COMPASSION WITH A THOUSAND ARMS

One often finds Avalokitesvara [the bodhisattva of compassion] portrayed as having a thousand arms [and a thousand eyes], and these symbolize his innumerableactivities. He took a vow to save all sentient beings in that very lifetime....As long as there are more sentient beings and as long as there is more that needs to bedone, his compassion also increases. And this shows that compassion is something within us. Where there is new suffering or a new outbreak of violence, thatviolence contains another eye, another hand of Avalokitesvara. The two things always go together. There is always a kind of negative, but there is always a positivewhich comes with it. In this particular sense, then, one should not exclude the negative and work only for the positive, but realize that the negative contains thepositive within itself. Therefore the act of compassion, the act of Avalokiteshvara, is never ending.

From "The Mahasattva Avalokiteshvara," pages 450-451 in THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHOGYAM TRUNGPA, Volume One.