An Intoxication of Mouse Venom: Reading the Guide, Chapter 9

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

The Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (Bodhicaryavatara, hereafter, Guide) of Śāntideva is, before all else, a practical guide for those who aspire to the life of a bodhisattva, an individual whose determining principle is the attainment of bodhi, or spiritual awakening. Not just his or her personal awakening, but rather the awakening of all, for bodhi, in the Mahāyāna Buddhism that Śāntideva espouses, is a universal principle. To become an individual determined by an orientation to awakening in this tradition, one must abandon the personal, self-centered viewpoint that is our habitual condition, in favor of a growing embrace of an all-encompassing vision.[1]
To accomplish this requires a severe ethical and spiritual discipline. Egoistical tendencies to possessiveness, impulsiveness, indolence, and the like must be overturned by a rigorous commitment to generosity, dignified behavior, forbearance, and effort, while the mind itself must be collected and calm. The goal, however, is not merely to become a well-mannered person adept in tranquility meditation, however praiseworthy that may be. For manners and meditative calm alone remain compatible with the narrow perspective of the self-regarding individual. Indeed, they may well become sources of personal pride, wherein lies an inevitable danger. For Buddhism, as for the other wisdom traditions of India, the sole means to avert such pitfalls on the path to spiritual perfection is to be found in the acquisition of wisdom, insight into the real nature of things. But just how this is to be understood is by no means immediately evident. Within classical Indian thought, just what constitutes wisdom came to be sharply contested, not only between differing schools but also within them. Debate and philosophical inquiry thus became indissociable from the pursuit of wisdom, and in the ninth chapter of Śāntideva's book his preeminently practical concerns seem sometimes to give way to wrangling over philosophical fine points. However, philosophy in this case is placed in the service of the cultivation of contemplative insight. Śāntideva's practical and theoretical concerns are found, in the end, to be one.[2]
The subject of the ninth chapter of the Guide is prajñā, often translated "wisdom," "higher knowledge," or "discrimination." As such, it is the "Perfection of Wisdom" (prajñāpāramitā), the pinnacle of the six perfections of the bodhisattva's path and identified as the goal of insight (vipaśyanā), the contemplative "seeing through" that, conjoined with tranquility (śamatha), forms the heart of Buddhist meditation. Prajñā, as Śāntideva expounds it, corresponds to the teaching of the Madhyamaka tradition of Buddhist philosophy, spearheaded by Nāgārjuna during the second century CE. Nāgārjuna is widely known for his emphasis on the universal "emptiness" (śūnyatā) of phenomena, but the meaning of this concept has been subject to much debate.[3] Just how Śāntideva understands it will be among the chief concerns throughout this chapter.

Notes

I have examined Śāntideva's approach to the Mahāyāna path in relation to what French philosopher Pierre Hadot, in the context of Hellenistic philosophy, has termed "spiritual exercise," forging a passage between an inauthentic, troubled existence and authentic peace and freedom. See Kapstein, "Stoics and Bodhisattvas."
On the relationship between the theoretical concerns of Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism's practical ends, see Kapstein, "Introduction," in Reason's Traces and Kapstein, '"Spiritual Exercise' and Buddhist Epistemologists in India and Tibet."
A nuanced philosophical introduction, with reference to much of the earlier scholarship, can be found in Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka.

Citation

Kapstein, Matthew T. "An Intoxication of Mouse Venom: Reading the Guide, Chapter 9." In Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice, edited by Jonathan C. Gold and Douglas S. Duckworth, 84–98. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Interconnections

Works related to this item

1 Chapter or part of

Gold, Jonathan C., and Douglas S. Duckworth, eds. Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Books2019About this item

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.

1 Scholarship on

Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Bodhicaryāvatāra [बोधिचर्यावतार]. byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa [བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པ།]. [The Way of the Bodhisattva]. Tengyur, RKTST 3216 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3216&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

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.