Our compassionate witnessing of an other’s suffering shows that the mind can be free from the constricted life of excessive self-preoccupation and become open and attentive to others. In An Introduction to the Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra), the eighth century north-Indian Buddhist author, Śāntideva, invites his readers on a path to nourish the liberating attention to others. He presents the text as a guidebook on the path from the darkened perception of self-cherishing to an awakened life. In Śāntideva’s terminology, this is the path of the bodhisattva, the awakened or awakening (bodhi) being (sattva) who, guided by insight and compassion, works to alleviate the sufferings of others, and in doing so, finds freedom from dissatisfaction and anguish.
Way of the Bodhisattva became a primary inspiration for Tibetan writings on the stages of the Buddhist path and mind training. In recent decades, Western teachers in a variety of Buddhist traditions have drawn on Śāntideva’s presentation of the interconnections between the three components of the Buddhist path: wisdom (prajñā), moral discipline (śīla), and contemplation (samādhi). In this online program, we will explore Śāntideva’s text, which is at once a poem, a meditation manual, a moral teaching, and a philosophy textbook. In particular, we will focus on the place of faith, offering, and ritual on the path; the importance of mindfulness in our ethical lives; Śāntideva’s understanding of emptiness, the two truths, and dependent origination; and the interdependence of action, meditation, and insight. Throughout, we will attend to the ways the text insists on the interweaving of compassion and wisdom, and how the most fruitful field of practice can be our daily lives and relations with others.
Presentations in this course will refer to The Bodhicaryāvatāra, translated from the Sanskrit by Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton, published by Oxford University Press, 1995. If you already have a different translation, there is no need to purchase the Crosby and Skilton.