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Śāntideva

शान्तिदेव · ཞི་བ་ལྷ། · zhi ba lha · 寂天

c. 685 – c. 763Historically documented person

Eighth-century Indian monk and poet, associated with the monastery of Nālandā and the Madhyamaka school. He is the author of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, the poem on the bodhisattva path most studied in Tibetan Buddhism, and of the Śikṣāsamuccaya, an anthology of Mahāyāna sūtras. His life is known only from late hagiographies; modern research has found at Dunhuang a shorter and older version of his poem.

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Śāntideva, pintura del siglo XIX

Śāntideva, pintura del siglo XIX · Public domain

In their words

«For as long as space endures and as long as the world endures, may I too endure, to destroy the sufferings of beings.»

Bodhicaryāvatāra 10.55. Es la estrofa con que el Dalái Lama cerró su conferencia del Nobel (1989). Traducción propia del sánscrito, cotejada con Crosby y Skilton (1996) y Wallace (1997).

Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra) — Śāntideva

Their central idea

The mind of awakening (bodhicitta) is the centre of all practice: whoever generates it, though still bound to the world, becomes a child of the buddhas; its worth depends not on what is done but on the intention to free all beings.

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Biography

5 min read

One name, two books and a legend

Of Śāntideva, the poet whom Tibetan Buddhism reads the way one recites a prayer, history keeps very little: a name meaning “god of peace”, a monastery—Nālandā, the great Buddhist university of Bihar—and two works whose authorship no one disputes, the Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Śikṣāsamuccaya. Everything else comes from biographies written five to nine centuries later. The dates usually repeated, 685–763, are a late reconstruction; scholarship prefers to place him, without further precision, in the first half of the eighth century, before his verses were translated into Tibetan at the end of that same century. What matters about him, strictly speaking, is not a life but a poem and an anthology.

The prince who dreamed of Mañjuśrī

The legendary life is read in three sources: Butön's history of Buddhism (1322), Tāranātha's (1608), and a short Sanskrit biography preserved in a fourteenth-century Nepalese manuscript that J. W. de Jong studied in 1975. They agree on the essentials. Śāntideva was supposedly born a prince in a kingdom of western India—Saurāṣṭra in most versions—and on the eve of his coronation dreamed that the throne was already occupied by Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, who told him: “This is my seat.” He fled the palace, learned from masters in the forest and, according to Tāranātha and Butön, served for a time as minister to a king of eastern India, armed with a wooden sword that blinded whoever looked at it when it was exposed. These episodes follow a familiar mould: renunciation of the throne, the bodhisattva's protection, wonders.

The idler of Nālandā

At Nālandā the abbot Jayadeva ordained him and gave him the name by which he is known. There, the legend says, the monks despised him because he seemed to do only three things: eat, sleep and go to the latrine—in Sanskrit bhuñjāna, supta, kuṭiṃ gataḥ—whence the nickname Bhusuku. To humiliate him they asked him to recite a text before the whole community from a high throne. Śāntideva asked whether they wanted something familiar or something new, and began to recite the Bodhicaryāvatāra. When he reached the stanza of the ninth chapter which says that when neither being nor non-being remains before the mind, it comes to rest without support, he rose into the air until he vanished, and only his voice was heard finishing the poem. Later they learned he had left two more books in his cell, the Śikṣāsamuccaya and a Sūtrasamuccaya. The story explains, in its own way, a literary fact: that the poem circulated in different versions.

Entering the conduct of the bodhisattva

The Bodhicaryāvatāra, “entering the conduct of awakening”, is a Sanskrit poem of some nine hundred stanzas in ten chapters. It opens with the praise of bodhicitta, the mind that aspires to awakening for the good of all beings, continues with the confession of faults and the taking of the vow, and then moves through the bodhisattva's perfections: mindfulness and vigilance, patience—the sixth chapter, a relentless analysis of anger—, joyful effort, meditation, where the author teaches how to equalise oneself with others and exchange oneself for them, and wisdom, a compressed treatise of Madhyamaka philosophy that argues with Buddhist realists, with the Yogācāra and with Sāṃkhya. It closes with a long dedication that has become one of the most recited prayers of Mahāyāna Buddhism. What is extraordinary about the book is its tone: it speaks in the first person, reproaches itself, doubts, exhorts itself; it is at once manual, confession and poem.

Two poems in one

The most important finding of modern research comes from the caves of Dunhuang. Among the Tibetan manuscripts sealed there around the year 1000, Akira Saito identified in the 1990s a shorter version of the poem: some 700 stanzas in nine chapters, because the second and third chapters of the canonical version form a single one, and with much less material in the chapters on meditation and wisdom. One of the colophons attributes it to Akṣayamati, whom tradition held to be another name of the author; the Tibetan imperial catalogue of the early ninth century records the text at a length that fits the short version. The long version, of some 913 stanzas, is therefore a later enlargement, and it was the one translated into Tibetan by Rinchen Zangpo and his collaborators in the eleventh century and later revised by Loden Sherab. Tāranātha already knew of three recensions, and the legend of the monk who vanishes while reciting is probably the way tradition explained the differences. The only Chinese translation, from the late tenth century, still attributes the text to Nāgārjuna.

The anthology

The Śikṣāsamuccaya, the “compendium of training”, is something else: twenty-seven mnemonic stanzas developed in nineteen prose chapters that are, above all, quotations from more than a hundred Mahāyāna sūtras, many lost in Sanskrit and known only through it. It survives in a single Sanskrit manuscript, which Cecil Bendall edited between 1897 and 1902 and translated into English with W. H. D. Rouse in 1922; Charles Goodman published the first complete modern translation in 2016. The poem itself refers to this anthology and to a Sūtrasamuccaya for anyone who wishes to know the bodhisattva's rules; the latter has not survived, and should not be confused with the homonymous compendium attributed to Nāgārjuna.

