Seeing from All Sides

Chapter in a Book

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།

This chapter will explore Śāntideva's presentation of the practice of substituting one's own perspective on oneself with that of another. It will focus especially upon his literary strategies to create in his readers the capacity to perform this practice. A lot of the chapter will center upon the logic and the metaphors within the text itself. It will also consider some provocative statements on the different, but perhaps relevant way a master actor sees herself from the viewpoint of her audience. In this I will draw upon the writings of the renowned Japanese dramatist and theorist of Nōh Zeami Motokiyo (c. 1363-c. 1443). I want to explore the phenomenon of seeing oneself from the vantage of others both in terms of Śāntideva's goal of compassion and in terms of its larger potentials in the phenomenology and ethics of being in the world, as intimated in Zeami's artistic vision. (Gyatso, "Seeing from All Sides," 101)

Citation

Gyatso, Janet. "Seeing from All Sides." In Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice, edited by Jonathan C. Gold and Douglas S. Duckworth, 99–113. 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.

Text