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Shantideva was an Indian Buddhist while Buddhism still flourished in
India. His great work, the Bodhicharyavatara, or "Entrance to the
Path of Awakening," became a major text of Tibetan Buddhism long after
it went out of circulation in its homeland. It is a handbook on how to
realize the nature of existence and of compassion that arises from such
realization. The Dalai Lama said of it, "If I have any understanding of
compassion and the practice of the Bodhisattva path, it is entirely on
the basis of this text that I possess it." Like the Book of Proverbs,
the Bodhicharyavatara is a timeless work of wisdom, the longevity
of which is due to the quality of its verse as much as to its wisdom. For
the first time, an attempt has been made to recover that poetic immediacy
by rendering the text in iambic lines.
Regard your body as a vessel,
A simple boat for going here and there.
Make of it a wish-fulfilling gem
To bring about the benefit of beings.
With this translation, gleaming in its clarity, a Buddhist classic becomes
an English classic. Worthy of recitation and committing to memory, Shantideva's
words on such topics as doing good, reading sutras, guarding the mind,
keeping good company, and on the nature of the mind and reality can take
on a life of their own, to grow and blossom in a new native tongue. The
text booms, like the voice of a Shakespearean actor, as if it were not
the bodhisattva but the book itself that proclaims:
And now as long as space endures,
As long as there are beings to be found,
May I continue likewise to remain
To drive away the sorrows of the world.
--Brian Bruya |
