Running Head: ŚĀNTIDEVA, A SOLAR HERO
Śāntideva, A Solar Hero
Raffaello Manacorda
Calle Encarnación, 20, At.2 Barcelona, Spain
Tel. +34 622262252
raffayellow@gmail.com
Ph. D. in Wisdom Studies
Ubiquity University
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Abstract
The Way of The Bodhisattva by Śāntideva (2008) is the third book I have approached in the
Great Books seminar series, where I have the opportunity of studying the work of cultural and
spiritual giants coming from different times and places. Taking part in the Great Books series
has allowed me to see all these masterpieces as chapters of a bigger story to which each
individual book gives its unique contribution. Then, the greatness of a work like Śāntideva
(2008) does not consist in being a complete and unchangeable depiction of an absolute truth,
but rather a masterfully transmitted point of view in the wider context of the evolution of
human consciousness. Approaching Śāntideva (2008) with this perspective allowed me the
space to attempt a reading that was more personal and intimate, and to connect with my own
complex, sometimes contradictory feelings towards Buddhism.
My sense is that Buddhist thought has given us precious gifts and refined our capacity for
compassion and awareness, but it has also partaken in the collective suppression of the body,
emotions, and sexuality—in short, the suppression of the Feminine.
Is it possible to still appreciate Buddhist masterpieces such as Śāntideva (2008) as we
endeavor to restore the Feminine values into a more comprehensive view of society and
spirituality?
This paper is an attempt at answering this question.
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Śāntideva, A Solar Hero
Reading The Way of The Bodhisattva allowed me to reconnect to one of my first
experiences of spiritual awakening. I was visiting the Wat Pho temple in Bangkok, Thailand,
when the giant reclining Buddha statue that gives the name to this temple completely
mesmerized me. This statue represents the Buddha in his final hour, as death was
approaching. As soon as I entered the dimly lit room and saw the giant golden masterpiece, I
burst into warm and gentle tears. The infinite compassion on the Buddha's face, the serenity in
meeting death, the completeness of a life well-lived—all of that and more hit me in a single
moment of sudden understanding. Mesmerized, I sat in spontaneous meditation for what
seemed to be the longest time. I spent the rest of the day walking in the courtyards and
bowing to the sitting Buddha statues, some of whom seemed to have personal messages that
spoke directly to my heart. Never before had I felt so touched by an icon or ritual coming
from any of the established religions.
Seven years after that first encounter with a Buddhist temple, amid a deep spiritual
crisis, I spent twenty-one days of silent meditation in Wat Chom Thong, a Buddhist
monastery in the North of Thailand. Those intense three weeks were an important part of my
process and helped me gain perspective and observe my emotions and thoughts with crystal
clarity. And yet, when the time came to leave the monastery, I felt relieved. The austerity of
the meditation practice, the lack of communication with any of the men and women that were
taking part in the retreat, the prohibition against singing, dancing, or expressing emotions, all
of this was feeling unnatural and lifeless to me. Despite the deep spiritual experiences I had
come to associate with Buddhist practice, I was struggling to reconcile some of the Buddhist
precepts with my intimate need for harmony with my own body, sensuality, and emotions.
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This same mixture of profound appreciation and sense of distance towards certain
aspects of Buddhism came up again as I was reading Śāntideva (2008). The sincerity and
depth of Śāntideva’s exploration of the human condition touched me profoundly. That
Śāntideva (2008) is a gigantic masterpiece of human intellect is clear from the very inception.
Śāntideva’s humbleness—he declares that he has produced this monumental discourse only to
“habituate his mind” (p. 51)—should not blind us to the greatness of this treatise. Ultimately,
in Śāntideva (2008) we find a complete, systematic path from the first glimpse of awakening
to a sustained condition of awakened mind, that Śāntideva refers to as bodhicitta.1 What a
gigantic task Śāntideva embarks in, with the intent of helping us fully awaken our mind and
develop universal compassion!
And yet, I cannot help but see Śāntideva (2008) as a historical document, born in a
specific cultural and spiritual context, of which it shares both strengths and limitations.
Following Anne Baring’s (2013) overview of the evolution of consciousness through
consecutive phases, I would argue that Śāntideva (2008), and really the whole Buddhist
enquiry and spiritual lineage, is an archetypal product of what Baring calls the “solar era” (p.
109).
The solar era is the long and arduous period of time, starting at about 2000 BC and
lasting up to our days, in which human consciousness managed to separate itself from the
original matrix of instinctual awareness. During the solar era, human consciousness went
1 Bodhicitta, from bodhi, "awakened", and citta, "mind," can be approximately translated with
"awakened mind" and is one of the pillars of the Mahāyāna tradition, to which Śāntideva (2008) pertains.
