If writers had a deity, I believe it would be Guanyin.
In East Asian Buddhism, Guanyin is a boddhisatva—an enlightened being who vows not to enter Nirvana until all beings are free—but she was probably a goddess long before Buddhism appeared on the scene. Like a Catholic saint who began life as a Pagan deity, Guanyin’s roots go deep. Today, she is honored by millions: As Guanyin in China, Kannon in Japan, Kwun Yum in Hong Kong, Kuan Eim in Thailand.
In English, she becomes Kuan Yin, the “Goddess of Compassion,” but that is a poor translation of her name. Guanyin is more more than compassionate. She is “the one who hears the cries of the world,” a being of total empathy. She doesn’t merely care for the beings of the Earth: She sees through their eyes, experiences what they experience, feels what they feel. In other words, she does exactly what writers aspire to.
I believe the writer’s greatest gift isn’t the ability to structure elegant plots, write fluid sentences, or create powerful imagery. It is empathy: the ability to “leave our own bodies . . . and find ourselves in the mind of the other,” as Philsopher Khen Lampert puts it. That is what enables us to connect in powerful ways to our readers’ lives. It is what allows us to serve as witnesses to the human experience.
“A man, to be greatly good . . . must put himself in the place of another and many others,” wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in “A Defense of Poetry”. “The pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.” Guanyin personifies this deep connection with others: a raw, unalloyed empathy that extends to every being (including animals: in China, vegetarian restaurants often identify themselves by displaying statues of Guanyin). And so, she is sometimes depicted with eleven heads and many eyes and hands— one 17th-century Vietnamese statue of her has 1,000 of each—so she can see, hear, and reach out to all those who need her.
I keep a small picture of Guanyin on my desk. As someone who continually gets lost in my own drama, the picture reminds me that life isn’t all about me. That I am related in a million ways to everyone else. It also reminds me that the purpose of my writing is not to just blurt out what’s on my mind, but to connect with others —and that the source of my creativity lies in that connection.
My little picture of Guanyin reminds me of something else: That, through empathy, writing can make the world a better place. In one Buddhist myth, Guanyin is murdered and forced into hell. But instead of suffering there, she plays music, and flowers bloom all around her. That is the thing about empathy. Just by being there, it turns hell into paradise.