Shantideva · Theology

A Poet’s Manual for the Awakening Life

What the <em>Bodhicaryavatara</em> - the &lsquo;Guide to the Bodhisattva&rsquo;s Way of Life&rsquo; - actually is: a work of some nine hundred verses in which a Nalanda monk turns the whole path of compassion and wisdom into a single sustained poem, addressed first of all to himself.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that the Bodhicaryavatara is a ten-chapter poem of about nine hundred verses, composed by the monk Shantideva at Nalanda in the eighth century, that lays out the bodhisattva path as a practical, first-person manual rather than an argumentative treatise. Explain what kind of book it is and why its form matt…

Leads to Thomas a Kempis.

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