Chapter 8: Expiation of Sinful Actions
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Chapter 8: Expiation of Sinful Actions
Article
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Description
This chapter explores the Buddhist practice of purifying sinful actions through confession and atonement, presenting the four essential powers of proper confession: cultivating remorse, engaging in remedial practices, resolving to avoid future offenses, and finding support through the Three Jewels and bodhicitta. Śāntideva emphasizes that bodhisattvas with skill-in-means (combining wisdom and compassion) can overcome even serious transgressions through practices like reciting mantras, making offerings, and cultivating the altruistic mind of bodhicitta, which serves as a powerful cosmic fire capable of burning away all negativity.
Citation
Phuntsho, Karma. "Chapter 8: Expiation of Sinful Actions." 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.)
