Ritual Structure and Material Culture in the Guide to Bodhisattva Practice

🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins
view on research edit on research Add an excerpt Add a bilingual page Add full text subpage

Chapter in a Book

The Seven Branch Offering

LibraryArticlesBibliography PDF Link

Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.

Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

The Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (Bodhicaryāvatāra, henceforth Guide) is rightly praised as a literary masterpiece of philosophy and ethics, so some modern readers might be surprised to learn of the importance of ritual and devotion both in Śāntideva's own text and in its broader reception in Buddhist history. Indeed, while the Guide compellingly portrays the internal struggles of an author, it clearly relies on a framework of common Buddhist practices and even serves as a basis for ritual in and of itself. If nothing else, such rituals provide a structure that reinforces specific progressions along the Buddhist path. Complementing the personal transformations through self-awareness that are foregrounded by the text, these rituals employ faith in higher powers and repetition to bolster the practitioner at critical moments. Accompanying its captivating philosophy and ethics, then, the Guide can be read to reveal actual practices of physical and material worship, such as making offerings to artistic images of the Buddha placed on an altar. Such activities are among the most common forms of Buddhist religiosity, and while they are only loosely addressed in Śāntideva's training text, they clearly underlie its composition and practice.
This chapter investigates the overall ritual structure of the Guide and describes material practices that correspond to specific passages. As with many aspects of Buddhist tradition, these rituals allow multiple, simultaneous levels of interpretation. In one sense, many of the rituals of the text directly support its well-known goals of mental transformation. Rituals of confession and dedication, in which one repeatedly rejects bad actions and devotes oneself to the benefit of others, may be considered mechanisms for improving the habits of one's mind. Such practices can also be understood in terms of faith and material performance. Confession, for example, depends on the real or imagined presence of a more awakened being to act as recipient and help subjects overcome the negative consequences of their past mistakes. The confession ritual described later in this chapter invokes thirty-five separate buddhas who are frequently depicted in paintings as a visual support for the practice. More elaborate rituals of offering involve not only artistic images of buddhas but also the daily placement of precious substances on altars, recitations, and other activities rarely noted when the Guide is treated solely in terms of its doctrines. (Huntington, introductory remarks, 132–33)

Citation

Huntington, Eric. "Ritual Structure and Material Culture in the Guide to Bodhisattva Practice." In Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice, edited by Jonathan C. Gold and Douglas S. Duckworth, 132–45. 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.