Kuan-Yin: A Winter Reverie

Joyce Camuyrano Cunningham, MS, LMFT, CST-T

Abstract

This article is a reflection inspired by a photograph of a Kuan Yin statue in one of Kay Bradway’s Journal articles. The author recognizes this Kuan Yin as the same figure who presided over an earlier STA workshop she attended and muses upon the role of Kuan Yin both at the conference and in analysis as she who listens “to all her devotees…” and androgynously holds the opposites. She recalls the synchronistic shattering and mending of the Kuan Yin image in her own collection and relates this to the bodhisattva’s ability to hold imperfection. She includes some examples of the use of Kuan Yin in the tray and then returns to the concept of the synchronistic or “co-moment” when “we (as therapists) meet the sandplayer’s … image with logos and Eros, with understanding and compassion, with Kuan Yin.”

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