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Santideva's eighth-century work the Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (Bodhicaryavatara) is one of the crucial texts of the Buddhist ethical and philosophical tradition. This book serves as a companion to this Indian Buddhist classic, illuminating the Guide's many philosophical, literary, ritual, and ethical dimensions.
List of contents
A Note to the Reader
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Participatory Authorship and Communal Interpretation: The Bodhicaryāvatāra as a “World Classic,” by Jonathan C. Gold
1. Śāntideva: The Author and His Project, by Paul Harrison
2. Reason and Knowledge on the Path: A Protreptic Reading of the Guide, by Amber Carpenter
3. On Learning to Overhear the “Vanishing Poet,” by Sonam Kachru
4. An Intoxication of Mouse Venom: Reading the Guide, Chapter 9, by Matthew T. Kapstein
5. Seeing from All Sides, by Janet Gyatso
6. Bodies and Embodiment in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, by Reiko Ohnuma
7. Ritual Structure and Material Culture in the Guide to Bodhisattva Practice, by Eric Huntington
8. Bodhicaryāvatāra and Tibetan Mind Training (Lojong), by Thupten Jinpa
9. Taming Śāntideva: Tsongkhapa’s Use of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, by Roger Jackson
10. The Middle Way of the Bodhisattva, by Douglas S. Duckworth
11. Seeing Sentient Beings: Śāntideva’s Moral Phenomenology, by Jay L. Garfield
12. Śāntideva’s Ethics of Impartial Compassion, by Charles Goodman
13. Śāntideva and the Moral Psychology of Fear, by Bronwyn Finnigan
14. Innate Human Connectivity and Śāntideva’s Cultivation of Compassion, by John Dunne
Appendix 1: A Guide to Guide Translations: Advice for Students and Instructors
Appendix 2: Index of Guide Verses Cited
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
About the author
Jonathan C. Gold is associate professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. He is the author of The Dharma’s Gatekeepers: Sakya Paṇḍita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet (2007) and Paving the Great Way: Vasubandhu’s Unifying Buddhist Philosophy (Columbia, 2015).
Douglas Duckworth is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Religion at Temple University. His latest works include Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature (2019) and a translation of an overview of the Wisdom Chapter of the Guide to Bodhisattva Practice by Künzang Sönam, entitled The Profound Reality of Interdependence (2019).
Summary
Santideva’s eighth-century work the Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (Bodhicaryavatara) is one of the crucial texts of the Buddhist ethical and philosophical tradition. This book serves as a companion to this Indian Buddhist classic, illuminating the Guide’s many philosophical, literary, ritual, and ethical dimensions.
Additional text
The essays contain the richness of classical Buddhist writing and showcase the latest trends in Buddhist studies. This is an excellent volume, and a rare one at that.
