René Girard, Śāntideva, and the Emptiness of Desire

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

The corpus of twentieth-century French-American philosopher René Girard posits a compelling cause of violence and its frequent imbrication with religion. Desire, Girard held, was not innate to the person, but was learned from another. Because we are left regularly seeking the same objects, rewards, or achievements of peers, violent conflict is inevitable. While Girard’s insights articulate forcefully the “rivalistic mimesis” in which we so easily engage, and while he saw in Christianity the clearest expression of an alternative vision, he has less to say about converting the rivalistic mimesis that engenders violent conflict to the pacific mimesis that does not. Expressing insights drawn from Buddhism’s foundational teachings and developed with the rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the eighth-century Indian writer Śāntideva examines the motivating causes of desire, anger, and violence and finds them to be, like all phenomena in the universe, “empty” of substantial existence. Finding no substantial object with which to be angry, finding no substance to the prestige and honor he had previously sought, Śāntideva’s desires unravel, leaving only an objectless compassion for those who suffer. His text, Bodhicaryāvatāra, describes this transformation as well as the meditative techniques offered to guide his reader toward the same realization. This paper will recognize the resonances between Girard’s twentieth-century insights into the nature of desire and Mahāyāna Buddhism’s conception of emptiness, as expressed in Śāntideva’s seminal text. These resonances provide an opportunity to articulate a process of the conversion of rivalistic mimesis to pacific mimesis. Additionally, the meditative practices Śāntideva recommends will be offered as starting points for the development of similar practices within Christianity. In a world continuing to drift away from substantialism, such a development might reveal a Girardian conversion of mimetic desire to be a key component of Christian spiritual practice going forward. (Source Accessed May 17, 2021)

Citation

Mileski, Greg. "René Girard, Śāntideva, and the Emptiness of Desire." Paper presented at the teleconference "Vengeance is Mine": Christianity, Violence, and Peace. Hosted by the Theology Graduate Student Association, Fordham University, April 2–3, 2020.

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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.

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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.