Shantideva biography definition

Who Was Shantideva? A Voice of Compassion in Buddhist Philosophy. Some key themes in his teachings include: Compassion and Altruism: Shantideva emphasized that true spiritual practice involves cultivating boundless compassion for others. He advocated for selflessness and the constant effort to alleviate the suffering of all beings. The Bodhisattva Path: His teachings guide practitioners through the six perfections paramitas essential to the bodhisattva way: generosity, ethical discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom.

Shantideva biography definition: Śāntideva (late 7 th

Mind Training and Mindfulness: Shantideva highlighted the importance of mastering the mind, transforming destructive emotions, and maintaining mindfulness in daily life. Interdependence: Drawing from Mahayana philosophy, he underscored the interconnectedness of all beings, encouraging a sense of responsibility and unity. He then began to recite that book which we call the Guide to the Bodhisattvas Way of Life.

He began at the very beginning of the text, and by the time he had gotten about a third of the way through the ninth chapter he began to rise up into the sky. He rose higher and higher, and it seemed as though the sky and his knowledge were pitted in competition, until he could no longer be seen at all, only heard. Then he totally disappeared.

Later on some of the monks who had clairvoyance of the ear, and others who were masters of total recall, pieced the whole book together. The group who were from Kashmir said that it had nine chapters, and the group from central India said it had ten. People then began to get curious about two of his other books which were mentioned in the fifth chapter of the Guide, and so they sent two monks to the place where Master Shantideva was living.

They travelled to a stupa in the south of India called Pelyun Chen to shantideva biography definition him to come back to Nalanda. The master refused to come, but he did tell them that the people from central India were correct, and that the two books they sought could be found written in tiny letters hidden in the rafters of his old room at the monastery.

It highlights significant episodes that showcase his philosophical contributions and interactions with various groups, emphasizing his ascension and the experiences that shaped his teachings. This biography serves as an important historical document, reflecting the values and principles of Buddhist philosophy as exemplified by Shantideva's life.

Synonyms: Shantideva's life story. The below excerpts are indicatory and do represent direct quotations or translations. See especially Siderits and Katsura trans. This Sanskrit term has a complex cluster of meanings that make it extraordinarily difficult to translate. Instead, everything that arises in our experience, or could so arise, is impermanent, constantly changing, dependent on causes and conditions, and understood within a conceptual framework.

We cannot say or think how or what anything is except by making overt or covert reference to other things; nor can anything be how or what it is except in relation to other things. Thus, everything is empty of intrinsic nature. In the Madhyamaka, this claim is taken to be equivalent to the statement that nothing can exist at the ultimate level of truth; instead, everything that exists, arises or happens does so at the conventional level.

Conventional existence, on this view, is actually the only kind of existence that anything has, and the only kind that anything could have.

Shantideva biography definition: Shantideva (Sanskrit: Śāntideva; Chinese: 寂天; Tibetan:

In drawing out this analogy, the first thing to notice is that a mirage is something that exists. Someone who simply denied reports that, on hot days, roads sometimes appear to be covered with pools of water, thus entirely rejecting the existence of mirages, would thereby hold a mistaken view. Similarly, according to the Madhyamaka view, ordinary conventional things, including shoes and ships and sealing-wax, actually do exist.

On the other hand, a mirage is deceptive: the way in which it exists is not the same as the way in which it appears to exist. Similarly, the objects of our everyday experience appear to us to exist by way of intrinsic nature, while in fact they exist conventionally. Moreover, a mirage arises from causes and conditions; just so, ordinary conventional things arise from causes and conditions.

Finally, and more controversially, a mirage is something that exists only from a certain point of view. SS-G: — However, similar arguments can be constructed entirely in terms of a contemporary scientific worldview. So liquidity has no intrinsic nature. When presented as a meditative exercise to appropriately prepared students, this reasoning can produce striking results.

Whether it is a cogent philosophical argument is an other question. More philosophical work on this form of Madhyamaka reasoning could be very helpful. Though they share a common denial that anything has intrinsic nature, Madhyamaka philosophers differ in their views about various other philosophical issues; indeed, some within this tradition hold that the goal of practice is to have no views at all.

But modern scholars disagree about whether the verse really does express a form of that doctrine, or whether the intended meaning was something else entirely. If the body is thought of a physical object that has a specific visible form, then such a body does not last for an entire lifetime, since the shape and appearance of the body change dramatically between early childhood and old age.

Neither view can provide us with a real entity that both withstands analysis and is suitable to be the object of our ordinary, attached attitude. Someone who adopts the Awakening Mind is thereafter known as a bodhisattva, a being in the process of waking up. First, the chapter expresses thoughts and sentiments that might be experienced by someone who was taking up the Awakening Mind for the first time.

The second, shorter portion of BCA III is a soaring evocation of the value and importance of this quality of the mind and heart. This chapter contains some of the finest Buddhist poetry ever written:. As a blind man might find a jewel in heaps of rubbish, so too this Awakening Mind has somehow appeared in me. This is the elixir of life, born to end death in the world.

This is the inexhaustible treasure, alleviating poverty in the world. This is the supreme medicine, curing the sickness of the world, a tree of shelter for weary creatures staggering along the road of existence. The causeway to cross over bad rebirths, open to all who travel. It is the rising moon of the mind, mitigating the defilements of the shantideva biography definition.

It is the brilliant sun, dispelling the mist of ignorance from the world. It is the fresh butter risen up from churning the milk of the true Dharma. For the caravan of humanity traveling the road of existence, hungry for the enjoyment of happiness, this is a feast of happiness offered as refreshment to all who approach. Today I summon the world to Buddhahood and, meanwhile, to happiness.

The six perfections are:. He extols the transcendent generosity of those bodhisattvas of the shantideva biography definition who were willing to sacrifice parts of their own body, even at grave risk to their own lives, in order to relieve the suffering of others and advance their own spiritual development. Instead, he holds several radical theses about anger: that anger is gravely spiritually and psychologically damaging to the one who succumbs to it; that anger always involves certain conceptual mistakes; and that it is therefore urgent to counteract anger through meditative exercises.

His reasons for thinking that anger necessarily involves conceptual error will be briefly explained below. Some of these belong to monastic etiquette and training; others are forms of mindfulness of body; and others are aspects of meditation practice. Mrozik sees much potential in these teachings, which emphasize aspects of moral practice that modern writers often overlook.

Early Buddhist texts appear to take the view that the Saint Sanskrit arhat stops creating karmic traces, whether good or bad, as a result of her experience of liberation. These karmic traces function to project happy or unhappy future experiences in cyclic existence; and a Saint, who is free of cyclic existence, must therefore have left goodness behind, along with the vile actions that lead to misery.

If they all work together and reinforce each other, such conflicts would be merely theoretical and would have little practical importance. The arguments identified by Lele are, first, that because our actions and decisions arise from causes, we should practice patient endurance and abandon the irrational emotion of anger BCA VI. The first of these arguments is embedded in a passage now seen by many scholars as the most sophisticated and well-developed discussion in the entirety of premodern Indian literature of what we know today as the problem of free will.

Shantideva biography definition: Śāntideva (literally “god of

The three verses that are perhaps most crucial to this passage are:. In this way everything is dependent upon something else. Even that thing upon which each is dependent is not independent. Since, like a magical display, phenomena do not initiate activity, at what does one get angry like this?