Their story
Śāntideva is usually placed in the late 7th or 8th century CE. Almost nothing reliable is known of his life.
His Bodhicaryāvatāra describes, in the first person, the practice of a bodhisattva: generating the aspiration to awaken for the sake of all beings, and training in generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. Its chapter on wisdom follows Madhyamaka, and its meditations on 'exchanging self and other' have shaped Buddhist ethics ever since.
He also compiled the Śikṣāsamuccaya, an anthology of passages from Mahāyāna sūtras on the bodhisattva's training, which preserves quotations from many texts otherwise lost.
The world they lived in
By the 8th century the great monasteries of northern India were centres of learning with thousands of monks. The bodhisattva ideal was the heart of Mahāyāna practice, and Madhyamaka its leading philosophy.
Their contribution
He joined rigorous philosophy with passionate devotion, giving the bodhisattva path its most compelling expression in verse.
Teachings and works
Bodhicaryāvatāra (Entering the Way of Awakening)
Dunhuang manuscripts preserve an earlier, shorter version in Tibetan, suggesting the text grew over time.
Śikṣāsamuccaya (Compendium of Training)
Related teachings
Their legacy
The Bodhicaryāvatāra is taught across all Tibetan traditions, and its verses are among those most often recited by the 14th Dalai Lama. It has been translated into many languages and read far beyond Buddhism.
History and tradition
What history can establish
His two main works are accepted, though the text of the Bodhicaryāvatāra developed over time. The traditional biography comes from Tibetan sources written centuries later.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
Tradition tells that the monks of Nālandā thought him lazy, doing nothing but 'eating, sleeping and relieving himself', and invited him to recite in public to shame him. He began the Bodhicaryāvatāra, and when he reached the chapter on wisdom he rose into the air and vanished while his voice continued.
