Sandy Boucher, author of Opening the Lotus: A Woman's Guide to Buddhism, has written a fascinating introduction to Kwan Yin, the most revered goddess of Asia. She calls it a "Woman's Book of Ruminations, Meditations, Prayers, and Chants."

The author first encountered Kwan Yin in a Kansas museum as a life-sized wooden statue that was carved in China during the eleventh or twelfth century. Boucher writes: "That image of strength, beauty, a radiant equanimity, and tenderness reached out to open a space in me wide enough to invite both my sorrow and my joy and awaken a sense of deep familiarity."

Kwan Yin is the great Celestial Bodhisattva of Compassion in the Buddhist tradition. Her name means "She who harkens to the cries of the world." Boucher charts some of the ways women have responded to this symbolic figure, who bears some resemblance to the Virgin Mary in the Christian tradition and Shekinah in the Jewish tradition. Many women have shrines to Kwan Yin, and they call upon her to bring love, hope, transformation, and healing into their lives. Boucher visits a Vietnamese nun in Santa Cruz who is said to be the living embodiment of Kwan Yin. She also sees evidence of this bodhisattva's influence in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California.

One woman tells the author: "Kwan Yin broadens my understanding of the myriad ways kindness and compassion might express themselves through me." Boucher ends this tribute to the Thousand-Armed Goddess with a series of practices that can be used to evoke her loving spirit.