From Tibet to the world

In India the poem received commentaries, the longest being Prajñākaramati's, from around the year 1000. But it was in Tibet that it became a central text: it was commented on by Gyaltsab Je—a disciple of Tsongkhapa—, Thogme Zangpo and Mipham, whose commentary on the ninth chapter set off a controversy lasting decades, and it was preached tirelessly in the nineteenth century by the wandering Patrul Rinpoche. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama has taught it for decades and has published commentaries on the whole work, on the chapter on patience and on the chapter on wisdom; he ended his Nobel lecture in 1989 with the stanza that asks to remain “for as long as space endures” to relieve the world's pain. Translated into French by Louis de La Vallée Poussin in 1907 and by Louis Finot in 1920, into English by Lionel Barnett in 1909 and many times since, the poem has also found readers among moral philosophers, who have seen in its arguments against selfishness an ethics of the good of all formulated a thousand years before the utilitarians'. Whoever its author was, the work has outlived his name.

Sources: Śāntideva. The Bodhicaryāvatāra. Trad., introd. y notas de Kate Crosby y Andrew Skilton; introducción general de Paul Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1996. ISBN 0192829793. · Śāntideva. A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life (Bodhicaryāvatāra). Trad. del sánscrito y del tibetano de Vesna A. Wallace y B. Alan Wallace. Ithaca (NY): Snow Lion, 1997. ISBN 1559390611. · Saito, Akira. A Study of Akṣayamati (= Śāntideva)'s Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra as Found in the Tibetan Manuscripts from Tun-huang. Mie (Japón): Mie University, 1993 (informe de investigación). · Goodman, Charles (trad.). The Training Anthology of Śāntideva: A Translation of the Śikṣā-samuccaya. Nueva York: Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN 9780199391356. · Bendall, Cecil y W. H. D. Rouse (trads.). Śikshā-samuccaya: A Compendium of Buddhist Doctrine, compiled by Śāntideva chiefly from earlier Mahāyāna Sūtras. Londres: John Murray (Indian Texts Series), 1922.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 685 · age 0

    Birth, according to traditional chronology

    The dates 685–763 come from late chronologies; hagiography has him born a prince in Saurāṣṭra (western India). Scholarship only affirms that he lived in the first half of the eighth century.

    Tradition

  2. c. 705

    Renunciation of the throne

    On the eve of his coronation he dreams that Mañjuśrī occupies his throne and flees to the forest. Hagiographic episode.

    Tradition

  3. c. 720 – 750

    Monk at Nālandā: the Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Śikṣāsamuccaya

    Ordained by abbot Jayadeva, he composes his two surviving works. The recitation before the assembly and the vanishing belong to legend.

    Probable

  4. c. 790

    First Tibetan translation (short version)

    Sarvajñādeva and Paltseg translate into Tibetan a recension of some 700 stanzas in nine chapters, the one preserved in the Dunhuang manuscripts.

    Probable

  5. c. 812

    The Ldan dkar ma catalogue records the poem

    The early ninth-century Tibetan imperial catalogue records the text at a length that fits the short version.

    Probable

  6. c. 985

    Chinese translation attributed to Nāgārjuna

    Tianxizai translates the poem into Chinese as Putixing jing (Taishō 1662), in eight chapters and under Nāgārjuna's name.

    Probable

  7. c. 1000

    Prajñākaramati's commentary

    Around 1000 the Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā, the longest surviving Indian commentary, is written.

    Probable

  8. c. 1020

    Tibetan revision of the long version

    Dharmaśrībhadra, Rinchen Zangpo and Śākya Lodrö translate the ten-chapter version; Sumatikīrti and Loden Sherab later revise it: this is the canonical text.

    Probable

  9. 1322

    Biography in Butön's History

    Butön Rinchen Drub includes Śāntideva's legendary life in his history of Buddhism.

    Documented

  10. 1608

    Biography in Tāranātha's History

    Tāranātha expands the legend and records the existence of three versions of the poem.

    Documented

  11. 1897 – 1902

    Bendall edits the Śikṣāsamuccaya

    Cecil Bendall publishes in St Petersburg, in instalments until 1902, the edition of the only Sanskrit manuscript; with W. H. D. Rouse he will translate it into English in 1922.

    Documented

  12. 1907

    First European translations

    Louis de La Vallée Poussin translates the poem into French (1907); Barnett follows in English (1909) and Finot in French (1920).

    Documented

  13. December 11, 1989

    The Dalai Lama closes his Nobel lecture with Śāntideva

    In Oslo, on 11 December 1989, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama ends his lecture with stanza 10.55 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra.

    Documented

  14. 1993

    Saito identifies the Dunhuang version

    Akira Saito publishes his study of the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts, which preserve an earlier and shorter recension attributed to Akṣayamati.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra) — Śāntideva

Written work · c. 720

Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra)

बोधिचर्यावतार (Bodhicaryāvatāra; también Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra) · tib. བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པ། (byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa) · chino 入菩薩行論 / 菩提行經

A Sanskrit poem in ten chapters tracing the bodhisattva's path: praise of the mind of awakening (bodhicitta), confession, taking the vow, mindfulness and vigilance, patience, effort, meditation—with the practice of equalising and exchanging self and others—, wisdom (a Madhyamaka exposition arguing with realists, Yogācāra and Sāṃkhya) and dedication. Written in the first person, it blends exhortation, confession and argument; it is the most studied Mahāyāna text in Tibetan Buddhism and one of the most translated into Western languages.

