Śāntideva in Three Ideas
the essentialsExchanging self and other
Since suffering is suffering whoever has it, and there is no self to own it, why protect my pain and not yours?
Patience
One moment of anger destroys the merit of aeons; the enemy is the teacher of patience.
The bodhisattva's prayer
“For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world.”
Śāntideva (8th century CE) was a monk of Nālandā and a Madhyamaka philosopher whose poem Bodhicaryāvatāra (“Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva”) is one of the great works of world religious literature. In ten chapters of verse, it describes the awakening of the mind of awakening (bodhicitta) — the aspiration to become a Buddha for the sake of all beings — and the practice of the perfections of generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom. He also compiled the Śikṣāsamuccaya (“Compendium of Training”), an anthology of Mahāyāna sūtras on ethics.
The poem
The Bodhicaryāvatāra is intensely personal, written in the first person, alternating confession, aspiration, argument and praise. Its sixth chapter, on patience, is one of the great treatments of anger: “There is no evil like hatred, and no austerity like patience” (6.2). One who harms us is driven by his own afflictions, as a fire burns because it is hot; the stick that strikes us is held by a man who is moved by anger — so why be angry with the man, and not with the anger? Enemies are precious, since without them there could be no practice of patience.
Its eighth chapter, on meditation, contains the famous practice of the equality and exchange of self and other (parātmasamatā, parātmaparivartana). Since all beings equally want happiness and fear suffering, and since there is no real self to own suffering — “the continuum and the collection are false, like a line of ants or an army” — there is no reason to protect my suffering more than another’s. “Suffering without an owner must be removed simply because it is suffering” (8.101–103). This argument from no-self to altruism is one of the most original in Buddhist ethics, and has been compared with Parfit’s.
Its ninth chapter, on wisdom, is a dense defence of Madhyamaka emptiness, and the tenth is a dedication of merit, ending with the verse the Dalai Lama often quotes:
For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world. (10.55)
Legacy
The Bodhicaryāvatāra became central to Tibetan Buddhism, where it has been taught and commented on for a thousand years; the Dalai Lama calls it the source of his inspiration. It has been translated into many languages and is now read widely in the West as a classic of compassion.
Curiosities
did you know?- Legend says the monks of Nālandā, thinking him lazy (he seemed only to eat, sleep and stroll), asked him to recite a text, hoping to humiliate him. He recited the Bodhicaryāvatāra — and while reciting the ninth chapter on wisdom, he rose into the air and vanished.
- The Dalai Lama often closes his talks with Śāntideva’s verse ‘For as long as space endures…’.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- If there is no self, why should I prefer my own happiness to yours?
Explore Next
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423 verses of the Buddha’s teaching in 26 chapters — on the mind, the fool and the wise, anger, craving, the path and the true Brahmin. The best-loved Buddhist scripture, and the shortest door into the Buddha’s ethics.
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