Chapter 17: Benefit of Prostration and Other Practices
From Bodhicitta
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Chapter 17: Benefit of Prostration and Other Practices
Article
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Description
Chapter 17 provides scriptural justification for the merit-enhancing practices discussed in the previous chapter by citing various sūtras that describe the immeasurable benefits of prostration, offerings, circumambulation, and veneration of buddhas and stūpas. Śāntideva emphasizes that while physical offerings generate great merit, the highest form of veneration is the actual practice of the bodhisattva path itself—cultivating bodhicitta, upholding the Dharma, and generating compassion—with rejoicing in virtuous deeds producing particularly extraordinary merit that surpasses even the merit of advanced meditative accomplishments.
Citation
Phuntsho, Karma. "Chapter 17: Benefit of Prostration and Other Practices." Śikṣāsamuccaya in-depth chapter overviews. Bodhicitta: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative, September 2, 2025.
Interconnections
1 Scholarship on
Śikṣāsamuccaya (T. Bslab pa kun las btus pa; C. Dasheng ji pusa xue lun; J. Daijōjū bosatsugakuron; K. Taesǔng chip posal hak non 大乘集菩薩學論). In Sanskrit, "Compendium of Training," a work by the eighth-century Indian Mahāyāna master Śāntideva. It consists of twenty-seven stanzas on the motivation and practice of the bodhisattva, including bodhicitta, the six perfections (pāramitā), the worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benefits of renunciation, and the peace derived from the knowledge of emptiness (śūnyatā). The topic of each of the stanzas receives elaboration in the form of a prose commentary by the author as well as in illustrative passages, often quite extensive, drawn from a wide variety of Mahāyāna sūtras. Some ninety-seven texts are cited in all, many of which have been lost in their original Sanskrit, making the Śikṣāsamuccaya an especially important source for the textual history of Indian Buddhism. These citations also offer a window into which sūtras were known to a Mahāyāna author in eighth-century India. The digest of passages that Śāntideva provides was repeatedly drawn upon by Tibetan authors in their citations of sūtras. Although Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra and Śikṣāsamuccaya both deal with similar topics, the precise relation between the two texts is unclear. Several of the author's verses appear in both texts and some of the sūtra passages from the Śikṣāsamuccaya also appear in the Bodhicaryāvatāra. One passage in the Bodhicaryāvatāra also refers readers to the Śikṣāsamuccaya, but this line does not occur in the Dunhuang manuscript of the text and may be a later interpolation. (Source: "Śikṣāsamuccaya." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 821. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