Not available View the book Read the full text

18 editions

The Training Anthology (Śikṣāsamuccaya) — Śāntideva

Written work · c. 720

The Training Anthology (Śikṣāsamuccaya)

शिक्षासमुच्चय (Śikṣāsamuccaya) · tib. བསླབ་པ་ཀུན་ལས་བཏུས་པ། (bslab pa kun las btus pa) · chino 大乘集菩薩學論

Twenty-seven mnemonic stanzas (kārikā) commented on in nineteen prose chapters that consist mostly of quotations from more than a hundred Mahāyāna sūtras, many lost in Sanskrit. It organises the bodhisattva's ethics around protecting, purifying and increasing one's body, possessions and merit in order to give them to beings. It is a first-rate source for lost Mahāyāna literature and the doctrinal complement to the Bodhicaryāvatāra.

Not available View the book

4 editions

Complete works (11)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

For as long as space endures and as long as the world endures, may I too endure, to destroy the sufferings of beings.

ākāśasya sthitir yāvad yāvac ca jagataḥ sthitiḥ | tāvan mama sthitir bhūyāj jagadduḥkhāni nighnataḥ ||

VerifiedBodhicaryāvatāra 10.55. Es la estrofa con que el Dalái Lama cerró su conferencia del Nobel (1989). Traducción propia del sánscrito, cotejada con Crosby y Skilton (1996) y Wallace (1997).

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Essential ideas (editorial summary)

Out of respect for copyright, these ideas are summarised in our own words and are not presented as literal quotations.

  • The mind of awakening (bodhicitta) is the centre of all practice: whoever generates it, though still bound to the world, becomes a child of the buddhas; its worth depends not on what is done but on the intention to free all beings.
  • Pain has no owner: if there is no substantial self who suffers, there is no reason to prefer relieving one's own pain over another's. The argument against selfishness is metaphysical before it is moral.
  • Anger is the inner enemy that destroys in an instant the merit of aeons; the adversary who harms us is in fact the occasion to practise patience, and so deserves gratitude.
  • One cannot cover the world so that it does not wound, but one can guard one's own mind: mindfulness (smṛti) and vigilance (saṃprajanya) are the true discipline.
  • The wisdom of emptiness is not a theoretical add-on to compassion but its foundation: all the preceding perfections exist for its sake.
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (1)

  • «If a problem can be solved, why worry? If it cannot be solved, worrying will do no good.»

    It is authentic Śāntideva (Bodhicaryāvatāra 6.10), but circulates massively attributed to the Dalai Lama or the Buddha by quotation sites; it is recorded here to correct the attribution, not the quotation.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

There is no record of his death. Hagiography (Butön, Tāranātha, the Sanskrit biography) narrates not an end but a disappearance: the monk rises into the air while reciting stanza 9.34 and is seen no more; later versions have him reappear in south India. The dates 685–763 are a late reconstruction.

Source: de Jong, J. W. «La légende de Śāntideva». Indo-Iranian Journal 16 (1975): 161–182.

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    He refutes the creator god; buddhas do not create the world, they teach the path

    No creator GodStated explicitly

    In chapter 9 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, devoted to wisdom, Śāntideva expressly discusses the thesis of a creator god (Īśvara) and rejects it: if it were an eternal and independent cause, it could not produce effects that arise and cease; if it depended on other conditions, it would no longer be the origin of everything. In the same section he refutes the primordial matter of the Sāṃkhya school. What he upholds instead is the Madhyamaka analysis: nothing has its own existence, and when neither being nor non-being remains before the mind, it comes to rest without support (9.34). This does not make his work a cold text: chapters 2 and 3 are of veneration and offering to the buddhas and bodhisattvas. But those awakened beings neither create nor govern the world; they teach the path.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    The self is like a row or an army: an aggregate without an owner

    There is no permanent selfStated explicitly

    Śāntideva approaches the self by two complementary paths in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. In chapter 9 he searches for it in body and mind, part by part, and finds it in none: neither the teeth, nor the hair, nor the sensations, nor consciousness are the self, and there is no self apart from them either. In chapter 8 he draws an ethical consequence from this. The continuum and the collection are unreal like a row or an army, so there is no owner of suffering who would justify protecting oneself alone; therefore one must meditate on the equality of self and others, who feel pain and joy equally (8.90). The absence of self is not, for him, a philosophical curiosity: it is the rational foundation of compassion.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    All who suffer suffer from desiring their own happiness

    Craving and attachmentStated explicitly

    Śāntideva's answer is at once psychological and moral. In the Bodhicaryāvatāra he states that all who suffer in the world suffer from desiring their own happiness, and all who are happy are so from desiring that of others (8.129). Attachment to oneself, the exclusive care for one's own well-being, is the source of pain; hatred is its most destructive form, and therefore there is no evil like it (6.2). Chapter 5 adds an image: one cannot cover the whole earth with leather, but the leather of one's sandals suffices; one cannot subdue the outer world, but one can subdue one's own mind. Behind all this lies the ignorance that believes in a self with its own existence, examined in chapter 9.

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  • What happens after death?

