(Excerpts from Raylene's upcoming book "Between The Visions")

The Honoring of the Female Buddhas

One evening I stopped to think about all the self-realized women who had ever lived. How many of these female Buddha had walked silently though their lives, never being recognized for their enlightenment. I decided to invoke their Presence.

I call forth the Power and the Presence of all Female Buddhas from the past, the present and the future, especially those who were never recognized down through the centuries of time.

I asked that their wisdom be brought forth and given to me so that they could finally have a voice. The Female Buddhas came as nameless ones. Some of them came from the East, while others I saw as temple priestesses from ancient times. This particular invocation became my favorite meditation. After saying this invocation for many months something wonderful happened. It was my first Christmas in Mt. Shasta after moving here. My mother and father had been invited for Christmas Eve and we had just finished dinner and had begun opening presents. My mother handed Andreas and I a package and was very excited for us to open it. Andreas pulled back the Christmas wrapping to reveal a beautiful antique wooden Kuan Yin statue. She had been passed down to my mother from her cousin who had recently passed away. David, my mother's cousin was a very scholarly man but he was an atheist. Oddly enough he had two beautiful possessions that he displayed in his home. One was a beautiful picture of a Madonna and child and the other was this very old Kuan Yin statue. I examined the statue and noticed that on the face of Kuan Yin the dark wood had split, leaving her face scared. Looking deep into the statue's serene face, her scar reminded me of looking at the face of the Black Madonna of Czechoslovakia. This famous Black Madonna is noted for many cures and miracles. But across her face she bears a scar. I now was looking at an Eastern Madonna that bore the same marking naturally from the splitting of the black ebony wood.

A few days later I suggested to Andreas that we should dedicate this statue on the altar since she had never been properly blessed. We put the Kuan Yin on our home altar and started to do the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum, the mantra of Avalokiteshwara, the Buddha of Compassion. This Buddha came to the gateway of his enlightenment and at the point of being able to pass into Nirvana he heard the cries of humanity's suffering. He vowed to come back over and over again until all of humanity had gained enlightenment. This became the Bodhisattva vow. When Buddhism came to China Avalokiteshwara transformed into his Feminine aspect, Kuan Yin. In Tibet Avalokiteshwara is known as Chenresig and his female Shakti is Tara. Tara has many different manifestations but the most popular is Jetsendolma, Green Tara, known as the Mother of the Buddhas.

As our Kuan Yin statue stood on the altar with candles flickering around her and the smell of sandalwood incense filling the air, the words Om Mani Padme Hum (The Jewel in the Lotus of my Heart) hummed though my voice and vibrated in my head like a hive of honey bees. Realizations began to take form in my mind as to why this statue had come to me in such a way. Symbolically this statue lived in the house of a person who had no belief in the Divine. So this Female Buddha was in a home where she was not recognized. She bore the scar of the Black Madonna across her face. The Black Madonna is the Feminine Aspect of the Divine that has not been honored, whether this comes in the form of Mother Earth, or Sacred Sexuality, or Female Saints and Shaktis that have not been given a voice in the world religions of the East or the West. I looked at the symbolic meaning of this Kuan Yin statue that was given to Andreas and I and realized she now was being honored. We dedicated her and all Female Buddhas that had never been recognized on the Altar that day.

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