Shantideva: Author of The Way of the Bodhisattva

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 3 June 2026 · Updated 13 November 2026

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Shantideva (Sanskrit Śāntideva), who probably lived between the late 7th and mid-8th centuries, was an Indian monk, poet, and philosopher of the Mahāyāna — and the author of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, “The Way of the Bodhisattva,” a guide in verse to the path of compassion that Britannica counts “among the most popular Mahayana literary works.”

In Tibetan Buddhism, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, Tibetan Buddhists “revere Śāntideva and his work,” above all the Bodhicaryāvatāra.

The Monk of Nālandā

Little is known of Shantideva’s life with historical certainty, but the traditional account is vivid. The Tibetan historians Butön (writing in 1322) and Tāranātha (in 1608) make him a prince of Saurāṣṭra, in what is now Gujarat in western India — and, like the Buddha before him, he turned from the throne. On the eve of his coronation, Butön relates, the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī appeared to him in a dream, seated on the throne itself, and the prince fled. (Royal birth, the scholar Charles Goodman cautions, was a standard feature of Indian Buddhist hagiographies, so this detail deserves some scepticism.) He became a monk, the story continues, at the famed Nālandā, the vast monastic university that was then the intellectual heart of the Buddhist world; that much, the philosopher Amod Lele judges, there is little reason to doubt. His own writings place him in the Madhyamaka (“Middle Way”) philosophy of Nāgārjuna.

His dates are uncertain too. Another Indian author, Śāntarakṣita, quotes him in a text that must have been composed by 763 CE, so his life most likely fell between the late 7th and mid-8th centuries; the scholar Akira Saito suggests c. 690–750. Two major works are attributed to him: the Bodhicaryāvatāra, and the Śikṣāsamuccaya (translated by Charles Goodman as The Training Anthology of Śāntideva), an anthology of passages from more than a hundred Mahāyāna sūtras with his own commentary. Even his name holds a puzzle: the earliest, shorter version of the poem, found among the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, names its author Akṣayamati, and whether the two names belong to one person, Saito writes, “has yet to be fully examined”.

The Lazy Monk and the Sublime Verses

The most famous story about Shantideva is a lesson in not judging by appearances. At Nālandā, the tradition relates, his fellow monks thought him hopelessly idle — he seemed to do nothing but eat, sleep, and idle his days away. Hoping to humiliate him into leaving, they invited him to give a formal public teaching, expecting him to fail and be shamed.

Shantideva agreed. Taking his seat before the assembly, he asked whether they wished to hear something old or something new. Something new, they said, mockingly. And then he began to recite — extempore — the luminous verses of the Bodhicaryāvatāra. The legend adds a final marvel: as he reached the profound chapter on wisdom and emptiness, he rose into the air and slowly vanished from sight, his voice continuing to teach as his body disappeared. The “idle” monk had been a hidden master all along.

The Way of the Bodhisattva

Shantideva’s masterwork is a step-by-step guide to becoming a bodhisattva — one who vows to attain full Buddhahood not for oneself alone but for the liberation of all beings. Its chapters lead the reader through the whole journey: arousing bodhicitta, the “awakening mind” of compassion; confessing faults and rejoicing in others’ good; and then cultivating the six perfections — generosity, ethics, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom.

What has made it endure is not only its depth but its warmth and practicality. Shantideva writes less like a remote scholar than like a wise, honest friend talking himself — and us — toward the good. Two of his teachings are especially treasured:

• On patience and anger. He argues, with disarming logic, that anger is our true enemy, destroying our peace and our merit in a moment, and that it can be undone by reflection. If a problem can be solved, he reasons, there is no need to worry; and if it cannot be solved, worrying does no good either way.
• On exchanging self and other. His boldest teaching is the practice of equalising and exchanging self and other — coming to cherish the welfare of others as instinctively as we now cherish our own. Scholars of Tibetan mind training connect it with the practice of tonglen, “sending and taking,” part of lojong and still taught today by teachers such as Pema Chödrön.

He is also famous for a homely image of this inner revolution: rather than trying to cover the whole rough earth in leather to protect our feet, he observes, it is far wiser simply to cover the soles of our own shoes. We cannot remake the world to suit us — but we can transform our own mind, and that changes everything.

His Enduring Influence

The Bodhicaryāvatāra travelled from India to Tibet, where, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, “All the major Tibetan texts on the stages of the bodhisattva path, such as those of Tsong kha pa and sGam po pa, quote it at length.” The Dalai Lama teaches from it often and, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, describes it as his favourite religious work. “I keep a copy beside my bed and read it whenever I can,” he told an audience in Leh in 2022; two years earlier, speaking of his own peace of mind, he said he was “inspired by verses by Shantideva” and quoted the stanzas beginning “And now as long as space endures”.

More than twelve centuries after he wrote, Shantideva still does what he set out to do: he makes the vast, almost impossible ideal of universal compassion feel not only beautiful but practicable — a path that an ordinary person, starting exactly where they are, can actually begin to walk.

For his book among our recommendations, see the best Buddhist books for beginners; for the philosophy he followed, Nāgārjuna; and for other figures who shaped the path, famous Buddhist teachers.