    Death comes without warning, and only our deeds follow us

    Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

    Śāntideva writes within the Indian framework of rebirth and uses it as a spur. In chapter 2 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra he depicts himself facing death: one must depart leaving everything, friends and enemies fade like a dream, and only the evil deeds committed on their account weigh. Chapter 4 recalls how hard it is to obtain a human birth with freedom to practise, like the blind turtle that finds the yoke in the ocean, and chapter 7 describes the hells to combat laziness. Death is not an end but a passage to another birth conditioned by conduct. The ultimate horizon is broader: the bodhisattva does not aspire to leave the cycle for himself, but to remain as long as there are beings who suffer (10.55).

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Awaken the mind of awakening and practise the perfections, up to wisdom

    Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

    The Bodhicaryāvatāra is, from beginning to end, a programme of practice. It starts by awakening the mind of awakening (bodhicitta), the aspiration to be liberated in order to liberate all, and sustains it with the confession and vow of chapters 2 and 3. Then come heedfulness, mindfulness and introspection (chapters 4 and 5), patience (6), effort (7), meditation (8) and wisdom (9). Each perfection corrects a specific obstacle: hatred, laziness, distraction. Śāntideva declares at the beginning of chapter 9 that the Buddha taught all the preceding for the sake of wisdom, which is what cuts the root. But without the prior discipline wisdom does not hold, and without compassion it is not the bodhisattva's.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    Never abandon the spiritual friend, even at the cost of one's life

    IndispensableStated explicitly

    Śāntideva gives the spiritual friend (kalyāṇamitra) a central place. In chapter 5 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra he asks that one never abandon, not even to save one's life, the spiritual friend who knows the meaning of the Great Vehicle and keeps the bodhisattva vows, and immediately refers to the sūtras, to the Compendium of Training and to Nāgārjuna's Compendium of Sūtras as guides to conduct. The Compendium of Training indeed gathers passages from the sūtras on how to serve and listen to the master. The spiritual friend is indispensable because he transmits discipline and view; yet the whole work is an exhortation to oneself, written, the author says at the outset, to familiarise his own mind with the teaching.

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  • Is the world real?

    Things are like illusions: they lack own-being, yet they function

    A web of causes without substanceStated explicitly

    Chapter 9 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra sets out the Madhyamaka view of the world against other Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools. Śāntideva distinguishes two truths, conventional and ultimate, and warns that what is real in the ultimate sense is beyond the reach of the intellect, which is itself conventional. Things arise from causes and conditions and, on examination, show no nature of their own; they are like a magical illusion, which appears and produces effects without being what it seems. He answers the objection that, if all is illusory, compassion would be meaningless: the illusion keeps operating on its own level, and the suffering of beings, though empty, is undergone. The world is not denied; it is seen without the solidity we attribute to it.

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  • What is love?

    As long as space endures, may I endure to end suffering

    Boundless compassionStated explicitly

    Few works have given compassion as accomplished a form as the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Its engine is the mind of awakening: the aspiration to attain buddhahood for the good of all. Chapter 8 grounds it in reasoning: one must meditate on the equality of self and others, since all feel pain and joy equally (8.90), and then on exchange, placing others where one used to place oneself. All who suffer do so from desiring their own happiness, and the happy are so from desiring that of others (8.129). Chapter 10 culminates in the vow the Dalai Lama read on receiving the Nobel Prize: for as long as space endures and the world endures, may I too endure to destroy the sufferings of beings.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    No one acts by their will alone, and yet one must strive

    Karma and choiceStated explicitly

    Śāntideva holds two claims at once. In chapter 6 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, on patience, he argues that whoever harms us does so moved by conditions they do not control, just as bile causes illness without wishing to; nothing arises by itself, and so anger at a person has no proper object. But chapter 4, on heedfulness, and chapter 7, on effort, urge insistently that the human birth not be wasted: today's actions determine future births and one's own path depends on diligence. Freedom does not consist in an independent self that chooses, but in the real possibility of changing causes: cultivating mindfulness, patience and the mind of awakening alters what is to come.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Mindfulness, introspection and meditation in the service of wisdom

    Seeing reality as it isStated explicitly

    The Bodhicaryāvatāra integrates prayer and meditation into a single path. Chapters 2 and 3 are liturgy: offering, confession, rejoicing in others' good, supplication to the buddhas and taking the bodhisattva vow. Chapter 5 teaches how to guard the mind with mindfulness and introspection, like someone watching over a wild elephant. Chapter 8, devoted to meditation, recommends the solitude of the forest and develops the equality and exchange of self and others. But all of this, he says on opening chapter 9, the Buddha taught for the sake of wisdom, which sees that nothing has its own existence. Meditation is ultimately seeing reality as it is, and that seeing is what frees the mind from its support (9.34).

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    The ultimately real is beyond the reach of the intellect

    The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

    At the beginning of chapter 9 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva concisely formulates his answer: there are two truths, conventional and ultimate, and the ultimately real is not the domain of the intellect, because the intellect itself is conventional (9.2). This does not prevent him from arguing throughout the chapter against other schools, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, with meticulous dialectic: reason serves to dismantle false ideas, such as the permanent self or the creator god. But its function is negative. When neither being nor non-being remains before the mind, there being no other option, it comes to rest without support (9.34). Realisation is not the conclusion of an argument but what remains when all the arguments have done their work.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Be for beings whatever they need: medicine, food, path, boat

    Engage with the worldStated explicitly

    The Bodhicaryāvatāra has two movements. Chapter 8 recommends withdrawing to the forest, far from the company of fools and the craving for gain, as a condition for meditation. But the horizon of the whole poem is service. In chapter 3, on taking the vow, the author wishes to be medicine and physician for the sick, food in times of famine, protector of the destitute, guide for travellers, boat and bridge for those who wish to cross. Chapter 10 ends with the vow to remain as long as the world lasts to end its sufferings. Retreat is a means; the end is to abandon no being. That is why the text has become a reference for contemporary engaged Buddhism.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Hagiographic accountsiglo VIII (según la leyenda)

