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WorkŚāntideva

Śikṣāsamuccaya

Śāntideva's twenty-seven verses, carried by quotations from over a hundred Buddhist scriptures on living for the awakening of all.

by Śāntideva721 passages held

  • Sanskrit, the original language
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Overview

More than a hundred Mahāyāna sūtras, the scriptures of the Great Vehicle, speak in this book, and most of its pages are theirs. Śāntideva, the eighth-century monk who also wrote the Bodhicaryāvatāra, built it as an anthology: long quotations, each introduced as spoken in a named sūtra, set around twenty-seven short verses of his own and a thread of linking prose. The verses carry the argument. The first asks why, if fear and suffering are unwelcome to me and to others alike, I should protect myself and no one else; the same verse stands in the eighth chapter of the Bodhicaryāvatāra. The fourth sets out the plan of the whole: a bodhisattva, one who seeks awakening for the sake of all beings, gives his body, his possessions and his merit away to every being, and then guards, purifies and increases them. The nineteen chapters are arranged around that plan, from giving to the growth of merit. The quotations are the book's authority: Śāntideva lets the sūtras, taken as the word of the Buddha, state the rules, while his verses and prose give them their order. Some of those sūtras survive in Sanskrit only through these quotations. Paul Harrison, a scholar of Buddhist texts, has argued that a substantial part of the book is the compiler's own writing rather than quotation. Cecil Bendall, an English Sanskritist, edited it; the English translation he made with the classicist W. H. D. Rouse appeared in 1922, sixteen years after Bendall's death. The philosopher Charles Goodman translated it again in 2016 as The Training Anthology of Śāntideva.

Key concepts

What is the training that the title says it collects?

It is the whole discipline a bodhisattva takes on with the vow to awaken for all beings. The Sanskrit word śikṣā means training, and samuccaya means a collection, so the title promises the training gathered in one place. It covers far more than a list of prohibitions: how to give, how to eat and sleep, whom to learn from, how to repair a fault and how to make good grow.

What is a root offence for a bodhisattva?

A root offence is a breach grave enough to cut the bodhisattva's vow at its root, unlike lesser faults that only weaken it. The passages gathered here name, for example, praising oneself and running others down for the sake of gain and honour. Because such a breach undoes the vow itself, the book treats it as something to be confessed and repaired at once, never simply lived with.

Why does the book insist on a spiritual friend?

A spiritual friend, kalyāṇamitra in Sanskrit, is a teacher already committed to the training, and the vow is best received from such a person. Taking it before someone who lives by it makes a later breach more sobering and the discipline more loved. True spiritual friends are rare, one passage warns, so the book also provides for the case where none can be found.

What is skilful means?

Skilful means is the knack of fitting an action to what will actually help the person at hand. A gift is good only if it does good: the passages gathered here rule out gifts that harm, shame or distress the one who receives them, and untimely gifts such as poison or weapons. The same test runs through every rule in the book, which asks what a deed does, not only what it is.

What are the foundations of mindfulness?

They are the four objects a practitioner keeps steadily in view: the body, feelings, the mind and the things it knows. The chapter that sets them out begins with the body, looked at in its unattractive parts until the wish to cling to it weakens. Mindfulness here is not relaxation but attention trained to notice what is actually happening, the condition for guarding everything else.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Given Away, Then Guarded

A bodhisattva hands over body, possessions and merit to every being at the outset. The puzzle the book works through is why something already given away must then be protected with such care.

Śāntideva's fourth verse sets the plan, and the chapters follow it: first the gift of body, goods and merit to all, then guarding, purifying and increasing each. The quoted sūtras explain the order with a medicine tree, every part of which heals whoever takes it, and whose seed must not be used up before the tree has grown. So the body is kept fed, rested and watchful, not out of self-regard but because it now belongs to others. Giving flesh itself is a mature practice, never a beginner's.

  • generosity
  • non-attachment
  • renunciation
  • attachment
  • impermanence
  • bodhisattva practice
  • bodhisattva path
  • mindfulness
  • meditation

Enter a dialogue

Rules Measured by Their Purpose

Hundreds of scriptural rules are gathered here, some of them in apparent conflict. What the compiler has to settle is which rule binds whom, and what to do when keeping one would harm a person it was meant to serve.

Śāntideva lets the sūtras state the rules, taking them as the Buddha's word, and quotes one that widens that word to whatever is well spoken. His own verses and prose then do the sorting. Instructions meant for advanced bodhisattvas are not laid on beginners. Above every rule stands the welfare of beings, so the passages he chooses allow even giving alcohol to keep a bond that does good, or a show of anger to stop someone from harming others. Great compassion is the quality the rest depend on.

  • bodhisattva ethics
  • bodhisattva vows
  • ethical conduct
  • ethical discipline
  • skillful means
  • compassion
  • wisdom
  • emptiness
  • dharma
  • patience
  • bodhicitta

Enter a dialogue

Clearing Old Deeds, Growing New Good

Every deed leaves a debt that will be paid in some later life. The question the closing chapters press is whether that debt can be shrunk, and the good multiplied, before it falls due.

On the compiler's arrangement, a wrong is not simply suffered out. The sūtras he gathers teach that open confession weakens a deed's force, and that a bodhisattva who has broken a root vow may ask, at dawn, to be shown the fault and its remedy in a dream. Even humiliation can be turned to use: reciters of a profound sūtra who are despised for it, one passage says, burn off a debt that would have meant a painful rebirth. Merit grows the other way, through worship, recollection of the Buddha and dedication.

  • karma
  • rebirth
  • merit
  • suffering
  • humility
  • devotion
  • afflictions
  • spiritual practice
  • awakening
  • liberation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
721
distinct concepts
564
by passages held, corpus-wide
#92

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “compassion” and “generosity”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 85 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
compassiongenerosity33
bodhisattva pathcompassion26
compassionmerit20
generositymerit19
compassionsuffering16
karmamerit15
bodhisattva pathmerit10
compassionemptiness10
emptinessimpermanence10
karmasuffering10
bodhisattva pathgenerosity7
impermanencesuffering7
bodhisattva pathemptiness6
compassionkarma6
emptinessgenerosity6
emptinesskarma5
meritsuffering5
generosityimpermanence4
generositykarma4
compassionimpermanence3
generositysuffering3
impermanencekarma3
bodhisattva pathkarma2
bodhisattva pathsuffering2
emptinessmerit2
bodhisattva pathimpermanence1
emptinesssuffering1
impermanencemerit1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Bodhicaryāvatāra

    The book Śāntideva is known by: a poem of about 900 verses that Tibetan Buddhism made one of its central texts, and by one scholar's count among the three Indian Buddhist texts most often translated in the West.

     SA
  2. Śikṣāsamuccaya you are here SA
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