Quan Yin

Listening to the cries of the world

When a mother hears their baby cry a deep and uncontrollable physiological response is activated in the brain. MRIs reveal that a mother’s brain lights up in response within seconds of hearing her baby cry. The areas of the brain that light up are associated with alarm, empathy, and compassion.

Quan Yin, “The One Who Hears the Cries of the World”, with limitless compassion, invites each of us to listen carefully and respond to the cries of the world. Quan Yin lovingly inspires us to embrace our suffering, to hear our cries, while simultaneously hearing the cries of all beings. From this primordial space of interconnectedness and love, we realize our inherited limitless compassion, step into our crucial role as healers, and manifest our destiny which is healing the world.

We are nourished when we tap into and respond with compassion, especially during this extraordinary time of deep uncertainty, radical transformation, and increasing awareness of our shared global suffering. The moment has arrived. We are indeed a global village.

Each of us has the opportunity to step into and embrace our role as compassion holders and healers. You do not need to be a professional healthcare provider to be a healer. A healer is anyone who tends to the needs of another being or beings. The intention of a healer, the role of a healer, no matter the context, is to alleviate suffering and to foster health and well-being.

Quan Yin teaches us that to successfully navigate our current collective condition we must care not only for our suffering but for the suffering of our family, friends, and communities. We must also care and show compassion for the suffering of our perceived enemies. To resist this suffering, to fight or flee our individual and collective suffering, is to invite greater suffering. This is the way of suffering.

 There is another Way. We can embrace our individual and collective human suffering in a renewed and revitalized way. It is a Way we can discover by slowing down, getting quiet, and listening. Listening to our calcified cognition and inhibited imaginations. Listening to our dulled and irritated senses. Listening to our deep embodied fear, anger, grief, and worry. Listening to our breath. Listening for the cries emerging from our wounded depths, from the furthest reaches of the planet, and from everywhere in between.

Hearing the cries we are activated by our inherited gift of compassion to respond. To tend to ourselves and others (if there are indeed others) with an open mind, a liberated imagination, embodied empathy, and limitless love. Tending to with tenderness. It is a healing response. It is a healing Way. A Healing Way of awareness, kindness, tenderness, compassion, and loving action for ourselves and our entire earth family.