The occupied throne

On the eve of the day he was to be crowned, the prince—Śāntivarman in some versions, son of a king of Saurāṣṭra—had a dream. He saw the throne on which he was to sit the next day and, seated on it, Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, who said to him: “Son, this is my seat; I am your teacher. How can the two of us sit on the same throne?” In other versions it is the goddess Tārā, in the guise of his mother, who pours boiling water over his head to show him that kingship is a similar torment. The prince took the dream as a command and fled that very night to the forest, where he learned meditation from a master whom tradition identifies with Mañjuśrī himself. The tale reproduces the mould of the Buddha's renunciation: an heir who abandons the throne at a call that comes in a dream. Its function is not to report a fact but to make the author of the Bodhicaryāvatāra a chosen one of the bodhisattva of wisdom, to whom the poem is dedicated.

Origin of the story: Butön, History of Buddhism (1322), Tāranātha, History of Buddhism in India (1608), and the Sanskrit biography in a fourteenth-century Nepalese manuscript studied by de Jong (1975). None is less than five centuries later than the life it narrates.

Source: Tāranātha. Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India. Trad. Lama Chimpa y Alaka Chattopadhyaya. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1970.

Hagiographic accountsiglo VIII (según la leyenda)

The wooden sword

Before reaching Nālandā, the legend says, Śāntideva served a king of eastern India as minister, and wore at his belt not a steel sword but a wooden one. The courtiers, jealous of his influence, denounced him: how could a man armed with a toy protect the king? The king ordered all the ministers to draw. Śāntideva asked that whoever wished to look at his weapon cover one eye; the king insisted on seeing it with both and, when it was drawn, the radiance of the wooden blade blinded the uncovered eye. Repentant, the king became a Buddhist, and Śāntideva, who had shown by his gesture a power he had no interest in exercising, left for the monastery. It is a tale of wonder underlining the paradox of the figure: the man who needs no weapons is more formidable than the armed.

Origin of the story: Butön, History of Buddhism (1322), Tāranātha, History of Buddhism in India (1608), and the Sanskrit biography in a fourteenth-century Nepalese manuscript studied by de Jong (1975). None is less than five centuries later than the life it narrates.

Source: Bu-ston (Butön Rinchen Drub). History of Buddhism (Chos-ḥbyung). Trad. E. Obermiller. Heidelberg: Harrassowitz, 1931–1932, 2 vols.

Hagiographic accountsiglo VIII (según la leyenda)

The one who ate, slept and went to the latrine

At Nālandā the monk Śāntideva seemed neither to study nor to meditate. His fellows said he had only three realisations: eating, sleeping and going to the latrine—bhuñjāna, supta, kuṭiṃ gataḥ—and from the first syllables of those three words they made his nickname, Bhusuku. To be rid of him they devised a humiliation: on the day of the annual recitation they asked him to climb a high throne and recite a sūtra before the whole community, certain he knew none. They built the throne without steps. Śāntideva climbed it effortlessly and asked whether they wished to hear something already known or something never heard before. They asked for the new, and he began to recite the Bodhicaryāvatāra. The legend turns the idler into a hidden sage: a commonplace of tantric hagiography, in which realisation hides beneath contemptible conduct. The etymology of the nickname, moreover, is a learned invention of the tale itself.

Origin of the story: Butön, History of Buddhism (1322), Tāranātha, History of Buddhism in India (1608), and the Sanskrit biography in a fourteenth-century Nepalese manuscript studied by de Jong (1975). None is less than five centuries later than the life it narrates.

Source: de Jong, J. W. «La légende de Śāntideva». Indo-Iranian Journal 16 (1975): 161–182.

Hagiographic accountsiglo VIII (según la leyenda)

The vanishing at stanza 9.34 and the three versions

When, reciting before the assembly, Śāntideva reached the stanza that says the mind comes to rest when neither being nor non-being remains before it, he rose into the air and vanished; only his voice went on being heard until the end of the poem. The monks who had taken it down disagreed: some had seven hundred stanzas, others a thousand. Tāranātha tells that later some monks went to seek him in south India and that he confirmed the central Indian version as authentic and told them that the Śikṣāsamuccaya and the Sūtrasamuccaya were in his cell. Modern research has given this legend an unexpected meaning: Dunhuang preserves a version of some seven hundred stanzas, earlier than the canonical one. The tale of the vanishing monk is probably the way tradition explained why the poem circulated in different recensions.

Origin of the story: Butön and Tāranātha (as summarised by van Schaik, 2014); the connection with the Dunhuang recension is Akira Saito's (1993).

Source: van Schaik, Sam. «The original Bodhicaryāvatāra». early Tibet (blog), 4 de febrero de 2014; revisado el 21 de julio de 2021.

Hagiographic accountsiglo VIII (según la leyenda)

The bowl that fed five hundred

Butön attributes to Śāntideva, after Nālandā, the life of a wandering wonder-worker. In the kingdom of Magadha, during a famine, he lived among five hundred non-Buddhists who made him head of their group; with a single bowl of rice he fed them all, and all were converted. Other versions show him feeding hundreds of beggars or defeating masters of other schools in debate. These are conversion episodes that Tibetan hagiography applies to many Indian masters and that cannot be checked against any source; they show how Tibetan historians filled with miracles a life of which they knew only two books.

Origin of the story: Butön, History of Buddhism (1322), Tāranātha, History of Buddhism in India (1608), and the Sanskrit biography in a fourteenth-century Nepalese manuscript studied by de Jong (1975). None is less than five centuries later than the life it narrates.