According to Śāntideva, cultivating an awakened mind is the necessary foundation to develop compassion for all
being, and to understand (and thus neutralize) the nature of suffering. In its ultimate, absolute stage, bodhicitta is
equivalent to the realization of “shunyata," or emptiness, the metaphysical ground of all that is.
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through tremendous intellectual development and ascended to unprecedented refinement and
power, but it also largely lost its connection to instincts, the body, and sexuality.
On a spiritual level, the solar era saw the rise of traditions that celebrated pure
consciousness over the body, nature, and matter. In these traditions, the spiritual hero, almost
always a male, starts on his quest after realizing that the world of matter, of relationships, of
mundane life, was an illusion. Maddened by a thirst to know the real nature of things, the
seeker embarks on a journey of renunciation, often almost bringing himself to death of
starvation and hardship, before he reaches realization.
Gautama Siddartha, the Buddha, is an example of this archetypal seeker. Born into a
royal family with all privileges, rich, handsome, cultured, at 27 he abandons his mundane life
and family to go into a radical, relentless quest for Truth. The rest is history. A thousand years
later, Śāntideva, also the son of a king, renounces the throne after having received a vision of
the Buddhist deity Manjusri. He follows the Buddha’s path of renunciation and self-inquiry
and consecrates his life to meditation, study, and the developing of bodhicitta, the awakened
mind.
In The Way of The Bodhisattva, which is said to have been delivered by Śāntideva to
the students of the Mulanda university in a single oration, Śāntideva gives us an exalted
transmission of his own quest, based on discipline and asceticism, on renunciation and deep
inquiry. Śāntideva presents himself as a spiritual warrior, at battle with insubstantial yet
powerful enemies: the defiled emotions, particularly anger and lust. Śāntideva's strategy to
win this relentless inner war consists primarily in a life of ascetic solitude and contemplation,
ideally in the wilderness, and with no friends to hinder our mediation (2008, p.190).
The solitary, austere lifestyle proposed by Śāntideva has been adopted, in some form,
by thousands of people around the world and deserves respect and recognition. However, it
also almost inevitably leads to consider sexuality, the emotions, and the physical body as
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something dangerous and to be avoided. In one telling passage, Śāntideva wishes to women
that they “can become more like men.” (Śāntideva, 2008, p. 279). There is not the slightest
trace of irony in this heartfelt wish, which makes complete sense given the hypothesis that
emotions, the body, sensuality, and sexuality—qualities that have been for centuries
associated with the Feminine—are some of the most insidious dangers towards the
development of bodhicitta. When we read Śāntideva’s words, when we feel his genuine care
for the well-being of all sentient beings, we cannot doubt his sincerity. Yet, two millennia
later, those feminine qualities in both women and men are still waiting for recognition.
The bottom line is that if Śāntideva (2008) is a testimony of a particular stage in the
evolution of our consciousness, what Baring (2013) has called the “solar era,” then as much
as it deserves our full praise and recognition, at the same time it also deserves our loving,
respectful critique. For it is clear that the solar era, with its emphasis on mind and
consciousness, with its ingrained mistrust of emotions and the body, needs to give way to a
new way of seeing the world, and that, in turn, to a new civilization. And as we move forward
into a new civilization and a new way of looking at ourselves and the world, perhaps the
wisest approach is carrying with us the wisdom and compassion of giants such as Śāntideva,
while lovingly letting go of those aspects of their teaching that can no longer accompany us
into the next stage of our evolutionary journey.
The Beauty of Filth
One of the most striking features of Buddhist thought as expressed in Śāntideva
(2008), and of all the ascetic forms of spirituality, is their distrust, even contempt for the
physical body. Perhaps the main handicap of our body, in Śāntideva’s view, is that it is both
the object and the cause of erotic lust, which Śāntideva considers one of the main obstacles to
developing bodhicitta. In order to prove how ridiculous and unsound sexual lust is, Śāntideva
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recurs to an apparently compelling argument: how can we desire someone’s body, if that
same body is ultimately nothing but a bag of bones and gases? How can we appreciate a live
body if we are disgusted by a corpse when they are, in reality, one and the same thing?
(Śāntideva, 2008, p.198)
I believe that this argument is both logically flawed and ethically unsound. It draws its
supposed strength from pointing out that our desire, adoration, and praise of our or other
people's body is an entirely subjective act whereby we attach value and desirability to
something that, upon examination, turns out to be an assemblage of bones, liquids, and gases.
