The Original Bodhicaryāvatāra

Digital Publication

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

The Bodhicaryāvatāra or "Way of the Bodhisattva" as it is often translated, is one of the most read texts in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.* This is hardly surprising, as its author Śāntideva managed the feat of encapsulating the vast expanses of Mahāyāna Buddhism in a single elegantly and often movingly written text. What is surprising is that the text as it has been passed down in the Tibetan tradition, and as it is read in translation today, is not the earliest version, and is quite different from it. We know this largely thanks to the excellent work of Akira Saito, which is undeservedly difficult to get hold of. During the 90s Saito worked on four Dunhuang manuscripts of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, showing how the early version that they contained differed quite radically from the familiar later version. Here I’ll summarize his conclusions and add some of my own thoughts.

Citation

Schaik, Sam van. "The Original Bodhicaryāvatāra." Early Tibet: Notes, Thoughts and Fragments of Research on the History of Tibet (blog), February 4, 2014. https://earlytibet.com/2014/02/04/the-original-bodhicaryavatara/.

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.

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