The Profound Reality of Interdependence: An Overview of the Wisdom Chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva

The Way of the Bodhisattva, composed by the monk and scholar Śāntideva in eighth-century India, is a Buddhist treatise in verse that beautifully and succinctly lays out the theory and practice of the Mahayana path of a bodhisattva. The ninth chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva is philosophically very rich but forbiddingly technical, and can only be read well with a good commentary. This volume makes Künzang Sönam’s extensive commentary on the ninth chapter accessible to English-speaking teachers and students of the Way of the Bodhisattva.

Douglas Duckworth is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University. He is the author of Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition (2008) and Jamgön Mipam: His Life and Teachings (2011). He also introduced and translated Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies: Illuminating Emptiness in a Twentieth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Classic by Bötrül (2011). He is the author of Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature (OUP 2019).