Bodhicaryāvatāra · the Way of the Bodhisattva

Śāntideva's poem in ten chapters on entering the bodhisattva's life — the vow, the guarding of awareness, patience under injury, the exchange of self and other, and a ninth chapter of pure Madhyamaka that most readers meet as a wall. Its most-quoted lines are its most practical: you cannot cover the whole earth in leather, so wear shoes; you cannot make the world stop wounding you, so guard your own mind. The Mussar literature — Mesillat Yesharim, Orchot Tzaddikim — walks the same ground in Hebrew, with the same patience about anger and the same conviction that character is trainable. Neither tradition thought spiritual attainment could outrun ordinary decency.