Susanne Kerekes
Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Regarded as the most widely worshipped deity of the Mahayana Buddhist pantheon, Kuan Yin has influenced the religious intersections throughout Asia, including Thailand, where devotion to her is increasingly on the rise, leading many scholars to label her following as cultic. Such labels aside, however, worship of this Bodhisattva of compassion might arouse, as one scholar suggests, liberation from women’s suffering, while also inspiring empowerment in a contemporary world that may challenge the roles and demands of the educated woman. Who is this popular goddess, Kuan Yin, and what about her appeals to the aspirations of women?
(Presented in the 2013 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: The Emergence and Heritage of Asian Women Intellectuals, 10-11 September 2013, Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Indian Studies Center, Chulalongkorn University)