Source: Bu-ston (Butön Rinchen Drub). History of Buddhism (Chos-ḥbyung). Trad. E. Obermiller. Heidelberg: Harrassowitz, 1931–1932, 2 vols.

Testimony1960s–1989

The Dalai Lama and the master from Kinnaur

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama has told in many teachings that he received the explanation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra from Khunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen, a scholar from the Kinnaur valley in the Indian Himalaya, who lived in extreme simplicity and had studied the poem with masters of every Tibetan school. Since then he has made it the axis of his public teaching: he commented on it in full in France in the early 1990s, has devoted books to the chapters on patience and wisdom, and often repeats that the final stanza on remaining for as long as space endures is his greatest source of inspiration. He closed his Nobel Peace Prize lecture with it before the world, in Oslo, in December 1989. It is the channel through which the poem of an eighth-century Indian monk has reached a global audience.

Origin of the story: The Dalai Lama's own account in his public teachings and in the introduction to A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night (1994); the Nobel lecture, at nobelprize.org.

Source: Dalái Lama XIV (Tenzin Gyatso). A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night: A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. Trad. Padmakara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala, 1994. ISBN 0877739714.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Mind of awakening (bodhicitta)bodhicitta
Bodhicitta is the aspiration to reach complete awakening in order to free all beings. Śāntideva devotes the first three chapters of the poem to it and distinguishes two aspects, which he compares to wishing to travel and setting out: aspiring bodhicitta, the wish to awaken for others, and engaged bodhicitta, the effective decision to tread the path through the bodhisattva vow. Its praise is deliberately hyperbolic: whoever generates it, says the first chapter, instantly becomes a child of the buddhas and worthy of veneration by gods and humans, though still chained to the cycle of existences; its merit is inexhaustible because its object, beings, is infinite. The poem presents it not as a feeling but as a turn of intention that orders all later practices; hence the liturgy of confession and vow (chapters 2 and 3) is the work's portico.

Indian Mahāyāna; the tradition of “generating the mind” (cittotpāda) in the sūtras.

Source: Śāntideva. The Bodhicaryāvatāra. Trad., introd. y notas de Kate Crosby y Andrew Skilton; introducción general de Paul Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1996. ISBN 0192829793.

Equalising and exchanging self and othersparatmaparivartana
In the eighth chapter, after praising life in the forest, Śāntideva proposes two linked meditations. The first, the equality of self and others (parātmasamatā), starts from an observation: all equally desire happiness and shun pain, and another's pain is no less pain for not being mine. If there is no substantial self who owns suffering, the preference for one's own has no foundation. The second, exchange (parātmaparivartana), reverses the perspective: regarding oneself as “other” and treating others as oneself, to the point of looking with envy, rivalry and pride from the neighbour's place at one's own self. Tibetan tradition made this chapter the origin of mind training (lojong) and of the practice of tonglen. Western philosophers have debated whether the argument is an early form of consequentialist impartiality.

Chapter 8 (meditation) of the Bodhicaryāvatāra; reception in Tibetan lojong.

Source: Williams, Paul. Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Richmond (Surrey): Curzon, 1998.

Patience (kṣānti)ksanti
The sixth chapter is the most famous analysis of anger in Buddhist literature. It opens by stating that there is no evil like hatred and that a single fit of anger destroys merit gathered over aeons. It then dismantles anger with arguments: whoever harms us is moved by their own afflictions, like a sick person; if the harm comes from the stick, let us blame the one who wields it, and if from the wielder, let us blame the anger that drives him; our own body is the target we offer. And it reaches the central reversal: the enemy is the occasion to practise patience, without which there is no path, and so deserves the same gratitude as a teacher. Stanza 6.10 on the futility of dejection before what does and does not have a remedy is among the poem's most quoted. The Dalai Lama devoted a whole book to it, Healing Anger.

Third of the six perfections (pāramitā).

Source: Śāntideva. The Bodhicaryāvatāra. Trad., introd. y notas de Kate Crosby y Andrew Skilton; introducción general de Paul Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1996. ISBN 0192829793.

Mindfulness and vigilance (smṛti and saṃprajanya)smrti-samprajanya
The fifth chapter, “guarding vigilance”, holds that all dangers and all virtues arise from the mind, and that guarding the mind suffices to guard everything: one cannot cover the whole earth with leather, but with the leather of one's sandals it is as if it were covered. The two faculties that guard the mind are mindfulness (smṛti), which retains the object and the precepts, and vigilance or introspection (saṃprajanya), which examines again and again the state of body and mind. The chapter descends to very concrete rules of conduct—how to sit, how to look, how to speak—and it is here that the author refers the reader to the Śikṣāsamuccaya and the Sūtrasamuccaya for the bodhisattva's norms.

Discipline (śīla) in Mahāyāna ethics.

Source: Śāntideva. The Bodhicaryāvatāra. Trad., introd. y notas de Kate Crosby y Andrew Skilton; introducción general de Paul Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1996. ISBN 0192829793.

The Madhyamaka wisdom of the ninth chaptermadhyamaka-bca9
The ninth chapter opens with a programmatic declaration—the Buddha taught all the preceding practices for the sake of wisdom—and then offers a compressed exposition of Nāgārjuna's middle way. It distinguishes the two truths, conventional and ultimate, and warns that the ultimate is beyond the reach of the intellect. It argues with Buddhist realists, who admit ultimate entities, and with the Yogācāra, to whose theory of self-awareness (svasaṃvedana) it devotes a critique that Tibetan tradition would debate for centuries; it refutes the existence of a self, of a creator god and of Sāṃkhya's primordial matter, and applies the four applications of mindfulness to the analysis of body, sensations, mind and phenomena. Tibetan tradition read it as a Prāsaṅgika text; Mipham's nineteenth-century commentary and the Gelug reply opened one of its most enduring controversies.

