38. Śāntideva: How to Lead an Awakened Life - Gyeltsap: Introduction to How to Lead an Awakened Life
A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy - Mohammed Rustom
Jay L. Garfield [+]
Smith College
Description
Translated here are sections of Śāntideva’s How to Lead an Awakened Life, with portions of Gyeltsap’s commentary. The former is justly renowned as the most significant treatise on ethics in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, and one of the great masterpieces of Buddhist ethical thought and literature tout court. The sixth chapter, on patience, is one of the most popular in the text. The critique of anger is powerful, and the poetic evocations that demonstrate the inappropriateness of anger and the rationality of patience are compelling. In this chapter, Śāntideva argues that anger is irrational as it is grounded in a view of persons as autonomous, causally independent agents who willingly harm one another instead of being causally driven, interdependent individuals who act in ignorance. Anger is also grounded in an unjustifiable egocentricity, and harms both others and oneself. Patience is the antidote to anger and reflects a clearer view of the nature of reality.