Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra : A Mahāyāna Path to Altered States of Consciousness Randall Studstill

1. Śāntideva’sBodhicaryāvatāra: A Mahāyāna Path to Altered States of Consciousness Randall Studstill

2. Question: How might the bodhisattva path as presented in the Bodhicaryāvatāra1 transform the consciousness of the practitioner and create altered states of consciousness? Method: Assessing the potential psychological effects of the text’s teachings using a systems-based model of mind.

3. Contents Preliminaries and Background Mind as a System Śāntideva on Forbearance Conclusions Appendix 1: Śāntideva’s Life: Tibetan Hagiography Appendix 2: Themes and Topics in the Bodhicaryāvatāra Organized by Chapter Notes References

4. Preliminaries and Background

5. Who was Śāntideva? • 8th century Indian, Mahāyāna Buddhist monk • Affiliated with the Madhyamaka school • Resident of Nālandā • In addition to the Bodhicaryāvatāra (“Introduction to the Conduct that Leads to Enlightenment” or “Undertaking the Way to Awakening”), author of the Śikṣāsamuccaya (“Compendium of Doctrines” or “Compendium of the Training”) • Beyond these few details, no historically reliable information

6. An overview of the text • Part of the text used in Mahāyāna ritual (anuttara-pūjā) • Primarily, the text is a guide for contemplative reflection aimed at cultivating the pāramitā (generosity, morality, forbearance, diligence, meditation, wisdom) and the altruistic motivation for enlightenment (bodhicitta) • Key themes: • Relentless negation of the self (renunciation; abandoning any tendency to protect the self) • The rewards of virtue and merit • The suffering (now and/or in future hell realms) of cyclic existence, the defilements (greed, anger, and delusion), and selfish thought and action in general • Developing compassion and bodhicitta by extending one’s locus of concern to include all beings

7. The text’s significance • “the single greatest Indian poem2 about cultivating the Mahāyāna spiritual life”3 • “the most widely read, cited, and practiced text in the whole of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition”4 • “the primary source of most of the Tibetan Buddhist literature on the cultivation of altruism” and bodhicitta5 • 9th chapter on emptiness “one of the principal sources for Mahāyāna philosophy”6 • One of the Dalai Lama’s principal sources of religious inspiration (specifically, Bodhicaryāvatāra 10.55: “As long as space abides, so long may I abide, destroying the sufferings of the world”)7

8. The organization of the Bodhicāryavatāra8

9. Notable passages10 “This world is a confusion of insane people striving to delude themselves.” (8:69b) “Those who have developed the continuum of their mind . . . , to whom the suffering of others is as important as the things they themselves hold dear, plunge down into the Avīci hell as geese into a cluster of lotus blossoms.” (8:107) “All those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness. All those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others. Why say more? Observe this distinction: between the fool who longs for his own advantage and the sage who acts for the advantage of others.” (8:129-130) “I make over this body to all embodied beings to do with as they please. Let them continually beat it, insult it, and splatter it with filth. Let them play with my body; let them be derisive and amuse themselves. I have given this body to them. What point has this concern of mine?” (3:12-13) “Whatever suffering is in store for the world, may it all ripen in me.” (10:56a)

10. Mind as a System 11

11. The mind viewed as an interdependent network of variables/events These variables/events function together to maintain the integrity of the system as a whole These variables/events include: Concepts/schema/beliefs Internal narrative Attention (selective; self-referentially oriented on the internal narrative) Defense mechanisms (e.g., denial, distortion, projection, displacement) Distraction-seeking; addiction

12. System functions • Constrain awareness within a dualistic frame of reference • Perceptual dualism: a self situated in a world of spatially removed and distinct objects • Evaluative dualism: the reflexive evaluation of things, persons, conditions, events, etc. as either attractive (“good”) or repellant (“bad”) • Maintain that state of reference in response to perturbing influences

13. Constructive processes • Perceptual and evaluative dualism based on two types of mutually-reinforcing concepts/schema/beliefs • Perceptual concepts that organize and interpret sensory data, establishing the background and focal dimensions of the perceptual field with reference to a substance-based, intuitive ontology and the objectification and reification of ordinary appearances • Evaluative concepts that assign positive or negative associations to particular things, situations, conditions, etc. (and thereby prompt positive or negative emotional responses)

