Entering the Path of Enlightenment-Review by Seyfort Ruegg
Description
Combining as it does the theoretical with the practical sides of Mahayana Buddhism, Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatarā is one of the best known and most frequently used treatises of the pure Madhyamaka school, of which it is one of the latest productions of Indian origin (7th century). Śāntideva was also the complier of an extensive anthology of Sūtra texts dealing largely with the same topics, the Śikṣāsamuccaya; compared with this work the Bodhicaryāvatāra is practically more methodical and philosophically more systematic, but the fact that it is composed entirely in verse no doubt gives rise to many a difficulty in interpretation. In Tibet there are a number of important commentaries on this work (and in particular on its ninth chapter dealing with the Perfection of transcending discriminative understanding) which testify to the significance attached to it by the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
While there exist an English translation of Śāntideva's Śikṣāsamuccaya by C. Bendall and W. Rouse (London, 1922) and also two French translations of the Bodhicaryāvatarā, one by L. de La Vallée Poussin (Paris, 1907) and the other by L. Finot (Paris, 1920), in English it has been available only in the partial translation by L. D. Barnett first published in 1909 (second ed. 1947, with reprints). Mention should also be made of a recent monograph on the life, works and thought of Śāntideva by Amalia Pezzali (Śāntideva, mystique bouddhiste des VIIe et VIIIe siècles, Florence, 1968).
The present work is therefore the first attempt to provide a complete English translation of this important Madhyamaka treatise. In conformity with the prevalent conception of Śāntideva as a poet, mystic and practiser, it is the religious aspect of the work that seems to have been the focus of the translator's interest. Now in much of the Buddhist tradition religious thought is hardly separable from philosophy; and that Śāntideva was a philosopher is very clear, in particular from chapter IX, the longest in the book, which, as a quasi-independent treatise on prajñāpāramitā and vipaśyanā, has been the subject of the separate and very detailed Tibetan commentaries mentioned above. But this aspect of Śāntideva's work has scarcely received the attention it merits from most Western scholars, this onesided evaluation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra being reflected for example in Barnett's abridged translation where the fundamental ninth chapter is given only two out of a total of 84 pages. As evidenced by the work under review this evaluation seems to linger on—at least in the English-speaking world where the Bodhicaryāvatāra appears to have come to be regarded as an easy introduction to the Mahāyāna for the pious and religious minded—and to have hindered the understanding of this work as an important treatise of the Madhyamaka philosophical tradition. (Seyfort Ruegg, "Review," 88–89) Read more here
