For some years I have included my favorite quote by Shandideva on my personal website, www.lowelljaks.com. It is taken from Siksasamuccaya, pp.278-83. I have run this quote be many of my friends, and almost universally, they cannot really see what he was doing, or they seem to immediately don some kind of filter or blinder making any kind of mental exploration of this passage impossible.

In this passage, Shantideva goes completely the opposite way of how most people understand prayer, and their relationship to God, the Ultimate, to the Masters, and so forth. Most people pray for help in some form. Shantideva is doing the opposite. He is taking complete responsibility for his own fate, and praying, really affirming, his support of God, the Divine, the Masters, all the Buddhas, whatever and whomever.

Here is a partial quote, so that you can see what I mean:

“The perfections of the bodhisattva do not support me–it is I who support them….I alone, standing in this round and adamantine world, must subdue Mara, with all his hosts and chariots, and develop supreme enlightenment with the wisdom of instantaneous insight!… I work to establish the kingdom of perfect wisdom for all beings. I care not at all for my own deliverance. I must save all beings from the torrent of rebirth with the raft of my omniscient mind. I must pull them back from the great precipice. I must free them from all misfortune, ferry them over the stream of rebirth.”

Think, for a minute, what Shantideva is saying here. Imagine yourself saying, and meaning, these same words. This is courage. This is the kind of thing that an enlightened masters does.

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