14. Homeostatic processes • Homeostasis or self-stabilization is maintained through negative feedback • The content of the experiential stream (a blur of thought and sensation) is monitored by the system in terms of its correspondence with system constructs (i.e., its confirmation of positive evaluative associations) • Inputs that contradict evaluative constructs initiate processes to adjust the content of the input so that it matches those constructs

15. Homeostasis Inputs regulated in two ways: • acting to change the self and/or environment • regulating the experiential stream (independent of the environment) • Active shaping (fantasy) • Inhibition of inputs (distraction; “drugs”)

16. The mind’s transformative potential • Disruption of cognitive variables / boundary conditions may initiate the transformation of the cognitive system • This transformation is associated with a qualitative shift in experience that has both epistemological and affective implications

17. Key points • Perceptual and evaluative concepts fuel an uninterrupted internal narrative characterized by obsessive self-monitoring and self-concern and manipulation of the experiential stream (often in the service of protecting the self-image) • These factors help maintain a person’s ordinary (and, from a Buddhist point of view, unsatisfactory) state of consciousness • Undermining these concepts may help pacify the internal narrative and play a role in eliciting a shift in a person’s state of consciousness, associated with altered states of consciousness

18. Śāntideva on Forbearance Bodhicaryāvatāra, Ch. 6

19. Overview • Forbearance (kṣānti): the 3rdpāramitā • A means of integrating suffering into the spiritual path12 • Forbearance described as the highest spiritual practice (6:102) (perhaps because it is an antidote to anger, one of the most problematic emotions for an aspiring bodhisattva) • General concern: developing a non-defensive, open, emotionally positive attitude in response to suffering, attacks from others, and threats to one’s social status and self-image • The ideal state is a 180 degree shift from ordinary concerns oriented around self-protection, e.g., suffering is good and should be welcomed, enemies are good and should be honored, public humiliation is good and should be embraced • Key ideas: the negative consequences of anger and hatred (suffering and hell), the rewards of patience (happiness and buddhahood), cultivating sympathetic joy, giving oneself over to all beings, self-castigation (observing one’s own egotism)

20. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to suffering in general • As aspiring bodhisattvas, we are at war with the defilements; suffering is a necessary and inevitable part of war (6:19) • suffering overcomes complacency, awakens compassion, and supports resolve to follow the path (6:21)

21. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Offensive behaviors arise through conditioning factors (6: 22-33); they are not willed into being (there is no way to intelligibly conceive a relationship between an unchanging Self and changing mental events) • “Since, like a magical display, phenomena do not initiate activity, at what does one get angry like this?” (6:31)

22. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Anger towards others is unjustified because others are deluded: • If others cause themselves great suffering, how can I expect them not to cause me suffering? • “If it is their very nature to cause others distress, my anger towards those fools is as inappropriate as it would be towards fire for its nature to burn.” (6:39) • But in fact, this tendency to cause others distress “is adventitious. Beings are by nature pleasant. So anger towards them is as inappropriate as it would be towards the sky if full of acrid smoke.” (6:40)

23. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Anger towards others is nonsensical because it is mistakenly directed • The other person is impelled by hatred, so hatred itself is the proper object of anger (if there were a proper object) (6:41) • Emotional upset is ultimately caused by my own attachment to my body and personal well being (6:43-44); if the cause of the problem is my own attachment, anger at others makes no sense (6:45) • “Some commit offenses out of delusion. Others, deluded, grow angry. Who among them should we say is free from blame, or who should we say is guilty?” (6:67)

24. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Anger towards other is nonsensical because it is often inconsistent with the actual offense: “‘Humiliation, harsh speech, and disgrace’ . . . does not oppress the body” (6:53) • The Buddhist version of “Sticks and stones . . .”

25. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Exposing self-deceptive justification for anger: “I become angry at someone speaking ill of me because they are causing harm to living beings” (see 6:62) • But if that’s the case . . . • “why . . . do you feel no anger when he defames others in the same way?” (6:62) • “You tolerate those showing disfavor when others are the subject of it, but you show no tolerance toward someone speaking ill of you . . . .” (6:63)

26. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Exposing self-deceptive justification for anger: “I hate those who desecrate sacred images or teachings” (see 6:64) • Why should you hate them when “the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are not distressed”? (6:64)

27. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • All unpleasant experiences are karmic: the result of the pain I have caused others (6:42) • “Why did you behave before in such a way that others now trouble you in this way? Everybody is subject to the force of prior actions. Who am I to change this?” (6:68)

28. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Recognizing the negative consequences associated with anger/hatred (and, therefore, the need to suppress it the moment it arises) • “. . . when the mind is catching alight with the fire of hatred . . . , [hatred] must be cast aside immediately for fear that one’s body of merit might go up in flames” (6:71)

29. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to suffering occasioned by the path • The path is the means of avoiding hell; the path involves suffering; therefore, suffering on the path is the means of avoiding hell; therefore, suffering is good (6:72) • The path is a means of becoming a Buddha and benefiting other beings; the path involves suffering; therefore, suffering on the path is a means of becoming a Buddha and benefiting others; therefore “Delight is the only appropriate response to suffering which takes away the suffering of the universe” (6:75) • Any difficulty you may have enduring suffering now is all the more reason to restrain anger and hatred, since these will cause much greater suffering in hell (6:73)

30. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to praise and blame • Praise has doubtful tangible benefits (6:90-91) • Concern with social status causes suffering : “Like a child that howls a wail of distress when his sandcastle is broken, so my own mind appears to me at the loss of praise or renown.” (6:93) • Encouraging sympathetic joy: Another person’s delight should cause me to feel delight, regardless of whether or not that person is delighted with me or someone else (6:94-96) • Praise is actually bad (and blame is actually good) for anyone serious about the path: “Praise and so on give me security. They destroy my sense of urgency. They create jealousy towards those who possess virtue, and anger at success.” (6:98) • Attachment to praise is an impediment on the path; so anyone “conspiring to . . . destroy my praise” is helping me (6:100-101)

31. Undermining evaluative associations: responding to offensive or malicious behavior • Forbearance is transformative; an enemy is an occasion for the practice of forbearance; therefore enemies are good • Longing for an enemy: “since he helps me on the path to Awakening, I should long for an enemy like a treasure discovered in the home, acquired without effort” (6:107) • Honoring enemies: “When the transmission of Buddha-qualities comes equally from both ordinary beings and from the Conquerors, what logic is there in not paying that respect to ordinary beings which one pays to the Conquerors?” (6:113)

32. Conclusions

33. Śāntideva’s teachings on forbearance comprise a set of concepts that conflict with the evaluative associations that help maintain a person’s ordinary state of consciousness by fueling self-concern and the internal narrative Sustained reflection on (and internalization of) those teachings may undermine evaluative associations and attenuate the internal narrative In the short term, this may manifest as the dissipation of emotional upset in the context of daily social interactions Over the long term, it may aid in pacifying the internal narrative in the context of meditative practice This pacification constitutes the disruption of one of the key variables in the cognitive system, creating conditions for possible transformation and the realization of altered states of consciousness Repeated suspension of the internal narrative may have a cumulative effect on consciousness, eventually crossing a critical threshold and initiating a naturally unfolding transformation with a corresponding qualitative shift in experience

34. Appendix 1:Śāntideva’s life: Tibetan hagiography • “a prince from North India who fled royal consecration for fear of implication in the evils of kingship”13 • Became a monk; he was a highly advanced practitioner, though his advanced level of realization was unrecognized by his fellow monks (“His fellow monks said that his three ‘realizations’ were eating, sleeping, and shitting”14) • His spiritual stature was only recognized when he was asked – in an attempt to humiliate this “lazy” monk – to give a recitation before the monastery • The Bodhicaryāvatāra is believed to be the record of that recitation • Toward the end of his recitation he levitated into the air and vanished, though his voice was still audible

