A guide to the Bodhisattva ideal and the process of enlightenment, this edition of the classic Buddhist treatise “will stand for many years as the standard English translation” (Publishers Weekly)In the whole of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there is no single treatise more deeply revered or widely practiced than A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. Composed in the eighth century by the Indian Bodhisattva Santideva, it became an instant class...

Written in India in the early eighth century CE, Santideva's Bodhicaryavatara takes as its subject the profound desire to become a Buddha and save all beings from suffering. The person who enacts such a desire is a Bodhisattva.Santideva not only sets out what the Bodhisattva must do and become; he also invokes the intense feelings of aspiration which underlie such a commitment, using language which has inspired Buddhists in their religious lives from his time to the present.