Shantideva · Theology

The Precious Life and the Nearness of Death

Shantideva’s opening call: the rare and fleeting chance of a human life fit for practice, the honest confession of one’s faults, and the urgency that the certainty of death - which strikes without warning - presses upon anyone who has grasped how brief the opportunity is.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Shantideva calls a human life fit for practice a ‘brief estate’ - rare, precious, and easily lost - that he clears the way through frank confession of faults, and that his sense of death’s nearness turns this into urgency rather than complacency. Explain how rarity, confession, and m…

Leads to Marcus Aurelius.

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