But when Śāntideva (2008) describes a human body as a “sack of dirt” (p. 196) and declares
that a human body, if left untended, is a “horror to behold” (p. 199), is he really being any
more objective than someone who praises a human body as desirable and beautiful?
Yes, Śāntideva’s position may be eye opening if contrasted with the habitual
glorification and erotization of (some) human bodies. However, both perceptions of the
human body, as filthy and as an object of desire, are far from being neutral. They both depend
on a more or less conscious value system and a subjective perception of what is attractive or
repulsive. Ultimately, Śāntideva falls into the same attitude that he criticizes in others:
attaching meaning and emotional content to the human body.
For most of us, relating to the human body in a detached, non-emotional manner feels
innately wrong, unless we are a surgeon in the operating theatre.2 We pride ourselves on our
capacity to see the human body, and even the body of animals and other living beings, as
much more than a bag of gases and bones. In fact, many of us see a human body as the
2 There are, of course, plenty of other professionals that need to relate to human bodies without any
particular emotional charge, such as dentists, hairdressers, or massage therapists.
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receptacle of something elusive and incredibly precious: life, intellect, personality, perhaps
even soul.
But if it is natural to consider a human body as the vessel of a precious soul, isn't it
also natural to feel attraction and desire for it? True, we may sometimes experience pure
physical lust for the human form, but we all also know the reality of being attracted to
someone’s body because we cherish their personality, their character, their intelligence. In this
sense, the suggestion to see the body of a woman (for it is usually women that are used as a
paragon of an object of lust) as a bag of filth, to disregard the beauty and uniqueness of the
physical vessel, might be one more aspect of the age-long war against the Feminine. 3
Perhaps then, we are ourselves responsible as to which emotional content we want to
attach to the physical body. It is our choice whether we consider the physical body as
something to be disgusted with or in reverence of. Among the great spiritual traditions of the
past, some (Hindu Tantra and Chinese Daoism are two prominent examples) have regarded
the body as a worthy vessel and even a sacred temple, while others have considered it as
inherently dangerous and unworthy.
Wherever we choose to position ourselves on that spectrum, the relationship between
mind and body is a nexus that we need to address, and from this standpoint, spiritual
compendiums like Śāntideva (2008) offer us their own unique idea of right relationship
between body and mind. For Śāntideva, developing an “awakened mind” will suffice to create
a healthy relationship between mind and body, because he sees the body as a mere vehicle
with next to no right to have its own requests and needs. But as I will illustrate in the next
3 Furthermore, it could be argued that the objectivization of the human body is an essential component
of many individual and collective criminal behaviors ranging from murder to genocide.
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paragraph, this may not be the best way to go if we want to build a healthy, compassionate,
and integrated world.
Is Shame Healthy?
My sense is that disregarding the physical body and seeing powerful emotions as a
threat may result in an inner split, in a severe risk to our health, and in the perpetuation of an
unbalanced collective state of consciousness.
On an individual level, like an uncaring rider that takes his horse to the limits of
exhaustion, the mind may end up treating the body as just a reservoir of energy, obviating to
listen to the body’s needs. Is it then so surprising that the body may develop resistance at
being treated in such a way, and that this resistance may cause the body to develop reactions
under the form of illness? Is it conceivable that our physical vehicle may go on an “immune
system strike” or even attack its own cells as a response to years of repressing anger and other
powerful emotions?
Doctor Gabor Maté has explored the connection between repressed emotions and
chronic illnesses in his bestseller “When The Body Says No” (2003). I will quote one passage
from this book which condenses a poignant critique to Śāntideva’s views on anger and other
defiled emotions:
“When anger is disarmed, so is the immune system. Or when the aggressive
energy of anger is diverted inward, the immune system becomes confused.
Our physiological defences no longer protect us or may even turn mutinous,
attacking the body.” (Maté, 2003, Chapter 19, Section 3, para. 23)
One of Maté’s insights is that both repression and uncontrolled discharge of a
powerful emotion (e.g. anger) are avoiding mechanisms that are triggered by fear of
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experiencing the emotion in its fullness. These evasive mechanisms, in turn, generate
physiological stress responses, thus lowering the vitality and immune strength of the organism
(Maté, 2003, Chapter 19, Section 3, para. 21).
Maté suggests that anger, for instance, is mainly a physiological process that demands
to be experienced, and it does not necessarily have to result in hostile action. We may achieve
a much healthier physiological and psychological state by allowing ourselves to feel the anger
fully, and then deciding, according to the circumstances, whether to manifest it in some way
or let go of it.
