The story of two forms – one with a single head and two hands, and one with a single head and a thousand hands.
In an infinite number of forms, whenever love and compassion appear in a person’s consciousness and actions, it is a sign of their presence. But mercy is not just a blind inclination towards those who suffer. That is why the thousand symbolic hands of Avalokiteśvara on the palm carry an eye, a symbol of the wisdom that accompanies love. It also marks the synthesis of the two principles that every human being should achieve: prajna, the highest knowledge of life, and upaya, active love and mercy, which lead to perfect awareness. Complete realization of consciousness is not possible without the synthesis of “heart and mind” in a person, because knowledge without love leads to cruelty, and love without knowledge leads to blindness, in both cases, to spiritual deadness. Only when both principles are attained does consciousness gain insight into complete reality. However, as inseparable as these principles are in the process of maturing and developing consciousness, one of them is the driver of all necessary changes in a person, a condition without which knowledge cannot be attained, and that is the principle of active love. The heavenly image represented by Avalokiteshvara is a law that should begin to be realized here on earth, in the everyday, still imperfect consciousness of humans. This imperfect consciousness cannot achieve this immediately, but Tibetans say that it can start from something that is already accessible to it. The first step is to not be indifferent to things and beings around oneself, to feel life in its countless forms, to empathize.
Indifference is a closed, sluggish, silent consciousness. A consciousness enclosed by walls of egoism and ignorance. A closed system without air, without contact with reality, in which everything is subordinated to fear for the false “self” which is the most important to itself and does not wish to lose its primacy under any circumstances. That is why the first sign of opening consciousness towards reality is feeling what is happening outside our “self”, empathizing with the sufferings of other beings. An old Tibetan text, The Voice of Silence, says:
Let every cry of pain reach your soul, just as the lotus opens its heart to absorb the morning sun.
Let every tear speak to you, let every smile move you, let every sound of laughter touch you. Let the beauty and suffering of the world stir your being, awaken your compassion, and inspire you to act. A burning tear falls onto the heart and let it stay there, and do not wipe it away until the pain that caused it disappears.
These tears, O merciful heart, are rivers that feed the fields of eternal mercy… This is the seed of liberation from rebirth. It separates the arhat from discord and desire and leads him through the fields of Being into peace and bliss…
This first step of a merciful hearted person towards bliss is based on the teachings of the true nature of existence: the entire universe is alive and all its elements are interconnected and influence each other. The life of each element depends on the influence of other elements and there is no independent form of life. The universe is like a weaving, a network of relationships, like the relationships that exist in every living organism. Therefore, every human activity is important because it will, like a stone thrown into a lake, affect the whole organism.
The “stone” with which a person affects the universe is compassion, the first expression of active love. It is the first force that opens the indifferent consciousness… In reality, the first speech of silent consciousness, the first seed of knowledge, because a connection has been established: one closed universe vibrated by the occurrence of another universe, one being is touched by the life of another being, consciousness begins to expand beyond its limited “self”. The influence of this power spreads like a chain reaction: the seed of right thinking ignites, the seed of right aspirations, right actions, way of life… It is the power that guides him through the meadows of Being towards bliss, because every activity that a person undertakes with an open lotus-like consciousness, compassionate, changes the course of everything he undertakes, the quality and even the consequences of his actions. Once awakened, this power liberates a person from attachment to their egoistic “self”, because Tibetans say that there is no better ally for humans in the war against their own pride and greed. It is the power that quietly but relentlessly dissolves the artificial barriers of the human being, both internal and external. Compassion is the only language that matters in all worlds, on all levels. Consciousness, because every being can understand it and every being can speak it.
According to Tibetan teachings, compassion is a sign of true spirituality, the source and essence of enlightened consciousness. Buddhist canonical texts symbolically speak of the power of compassion as the fundamental test that every consciousness, even the most sublime, must go through in order to confirm and prove its sublimity. Thus, the story from Lalita Vistara tells of an event from Buddha’s life before his enlightenment:
God Indra, in agreement with other deities, wanted to test the future Buddha and see if he could truly become a Buddha. He transforms himself into a falcon and begins to chase a dove in his presence. The dove escapes and hides among the hands of the one who will become the Buddha, asking him for protection. Taking pity, he promises that nothing will happen to her in his presence. However, then the falcon arrives and asks him for the dove, complaining that doves are his food. At that moment, the one who will become the Buddha Buddha understood that even a falcon has the right to live, so he made a deal with both animals: if the falcon spared the dove’s life, it would receive as much meat as the pursued dove weighed. Buddha brought a scale and placed the dove on one side, then started cutting pieces of his own body with a knife and placing them on the other side. However, he soon realized that the pieces of his body could never reach the weight of the dove, so he put his entire self on the other side. Suddenly, with a loud thunder, the deities appeared and revealed to him that it was just a test.
The ways of expressing archetypes are diverse. Yet, beneath the disguise of different forms, there is something identical, something that is part of the depths of humanity within us. That is what we recognize. That is the language we all understand and that we all need so desperately.