The compassionate visage of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, better known as Guanyin in Chinese, has been a source of inspiration and devotion for Buddhists and non-Buddhists for centuries. Offering readers the opportunity to get to know this great practitioner from the Buddhist texts themselves, The Universal Gate contains a new translation of Avalokitesvara's Universal Gate Sutra, the Buddha's scriptural account of this compassionate sage and his power to manifest in whatever form necessary to help sentient beings.This short sutra, chanted and memorized throughout East Asia, is rich with symbolic significance and striking, memorable images. Venerable Master Hsing Yun provides a complete line-by-line commentary to unpack the sutra's fantastic descriptions, relating them to personal practice and the wider Buddhist teachings. The Universal Gate allows readers to enter Avalokitesvara's compassion and to appreciate the bodhisattva's special place of reverence in the Buddhist world.
Venerable Master Hsing Yun is a Chinese Buddhist monk, author, philanthropist, and founder of the Fo Guang Shan monastic order, which has branches throughout Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Ordained at the age of twelve in Jiangsu Province, China, Master Hsing Yun has spent his over seventy years as a Buddhist monk building what he calls Humanistic Buddhism: Buddhism that meets the needs of people and is integrated into all aspects of life.In 1949, Master Hsing Yun came to Taiwan and began to nurture the new burgeoning Buddhist culture in Taiwan. He served as an editor and contributor to many Buddhist magazines and periodicals, authoring the daily columns "Between Ignorance and Enlightenment," "Dharma Words," and "Hsing Yun's Chan Talk," as well as starting his own Buddhist magazine, Awakening the World, in 1957, and the first daily Buddhist newspaper, the Merit Times, in 2000. Master Hsing Yun authored many important works including the Song of Silence, the Biography of Sakyamuni Buddha, and National Master Yulin. Master Hsing Yun also edited and sponsored the Fo Guang Encyclopedia, the most authoritative Buddhist reference work in the Chinese language. His contributions have reached as far as sponsoring Buddhist music and art, to creating Buddhist programming for television, radio, and the stage.