart Sutra.

In the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha said that if a suffering being hears the name of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva and earnestly calls out to the bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara will hear the call and relieve that being from his suffering.

In her hands, Quan Yin may hold a willow branch, a vase with water or occasionally, a lotus flower. The willow branch is used to heal people's illnesses or bring fulfillment to their requests. The water ( the dew of compassion) has the quality of removing suffering, purifying the defilements of our body, speech and mind, and lengthening life.

Quan Yin has been depicted in many forms, some inspired by miracles attributed to her. A Tang Dynasty depiction of Quan Yin sitting in the Royal Ease pose, backed by a crescent moon, was made popular from a folk legend where she saved an entire village from disaster (Named the Water & Moon Quan Yin). In Buddhist art, Quan Yin is sometimes shown with eleven heads and one thousand hands (Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva), a symbol of her aspiration to reach out to any being in any form to help them.

Engraved on this statue is the Heart Sutra, it is a well-known Mahāyāna Buddhist sutra that is very popular among Mahāyāna Buddhists, both for its brevity and depth of meaning. Its Sanskrit name Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya literally translates to the "Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom." The Heart Sutra could be said to be the best known and most popular of all Buddhist scriptures.

Made in museum-grade resin with a white marble finish, this stunning statue is 8.5 x 7 inches. It is perfect as a gift for a new home or new couple.

The Heart Sutra

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, meditating deeply on Perfection of Wisdom, saw clearly that the five aspects of human existence are empty*, and so released himself from suffering.  Answering the monk Sariputra, he said this:

Body is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than body.
The body is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly body.

The other four aspects of human existence --
feeling, thought, will, and consciousness --
are likewise nothing more than emptiness,
and emptiness nothing more than they.

All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.

So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.

There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.

The Bodhisattvas rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and so with no delusions,
they feel no fear,
and have Nirvana here and now.

All the Buddhas,
past, present, and future,
rely on the Perfection of Wisdom,
and live in full enlightenment.

The Perfection of Wisdom is the greatest mantra.
It is the clearest mantra,
the highest mantra,
the mantra that removes all suffering.

This is truth that cannot be doubted.

Say it so:

Gaté,
gaté,
paragaté,
parasamgaté.
Bodhi!
Svaha!

Which means...

Gone,
gone,
gone over,
gone fully over.
Awakened!
So be it!

* Emptiness is the usual translation for the Buddhist term Sunyata (or Shunyata).  It refers to the fact that no thing -- including human existence -- has ultimate substantiality, which in turn means that no thing is permanent and no thing is totally independent of everything else.  In other words, everything in this world is interconnected and in constant flux.  A deep appreciation of this idea of emptiness thus saves us from the suffering caused by our egos, our attachments, and our resistance to change and loss.

Note:  Perfection of Wisdom is a translation of Prajnaparamita.  The full title of this sutra is The Heart of Prajnaparamita Sutra.