There is no time to waste

Not much is known about Shantideva. We know its author How to live an awakened life (Bodhicarya avatara) – the text from which these poems are derived – lived in the 8th century and taught at Nalanda University, which was in what is now the state of Bihar in eastern India. From its foundation in the 5th century until its destruction at the end of the 12th century, it was the largest and most cosmopolitan university in the world, and its ruins, although only partially excavated, are dramatic.

About Shantideva we have only legend. Here is the story of his life as found in Buddhist canonical literature: Shantideva was very lazy. His colleagues said he just ate, slept and shitted. So one day, to publicly embarrass him, he was invited to give a lecture in the main lecture hall to a huge congregation of students and scholars. He asked them if they wanted to talk about something old or present new ideas. The latter was requested.

On the appointed day, Shantideva sat on the high teacher’s throne and recited the poetic text. How to live an awakened life. As the performance ended (and he dazzled the audience with one of the most beloved texts of the Mahayana—the Great Vehicle—tradition), he rose into the air and flew out of the auditorium, disappearing into space, never to be seen again. When some of his fellow monks went up to his room, they found two books: How to live an awakened life and accompanying reader, Student anthology (Shikshasamuccaya).

How to live an awakened life one of the most beloved and most frequently taught texts in the Indo-Tibetan Mahayana tradition. He is a favorite of the current Dalai Lama and often teaches in public. It is the most systematic presentation of ethical thought in that tradition, and is composed in beautiful poetry that appeals to scholars and laymen alike. The subject of the text is the life of a bodhisattva (a person committed to awakening for the benefit of all beings), which is the path of ethical cultivation leading to awakening.

The commitment of the bodhisattva, so called bodhicitta (the determination to awaken) is the hallmark of the Mahayana practitioner. In a religious context, such a person resolves to attain buddhahood—become omniscient and highly skilled—and, instead of leaving existence to enter nirvana, remains to help others escape the suffering of life. This determination is motivated by a caring attitude (Karuna), which is the four “divine moral attributes” in Buddhist moral theory. (The others are friendship, impartiality, and the ability to rejoice in the success of others.) Caring, in this sense, is a commitment to alleviating suffering.

But all this does not mean that this text is only useful for serious Buddhist practitioners. It speaks to all of us. This aspiration can be understood in a more modern, secular sense as the determination to become the most effective means of improving the world and alleviating suffering. Shantideva’s fundamental insight is that because there is so much suffering in the world, and because it is often so difficult to alleviate it, if we want to be effective, caring agents in improving life, we must persistently cultivate ourselves as moral agents—that is, the first step to solving the world’s problems is conquering our own psychopathologies, becoming better people. And this insight speaks to us just as it did to medieval Buddhist monks in India. This book is about how we can become such moral agents.

Shantideva begins by reminding himself—and inviting us to remind ourselves—of the urgency of the moral task before us. This task is to transform ourselves from ordinary mediators of suffering to agents for the relief of suffering, or to replace our egocentric world-orientation with a caring orientation towards all. That’s no mean feat. And Shantideva asks us to remind ourselves that our lives are limited. Let us not forget that we now have the opportunity to take this transformative journey. We don’t know how long our lives will last, or what misfortunes we may encounter later that might make real moral progress difficult. So there is no time to waste!

The verses taken from the beginning of chapter 1 emphasize the value of our opportunity—life, good health, and time devoted to reflection and self-improvement. Verses 1.15 and 1.16 introduce us to the difference between merely thinking about becoming agents of change and actually doing so. And the verses drawn from chapter 2 bring us face to face with our own impending death. This may sound morbid, but Shantideva wants to remind us that if we don’t think about our own death, we don’t recognize the most important aspect of our life; keeping death in the forefront of our minds is not only realistic and healthy, but also the best motivation to seize the time we have.

In a classical Indian context, such as that in which Shantideva lived, many would think of this motivation in terms of karma and rebirth. Karma literally means ‘action’, but can also mean ‘effects of action’. So to talk about karma is to talk about action and its effects. Literally, the belief in rebirth means the belief that after death another being is born, psychologically connected to us, and experiences the effects of our actions. Those who take this view seriously want to make sure that they exert influence during their lives that will have positive outcomes for their offspring.

But we don’t have to think like that to take karma and the future seriously. Every action we take now has an impact after we die. How we travel and heat our homes will affect the lives of those who come after us; whether we work for peace or wage war will have an effect after our death; how we raise our children will also have such effects. So we don’t have to think about the future personal rebirth to care. These verses encourage us to take our mortality seriously because we only have so much time to make sure that our lives are not harmful but beneficial to those who come after us, and they encourage us to take seriously the long-term consequences of anything.

—Jay L. Garfield