Theology
c. 685 to 763 CE, Nalanda, India
The Nalanda monk whose Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life turned the whole path of compassion and wisdom into a single unforgettable poem.
Start learning Shantideva →What the Bodhicaryavatara - the ‘Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’ - 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 po…
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…
Shantideva’s discipline of watchfulness - that since we cannot armor the whole world against every danger, but can master our own mind, taming the mind accomplishes everything: kept by mindfulness at the door and vigila…
Shantideva’s argument for impartial compassion: another’s suffering deserves exactly the same concern as my own, because suffering is simply suffering wherever it occurs - and the boundary of the ‘self’ that seems to ma…
Shantideva’s ninth chapter, one of the most compact expositions of Madhyamaka ever written: that all the other perfections were taught for the sake of wisdom , that reality has two truths - conventional and ultimate - a…
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