New York Stan sent this beautiful imagery over, all of the performers are purportedly deaf. The thousand handed deity reaches back to the male Avalokitesvara or Chenrezig in mahayana buddhism and his female form Guan Yin.
One prominent Buddhist story tells of Avalokiteśvara vowing never to rest until he had freed all sentient beings from samsara. Despite strenuous effort, he realizes that still many unhappy beings were yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, his head splits into eleven pieces. Amitabha Buddha, seeing his plight, gives him eleven heads with which to hear the cries of the suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara attempts to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that his two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitabha comes to his aid and invests him with a thousand arms with which to aid the suffering multitudes.
Manicures must have been a celestial bitch.
And since I hopefully have your attention and can talk about China...An amazing country - Some of the most enlightened religions and teachings in the world sprung from China - Taoism, Chan or the chinese variant of Zen, Confucious, Buddhism after its inception in India.
It is a shame that the country and its Han majority, which went through the ugly cultural revolution and the purges, has had to step on the fingers and toes of so many of it's neighbors and smaller ethnicities, like Tibet, Zhuang, Miao, Hui, Mongol, Tujia, Bai, Yao, Li, Dai, Hani, Kazakh, Buyei, Uighur, Manchu, Falun, etc. I hope that with their new wealth and standing comes a new tolerance and empathy and a hearkening back to their more enlightened roots.
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