The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryavatara)
The Way of the Bodhisattva (Sanskrit: Bodhicaryāvatāra, “Introduction to the Conduct of the Bodhisattva”) is a Mahayana poem in ten chapters by the Indian monk Śāntideva, written in the early 8th century. It is the best-loved guide to the bodhisattva path — the awakening of bodhicitta, the wish to become enlightened for the sake of all beings — and it stands at the very centre of Tibetan practice. Among all the great texts, it is perhaps the tenderest and most personal. It is a treasure of Buddhist literature.
What it is
The Bodhicaryāvatāra is not a scripture in the strict sense — not a sutra, not the word of the Buddha — but a named author’s composition, a work of luminous Sanskrit verse. In the Tibetan canon it belongs to the Tengyur, the collection of treatises and commentaries by the great Indian masters, as distinct from the Kangyur of the Buddha’s own word. What sets it apart from a dry treatise is its voice: Śāntideva writes in the first person, wrestling with his own mind, and the poem reads less like a manual than like the intimate journal of someone learning to love the whole world.
Śāntideva of Nālandā
Its author, Śāntideva, was a monk-scholar of Nālandā, the great Buddhist monastic university of ancient India, in the early 8th century CE. The traditional story of his life is charming and almost certainly embroidered: his fellow monks are said to have thought him idle and useless — a monk who seemed to do nothing but eat and sleep — and to have invited him to teach as a humiliation, only for him to astonish them by reciting the entire Bodhicaryāvatāra from memory, rising into the air as he reached its soaring chapter on wisdom. The tale is hagiography; what scholars affirm is the Nālandā setting and the 8th-century date. The poem itself is his enduring monument.
The ten chapters
The Bodhicaryāvatāra is arranged in ten chapters that lead the reader step by step into the bodhisattva’s life:
- It opens by praising bodhicitta, the awakening-mind, and the immense good of arousing it.
- It moves through confession of one’s failings and the taking hold of bodhicitta — the formal resolve to seek awakening for all beings.
- It turns to vigilance and the guarding of awareness (introspection), the alert watchfulness that protects the resolve.
- It then treats the perfections (pāramitās) — with especially celebrated chapters on patience (kṣānti, chapter 6), meditative concentration (chapter 8), and wisdom (prajñā, chapter 9, its great exposition of emptiness).
- It closes with a famous dedication of merit (chapter 10), offering the good of the whole work to the welfare of every living being — one of the most moving passages in Buddhist literature.
(An earlier, shorter recension of the text is known from Tibetan manuscripts at Dunhuang, differing somewhat in length and arrangement; the standard version studied today is the ten-chapter text.)
The heart: bodhicitta and exchanging self and other
If the poem has a single beating heart, it is the cultivation of compassion so radical that it dissolves the boundary between self and other. Its eighth chapter contains the teaching for which it is most treasured: the meditation on exchanging self and other — training to cherish others as one now cherishes oneself, and to regard others’ suffering as one’s own to relieve.
This is not sentiment but a rigorous discipline, argued with a philosopher’s precision: if suffering is bad wherever it occurs, Śāntideva reasons, then there is no reason to relieve only my suffering and not yours. This chapter is the textual root of the Tibetan mind-training practices known as lojong, and of tonglen — the practice of breathing in others’ pain and breathing out one’s own well-being. From these few verses grew a whole tradition of compassion-practice.
Why it matters, and how to read it
The Bodhicaryāvatāra is among the most cherished and most taught texts in all of Tibetan Buddhism — the standard source for arousing bodhicitta and cultivating the six perfections. The 14th Dalai Lama has taught it many times, calling it a principal source of his own practice of compassion. Its influence reaches wherever the Mahayana ideal of the bodhisattva is honoured.
To read it, reach for a recognised translation and note its source language: the Padmakara version (The Way of the Bodhisattva) and Stephen Batchelor’s render the Tibetan, while Crosby and Skilton’s (The Bodhicaryāvatāra, Oxford) renders the Sanskrit — two valid titles for the one work. Read a few verses at a time, slowly; this is a text meant to be practised, not merely finished. For its author, see Śāntideva; for the perfections it teaches, the six perfections; and for the wider library, Buddhist scriptures. Unfamiliar terms are in the glossary.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Way of the Bodhisattva?
The Way of the Bodhisattva (Sanskrit: Bodhicaryāvatāra, 'Introduction to the Conduct of the Bodhisattva') is a Mahayana Buddhist poem in ten chapters, written by the Indian monk Śāntideva in the early 8th century. It is the classic guide to the bodhisattva path — arousing bodhicitta, the awakening-mind that seeks enlightenment for the sake of all beings, and cultivating the perfections, above all patience, meditation, and wisdom. It is especially beloved in Tibetan Buddhism.
Who wrote the Bodhicaryavatara?
Śāntideva, an Indian monk-scholar of the great monastic university of Nālandā, in the early 8th century CE. The colourful stories of his life — that he seemed idle to his fellow monks until he astonished them by reciting the entire poem — are traditional and hagiographic, but scholars agree on his Nālandā setting and 8th-century date. The Bodhicaryāvatāra is his composition, not a sutra or a discourse of the Buddha.
Is the Way of the Bodhisattva a sutra?
No — and this is worth getting right. It is not a sutra and not the word of the Buddha; it is a named author's composition, a poem-treatise by Śāntideva. In the Tibetan canon such works belong to the Tengyur, the collection of treatises and commentaries by Indian masters, as distinct from the Kangyur, the collection of the Buddha's own word. It is revered for its depth and beauty, but honestly as Śāntideva's work.
Why is it important in Tibetan Buddhism?
It is one of the most cherished and most taught texts in all of Tibetan Buddhism — the standard source for cultivating bodhicitta and the six perfections. Its eighth chapter, on 'exchanging self and other,' is the textual root of the mind-training (lojong) practices and of tonglen, the practice of taking in others' suffering and giving out one's own happiness. The 14th Dalai Lama has taught it many times.
Sources
- Padmakara Translation Group (trans.), 'The Way of the Bodhisattva' (Shambhala, 1997; revised 2006) — from the Tibetan; and Kate Crosby & Andrew Skilton (trans.), 'The Bodhicaryāvatāra' (Oxford World's Classics, 1995) — from the Sanskrit
- Śāntideva, an Indian monk of Nālandā, early 8th century CE — Encyclopædia Britannica, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Śāntideva and the Bodhicaryāvatāra
- Stephen Batchelor (trans.), 'A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life' (Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, 1979) — from the Tibetan