35. Appendix 2: Themes and Topics in the Bodhicaryāvatāra Organized by Chapter

40. Notes • All translations are from Śāntideva, Crosby, & Skilton, 1996. The translation is based on Louis de la Vallée Poussin’s “critical edition of the Sanskrit text of Prajñākaramati’s [8th-9th centuries] commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatarā, the Bodhicaryāvatarā-pañjikā” (Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. xl). [Return] • On the poetic form of the Bodhicaryāvatarā (anuṣṭubh), see Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. xxxviii. [Return] • Williams, 2004, Śāntideva, p. 749. [Return] • Śāntideva, Wallace, & Wallace, 1997, p. 7. [Return] • Vesna and Allan Wallace, reporting on a view expressed by the Dalai Lama (Śāntideva et al., 1997, p. 7). [Return] • Paul Williams, in Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. viii. [Return] • Paul Williams, in Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. ix. [Return] • Quotations and other information in this table from Śāntideva et al, 1996, pp. xxx-xxxiv, 9-13. [Return] • “Merit (puṇya . . .) is karmic virtue acquired through moral and ritual actions; it is widely regarded as the foundation of Buddhist ethics and salvation” (Tanabe, 2003, p. 532). [Return] • See also 5:40, 5:61, 4:44, 6:21, 8:49, 8:80, 8:165, 8:170. On emptiness, see 9:103, 9:110, 9:139, 9:149-154a. [Return]

41. Notes For a more detailed description of a systems-based model of mind, see Studstill, 2005, Ch. 3. [Return] See Cozort, 2010, p. 209. [Return] Paul Williams, in Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. viii. [Return] Chödrön, 2005, p. xi. [Return] Comments on Chapters 2 and 3 based in part on Śāntideva et al., 1996, pp. 12-13. [Return] According to Crosby and Skilton, in this chapter Śāntideva “follows the traditional teaching on the ‘four correct efforts’”: (1) “avoiding unskillful mental states,” (2) “overcoming unskillful states,” (3) “developing skillful states,” and (4) “sustaining skillful states.” (Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. 63). [Return] Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. 63. [Return] All page references from Śāntideva et al., 1996. [Return] All page references in this table are from Śāntideva et al., 1996. For another topical overview of the chapter by verse, see Śāntideva et al., 1996, pp. 111-112. [Return] Emptiness is generally defined as the absence of intrinsic or inherent existence (svabhāva) in all phenomena. The Madhyamika claim is that nothing is permanent, unchanging, or exists in independence from other factors (see Śāntideva et al., 1996, p. 106). [Return]

42. References Chödrön, P., & Berliner, H. (2005). No time to lose: A timely guide to the way of the Bodhisattva. Boston, Mass: Shambhala Publications. Cozort, D. (2010). Suffering made sufferable: Śāntideva, Dzongkaba, and modern therapeutic approaches to suffering’s silver lining. In J. Powers & C. S. Prebish (Eds.), Destroying Mara forever: Buddhist ethics essays in honor of Damien Keown (pp. 207-220). Ithaca, N.Y: Snow Lion Publications. Śāntideva, Crosby, K., & Skilton, A. (1996). The Bodhicaryāvatāra. Oxford: Oxford University Press Śāntideva, Wallace, V. A., & Wallace, B. A. (1997). A guide to the Bodhisattva way of life: Bodhicaryāvatāra. Ithaca, N.Y., USA: Snow Lion Publications. Studstill, R. (2005). The unity of mystical traditions: The transformation of consciousness in Tibetan and German mysticism. Leiden: Brill. Tanabe, G., Jr. (2004). Merit and Merit-Making. In R. E. Buswell, Jr. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Buddhism, (Vol. 2). (pp. 532-534) New York: Macmillan Reference USA Retrieved June 15, 2011, from Gale Virtual Reference Library via Gale: http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=ucsantacruz Williams, P. (2004). Bodhicaryāvatāra. In R. E. Buswell, Jr. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Buddhism Vol. 1 (pp. 53-54). New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved June 5, 2011, from Gale Virtual Reference Library via Gale: http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=ucsantacruz Williams, P. (2004). Śāntideva. In R. E. Buswell, Jr. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Buddhism, Vol. 2 (p. 749). New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved June 5, 2011, from Gale Virtual Reference Library via Gale: http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=ucsantacruz