On a collective level, it is also debatable whether a widespread attitude of shame
towards the body and fear of the defiled emotions will create societies that are more just,
compassionate and integrated. In Śāntideva’s (2008) view, fear and shame are essential tools
on the path of developing bodhicitta. Fear is an asset for cultivating mindfulness (p. 107), and
we are encouraged to develop a sense of shame knowing that our actions are always open to
the gaze of the Buddhas (p.108). In Śāntideva’s view, to win our inner battle against anger
and lust, we need motivation, and fear and shame may provide strong, if negative, motivation
to keep up the meditation practices that he suggests. However, this begets the question: do we
want to build communities that use fear and shame as core tools to support personal
development and ethical behavior? Do we really want to foster the development of
individuals that do not experience, or express, anger and lust?
Perhaps, in the closed environment of a Buddhist monastery, repressing anger and lust
through attitudes of fear and shame may help to enforce a strict discipline as intended. But if
we translate those same attitudes into the cities and villages, the outcome might be quite
different. I have lived in small villages in the Italian countryside where fear and shame (of
sex, of the body, of anything “different”) were critical external motivators to maintain peace
and order. But as a result, those small communities created an oppressive milieu where it was
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challenging for anybody, and young people in particular, to develop healthy boundaries, a
healthy relationship with their own body and sexuality, and ultimately an integrated
personality.
The rules of conduct that were valid and appropriate for a community of Buddhist
monks fifteen hundred years ago, when Śāntideva dictated his precious sermon, do not
necessarily apply to us, men and women living in a more or less secular society, trying to find
answers to pressing questions about relating, sexuality, emotions. When we mix the two
worlds, the monastic and the secular, and pass on teachings that were intended for the monks,
unfiltered, to the laymen, we may end up with all sort of unwanted consequences and even
risks to our health.
Institutions like the Ubiquity University or the International School of Temple Arts,
where I have the privilege of serving as lead faculty, are making tremendous efforts to unwind
some of the fear and shame around the body and sexuality that has riddled humanity since the
inception of the solar era. From this standpoint, works like Śāntideva (2008) are both part of
the problem and part of the solution, as theirs is a complex transmission that mixes universal
compassion and deep understanding of the human psyche with an almost complete rejection
of other important human aspects like the emotions, the body, and sexuality.
Conclusion
What then, can we rescue from Śāntideva’s instruction, and bring along in our
individual and collective evolutionary journey?
The core of Śāntideva (2008) is the essence of the Mahayana path of Buddhism, with
its emphasis on boundless compassion, on working towards the liberation of all sentient
beings. Śāntideva pledges to develop bodhicitta for the benefit of all beings (2008, p.84) and
thus stipulates the vow of the Bodhisattva, a man or woman who dedicates her life to the
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liberation of all sentient beings. I see Śāntideva (2008) as an actual manual for developing
universal compassion springing forth from a clear, awakened mind that has freed herself from
the illusion of separation. The Buddhist awakened mind is as precious a gift as the universal
love rooted in the heart, of which mystics like Christ, Kabir, or Rumi have given us exquisite
transmissions. These are universal gifts to the human consciousness, that take their rightful
place alongside the purest teachings of our history.
But if a healthy dose of Buddhist calmness, equanimity, compassion and distance from
one’s own emotional body can be a balm for the agitated, frenzied mind of many Westerners,
I doubt that the full-fledged proposal that Śāntideva makes, with its call to avoid company,
emotions and sexual connections, with its emphasis on an ascetic lifestyle, is applicable to
modern society. For if we are to imagine a society where the body, the emotions, sexuality,
and ultimately the Feminine are seen and honored, if we are endeavoring to break free from
the limitations of a “one-eyed vision”4 as Anne Baring (2013, p. 181) calls it, then we need to
gather the essential wisdom of Śāntideva and integrate it in a broader vision of the human
system. A vision that honors intellect as much as emotionality, and that respects the ascetic
aspirations towards inner peace and simplicity as much as the Tantric tendencies towards
inclusion and relating. And in order to invite this more complete, comprehensive view of the
human experience, we need to bow to the greatness of Śāntideva, take his precious message
into our hearts, and move forward.
4 Baring (2013) uses the term “one-eyed vision” to describe the incomplete, skewed way of being in the
world that we have collectively developed, primarily as a result of the centuries of suppression of the instincts,
emotions, intuition, and in general our “feminine” attributes.
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References
Baring, A. (2013). The dream of the cosmos: a quest for the soul. Dorset, England: Archive
Publishing.
Maté M.D., Gabor. (2003). When the Body Says No. Turner Publishing Company. Kindle
Edition.
Śāntideva (2008). The way of the Bodhisattva : a translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra.
Boston, Mass. Enfield: Shambhala Publishers Group UK distributor.