The Profound Reality of Interdependence

An Overview of the Wisdom Chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva

Künzang Sönam author Douglas S Duckworth editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:2nd May '19

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Profound Reality of Interdependence cover

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. Over one thousand years after Śāntideva's composition, Künzang Sönam (1823-1905) produced the most extensive commentary on the Way of the Bodhisattva ever written. This book is the first English translation of Künzang Sönam's overview of Śāntideva's notoriously difficult ninth chapter on wisdom. 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. Künzang Sönam's commentary offers a unique and complete introduction to the view of Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, the summit of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet, as articulated by Tsongkhapa. It brings Śāntideva's text, and Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, into conversation with a vast Buddhist literature from India and Tibet. By articulating the integral relationship between emptiness and interdependence, this text formulates a sustained and powerful argument for emptiness as a metaphysical basis of bodhisattva ethics. This volume makes the ninth chapter accessible to English-speaking teachers and students of the Way of the Bodhisattva.

All in all, this is an excellent piece of scholarship which significantly contributes to our understanding of Prasangika-Madhyamaka. * Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette, Ghent University, Religion *

ISBN: 9780190911911

Dimensions: 236mm x 157mm x 33mm

Weight: 567g

328 pages