Śāntideva's Ethics of Impartial Compassion

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

The insight and eloquence found in Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (Bodhicaryāvatāra, herefater Guide) have made the text an influential source of ethical guidance and inspiration to many generations of Buddhists. We today may be able to learn something about ethics from the text as well; but in order to do so successfully, we must understand how its normative concepts function and how they hang together. To many interpreters, engagement with the ethics of the Guide also means trying to classify the overall view of the text, or at least some particular aspects of its view, in terms familiar to Westerners who write about ethics today. Not all scholars agree about whether it is appropriate to attempt to use our modern categories to understand South Asian Buddhist views about how to live. But for those who wish to engage seriously and respectfully with the Buddhist tradition as philosophy, it would be very helpful if it were possible to ascertain where Śāntideva's ethical views might fit, if they fit at all, in the space of ethical theories that are defended today. (Goodman, preliminary remarks, 209)

Citation

Goodman, Charles. "Śāntideva's Ethics of Impartial Compassion." In Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice, edited by Jonathan C. Gold and Douglas S. Duckworth, 209–20. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Chapter or part of

Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice

This book serves as a companion to the Bodhicaryāvatāra. The fifteen essays contained here illuminate the Guide's many philosophical, literary, ritual, and ethical dimensions.

Book

Scholarship on

Bodhicaryāvatāra

An "Introduction to Bodhisattva Practice," the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra is a poem about the path of a bodhisattva, in ten chapters, written by the Indian Buddhist Śāntideva (fl. c. 685–763). One of the masterpieces of world literature, it is a core text of Mahāyāna Buddhism and continues to be taught, studied, and commented upon in many languages and by many traditions around the world. The main subject of the text is bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and the path and practices of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (pāramitās). The text forms the basis of many contemporary discussions of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.

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