How Shantideva came to compose the Bodhicharyavatara

The story of how Shantideva composed this text is worthy of recounting. It happened at Nalanda, the great monastery and university distinguished at that time by a high standard of study and teaching. All of the resident monks were learned, and everyone there was expected to study assiduously. No one who lived there was ever distracted or indolent. One day a monk turned up whose robes were somewhat old and torn; he was tranquil in his bearing but ragged in his appearance. He took up residence at the monastery, and he would show up every day when the monks ate their only meal at midday. He would eat, and afterwards would disappear again. The other monks, who all studied day and night, found out what the ragged monk was doing when he was not at the midday meal. He was sleeping. He slept in front of the entrance to the principal temple, and that is all he did, all of the time. When the clacker rang to summon the monks to a meal, he would go and eat; then he would go back to sleep. 

Some of the monks, probably the officials in charge of enforcing discipline, got together and said to one another, “This new monk Shantideva is a disgrace. He’s a disgrace to the Buddha’s teachings in general, and in particular he poses a problem for this monastery. With his example, one monk after another is sure to become lazier and lazier. We simply have to expel him.”



According to the rules of the monastery, the monks could not decide to expel a monk without getting permission from the principal abbot, who at that time was called Ge Wa Lha, or “Virtuous Deity.” So they went to the abbot and explained the situation and what they wanted to do about it. Contrary to their expectations, the abbot did not give his permission to expel Shantideva. He said, “You don’t know whether he’s someone special, or just an ordinary lazy person. Since we really don’t know, and we can’t tell what’s going on inside of him, it’s better just to leave him alone. Don’t do anything.”

The disciplinarians were left without recourse, since they could not expel the sleeping monk. However, there was one custom at Nalanda that they felt at least gave them a chance to get him to leave. The professors at the university customarily took turns giving public lectures in the central courtyard. For some time before it was scheduled, the lecture would be announced, and on the day before it was to take place, the disciples of that particular professor would gather together, clean up the courtyard, and cast flower petals. On the day of the lecture, they would lay out all of their outer robes and pile them on top of each other, and these would serve as the throne of the lecturing professor. 

Knowing this custom, the Nalanda disciplinarians said, “Although Shantideva is not a member of the faculty, perhaps we can tell him that he has to lecture. Even though we can’t expel him, if we schedule a lecture, he’ll certainly flee. He’ll run away before that day comes, because obviously he doesn’t know anything.” They went to him and said, “Shantideva”—or whatever they called him at that time—”your turn to deliver the public lecture is coming up. You must do it.” Of course they expected him to act surprised, intimidated, scared—but he was unperturbed. He simply said, “Okay,” and went back to sleep.

Of course, since Shantideva was not a professor on the faculty, he did not have any students, so there was no one to clean up the courtyard on the day before the lecture. Nevertheless, in the evening before the talk, a great wind came up and blew away all of the dirt and dust in the courtyard. Then a light rain fell, causing the remaining dust to settle. People were amazed at this, but they still wanted to humiliate Shantideva. They said, “Well, he doesn’t have any students to pile up their robes as his throne, so we’ll build him one, and a very high one. To make it humiliating, we’ll build it without stairs so he can’t get on it. He’ll have to stand there looking like a fool beside this very high throne which he’ll be unable to mount.” And that is what they did.

At the appointed time for the lecture, the clacker was rung, and all the monks gathered. They put on their ceremonial outer robes and, holding flowers in their hands, filed into the courtyard in an elaborate procession. Shantideva calmly walked in among them. When he reached the throne, he simply put his hand on it, and—all of a sudden—he was sitting on top of it. No one was quite sure how he got up there. As soon as he took his seat on the throne, he showed not only his accustomed tranquillity, but he also seemed majestic and somehow awe-inspiring. Then he turned to the monks and said, “Do you want me to repeat a teaching that is already well known in India, or do you want me to teach something new—something that’s never been heard before?”

When the monks heard that, they thought that this was their last possible chance to humiliate Shantideva, so they said, “Oh please, something new!” and asked for a previously unheard teaching, a teaching that was missing in India at that time. Although there were in India loads and loads of the Buddha’s teachings—all of the sutras and tantras, and loads and loads of shastras or commentaries—there was not a single book that comprised the quintessence of all of the teachings. Therefore what Shantideva spoke, entirely extemporaneously, was just that. It was the Bodhicharyavatara, or the Way of a Bodhisattva. 

The Bodhicharyavatara has ten chapters. As Shantideva uttered the first words of the ninth chapter, which is the chapter on discernment, he started to rise in the air. His body left the throne, and as he continued stanza after stanza, he floated in the air higher and higher until he not only floated above the assembly but also circumambulated it. As he floated, reciting the ninth chapter, he circled like an airplane trying to find a place to land. By the time he got to the tenth chapter—this one, the aspiration chapter—he was so high in the sky that the crowd could no longer see him, although somehow they could still hear his voice clearly. Then, eventually, he disappeared, and they did not hear him anymore.

What he did was to fly to southern India where his teacher, Nagarjuna, was living at the time. He remained in Nagarjuna’s presence, but his audience did not know that yet. Back at Nalanda, many who attended that assembly had the ability of what we would call “total recall,” and each of these persons had memorized what Shantideva said. When, however, they compared their memories, they found that they disagreed. Some of them had heard a Bodhicharyavatara of five chapters, some of thirteen chapters, and some of other variations. The reason for this discrepancy was that Shantideva’s teaching had the extraordinary quality of a buddha’s teaching—it was heard in a way appropriate to each listener. When they finally discovered that he had landed in southern India and was living with Nagarjuna, they went to him there and asked him to tell them the correct form of the text and how many chapters it really had. He told them it had ten chapters, and he also told them to find and study two other documents that he had written secretly while at Nalanda. One of these documents was called a “Compendium of the Training,” and the other a “Compendium of the Sutras.” He said that they were both hidden inside a pillar in the room assigned to him at the monastery.
~from the website: Karma Triyana Dharmachakra