Indian Madhyamaka; Tibetan reception (Gyaltsab Je, Mipham).

Source: Williams, Paul. Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Richmond (Surrey): Curzon, 1998.

Dedication of merit (pariṇāmanā)parinamana
The tenth chapter transfers all the good accumulated in writing the poem to beings: may the sick be healed, the blind see, travellers arrive, the hells grow cool. It is a list that grows until it embraces the cosmos and culminates in the wish to remain in the world “for as long as space endures” to relieve its pain. Doctrinally it expresses the Mahāyāna idea that merit is not the practitioner's property but something that can and must be given away. In the Dunhuang recension it is even preserved in a separate manuscript (IOL Tib J 630), which suggests it was recited independently, as Tibetan communities still do today.

Mahāyāna liturgy; prayer recited in Tibetan Buddhism.

Source: van Schaik, Sam. «The original Bodhicaryāvatāra». early Tibet (blog), 4 de febrero de 2014; revisado el 21 de julio de 2021.

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life" - Day 1

    Lecture· EN· 2010

    Dalai LamaOfficial channel

  • Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life - Day 1

    Lecture· EN· 2018

    Dalai LamaOfficial channel

  • Day 1 - "Shantideva's A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life" - Chapter 1

    Lecture· EN· 2022

    Dalai LamaOfficial channel

  • Día 1 - Guía del Modo de Vida de los Bodisatvas de Shantideva - Capítulo 9

    Lecture· ES· 2022

    El Dalái LamaOfficial channel

  • Stephen Batchelor on Shantideva

    Lecture· EN

    Belfast Buddhist

  • [#1: Jul 13, 2026] How to be Caring: Shantideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra - Jay Garfield

    Lecture· EN· 2026

    Shantideva Center, FPMT

  • Pema Chodron – On Shantideva

    Interview· EN

    Pema Chodron FoundationOfficial channel

  • The Story of Shantideva with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

    Lecture· EN

    Yongey Mingyur RinpocheOfficial channel

  • The Way of the Bodhisattva with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

    Lecture· EN

    Yongey Mingyur RinpocheOfficial channel

  • Chapter 6: Patience (Intro) - Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life with Ven. Jamyang

    Lecture· EN

    Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre DelhiOfficial channel

  • Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara | Swami Yogatmananda

    Lecture· EN

    Vedanta Society of New York

  • Bodhicharyavatara de Shantideva, clase 1

    Lecture· ES

    Carlo R. Carranza

  • Enseñanzas de Shantideva - Capítulo de la dedicación del Bodhicharyavatara

    Lecture· ES

    Druk Manjushri

  • Full Audio-Book: The Path of Light: The Bodhicaryavatara by ShantiDeva

    Third-party recording· EN

    Global Well-Being

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • SA · Escritura nepalesa (bhujimol/newari) · Siglo VIII

    Śikṣāsamuccaya

    Surviving witness
    Único manuscrito sánscrito completo conocido, base de la edición de Bendall (1897–1902)
    Custodian
    Cambridge University Library (colección Wright)

  • BO · Tibetano (dbu can) · Siglo VIII (traducción tibetana de finales del VIII)

    byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa (recensión breve)

    Surviving witness
    Copia completa repartida entre IOL Tib J 628 y Pelliot tibétain 794; copia parcial (c. 60 %) IOL Tib J 629; copia del capítulo de la dedicatoria IOL Tib J 630
    Custodian
    British Library (Londres) y Bibliothèque nationale de France (París) · IOL Tib J 628, 629, 630; Pelliot tibétain 794
    Digitisation
    idp.bl.uk/…
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Influenced by

    Nāgārjuna

    The ninth chapter expounds Nāgārjuna's middle way, and the poem itself (5.106) refers to a compendium attributed to him.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

    The Śikṣāsamuccaya is an anthology of more than a hundred sūtras attributed to the Buddha.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Tsongkhapa

    Tsongkhapa and his disciple Gyaltsab Je read the ninth chapter as a Prāsaṅgika text and commented on it; Paul Williams studies that reading.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)

    The poem is the axis of his public teaching: he has commented on it in full and by chapters, and closed his Nobel lecture with it (1989).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Pema Chödrön

    Author of a commentary on the poem, No Time to Lose (2005).

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Milarepa

    The Kagyu tradition joins the yogi's renunciation to the bodhisattva ethics Gampopa took from the Kadam school, where the Bodhicaryāvatāra was a central text.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Thich Nhat Hanh

    Both ground practice in the interdependence of one's own and others' suffering; Thich Nhat Hanh called it “interbeing”.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Contemporary of

    Huineng

    Rough contemporaries at the two ends of Asia: while the poem was being composed at Nālandā, the legend of the sixth Chan patriarch was taking shape in south China.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Hakuin Ekaku

    Hakuin insisted that awakening without the vow to save beings is incomplete (“post-satori practice”), an idea close to the primacy of bodhicitta.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Shunryu Suzuki

    Both treat practice as an everyday attitude rather than an achievement; a thematic coincidence, with no documented influence.

    Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. van Schaik, Sam. «The original Bodhicaryāvatāra». early Tibet (blog), 4 de febrero de 2014; revisado el 21 de julio de 2021.
  2. Wikidata, «Shantideva», QID Q445460 (VIAF 23444930; LCCN n80102717).
  3. Śāntideva. The Bodhicaryāvatāra. Trad., introd. y notas de Kate Crosby y Andrew Skilton; introducción general de Paul Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 1996. ISBN 0192829793.
  4. Śāntideva. A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life (Bodhicaryāvatāra). Trad. del sánscrito y del tibetano de Vesna A. Wallace y B. Alan Wallace. Ithaca (NY): Snow Lion, 1997. ISBN 1559390611.
  5. de Jong, J. W. «La légende de Śāntideva». Indo-Iranian Journal 16 (1975): 161–182.
  6. Saito, Akira. A Study of Akṣayamati (= Śāntideva)'s Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra as Found in the Tibetan Manuscripts from Tun-huang. Mie (Japón): Mie University, 1993 (informe de investigación).
  7. Goodman, Charles (trad.). The Training Anthology of Śāntideva: A Translation of the Śikṣā-samuccaya. Nueva York: Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN 9780199391356.
  8. Bendall, Cecil y W. H. D. Rouse (trads.). Śikshā-samuccaya: A Compendium of Buddhist Doctrine, compiled by Śāntideva chiefly from earlier Mahāyāna Sūtras. Londres: John Murray (Indian Texts Series), 1922.
  9. Bendall, Cecil (ed.). Çikshāsamuccaya: A Compendium of Buddhistic Teaching compiled by Çāntideva chiefly from earlier Mahāyāna-sūtras. San Petersburgo: Academia Imperial de Ciencias (Bibliotheca Buddhica I), 1897–1902.
  10. Bu-ston (Butön Rinchen Drub). History of Buddhism (Chos-ḥbyung). Trad. E. Obermiller. Heidelberg: Harrassowitz, 1931–1932, 2 vols.
  11. Tāranātha. Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India. Trad. Lama Chimpa y Alaka Chattopadhyaya. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1970.
  12. Lele, Amod. «Śāntideva». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009.
  13. Pezzali, Amalia. Śāntideva, mystique bouddhiste des VIIe et VIIIe siècles. Florencia: Vallecchi, 1968.
  14. NTI Reader. «菩提行經 (Putixing jing), Taishō n.º 1662», trad. china atribuida a Nāgārjuna, traducida por Tianxizai (天息災), dinastía Song del Norte.
  15. Dalái Lama XIV (Tenzin Gyatso). A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night: A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. Trad. Padmakara Translation Group. Boston: Shambhala, 1994. ISBN 0877739714.
  16. Williams, Paul. Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Richmond (Surrey): Curzon, 1998.
  17. Finot, Louis (trad.). La Marche à la lumière (Bodhicaryāvatāra), poème sanskrit de Çāntideva. París: Bossard (Les Classiques de l'Orient), 1920. Texto validado en Wikisource.
  18. La Vallée Poussin, Louis de (trad.). Bodhicaryāvatāra. Introduction à la pratique des futurs Bouddhas, poème de Çāntideva. París: Bloud, 1907.
  19. Barnett, Lionel D. (trad.). The Path of Light, rendered for the first time into English from the Bodhi-charyāvatāra of Śānti-Deva: A Manual of Mahā-yāna Buddhism. Londres: John Murray (Wisdom of the East), 1909.
  20. Kværne, Per. An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs: A Study of the Caryāgīti. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977.
  21. The Nobel Prize. «The 14th Dalai Lama — Nobel Lecture», Oslo, 11 de diciembre de 1989; la conclusión con la estrofa de Śāntideva se reproduce en CBS News, «Almanac: The Dalai Lama».
  22. Chödrön, Pema. No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva. Boston: Shambhala, 2005. ISBN 1590301358.
  23. Prajñākaramati. Bodhicaryāvatārapañjikā. Ed. Louis de La Vallée Poussin. Calcuta: Asiatic Society of Bengal (Bibliotheca Indica), 1901–1914.
Rights holder
Obra original en dominio público (siglo VIII). Las traducciones modernas tienen derechos propios: Oxford University Press (Crosby y Skilton; Goodman), Shambhala Publications (Padmakara; Karma Choephel; comentarios del Dalái Lama, Kunzang Pelden y Pema Chödrön), Snow Lion (Wallace), Wisdom Publications, Tharpa Publications, Ediciones Dharma, Miraguano.

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Fechas: 685–763 es la cronología tradicional que recoge Wikidata; la erudición solo afirma «primera mitad del siglo VIII». Se han mantenido como aproximadas y marcadas «traditional».
  • Signatura del manuscrito sánscrito único del Śikṣāsamuccaya en la Cambridge University Library (colección Wright): no se ha podido confirmar en un catálogo accesible.
  • Traductores de las ediciones españolas de Ediciones Dharma (2008) y Miraguano (2015): no constan en Open Library; comprobar en el colofón.
  • Obras tántricas atribuidas a un «Śāntideva» en el Tengyur (rituales del ciclo Guhyasamāja): no se han podido verificar los números Tōhoku; si se confirman, añadir como «attributed» con nota de homonimia probable.
  • No hay texto sánscrito del Bodhicaryāvatāra en Wikisource; las ediciones de Vaidya (1960) y Bhattacharya (1960) están en Internet Archive solo como escaneo.
  • Barnett (1909) y Bendall-Rouse (1922) registrados con caution: true (derechos en la UE/España hasta 2031/2041).
  • Duraciones y años de varios vídeos: oEmbed no los devuelve; se han dejado en null salvo los del canal oficial del Dalái Lama.

Researched on 2026-10-25