The Way of the Bodhisattva

The Way of the Bodhisattva
By Shantideva

From Chapter Three:

May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,
A guide for those who journey on the road.
For those who wish to go across the water,
May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.

May I be an isle for those who yearn for landfall,
And a lamp for those who long for light;
For those who need a resting place, a bed;
For those who need a servant, may I be their slave.

May I be the wishing jewel, the vase of plenty,
A word of power and the supreme healing;
May I be the tree of miracles,
And for every being the abundant cow.

Like the earth and the pervading elements,
Enduring as the sky itself endures,
For boundless multitudes of living beings,
May I be their ground and sustenance.

Just as all the Buddhas of the past
Embraced the awakened attitude of mind,
And in the precepts of the Bodhisattvas
Step by step abode and trained,

Just so, and for the benefit of beings,
I will also have this attitude of mind,
And in those precepts, step by step,
I will abide and train myself.

That this most pure and spotless state of mind.
Might be embraced and constantly increase,
the prudent who have cultivated it.
Should praise it highly in such words as these:

Today my life has given fruit.
This human state has now been well assumed.
Today I take my birth in Buddha’s line,
and have become the buddhas’ child and heir.

In every way, then, I will undertake.
Activities befitting such a rank.
And I will do no act to mar
Or compromise this high and faultless lineage.

For I am like a blind man who has found.
A precious gem within a mound of filth.
Exactly so, as if by some strange chance,
the enlightened mind has come to birth in me.

This is the draft of immortality,
that slays the Lord of Death,
the slaughterer of beings,
the rich unfailing treasure-mine.
To heal the poverty of wanderers.

It is the sovereign remedy,
that perfectly allays all maladies.
It is the wishing tree bestowing rest
On those who wander wearily the pathways of existence.

It is the universal vehicle that saves
All wandering beings from the states of loss—
The rising moon of the enlightened mind.
That soothes the sorrows born of the afflictions.

It is a mighty sun that utterly dispels.
The gloom and ignorance of wandering beings,
the creamy butter, rich and full,
all churned from milk of holy Teaching.

Living beings! Wayfarers upon life’s paths,
who wish to taste the riches of contentment,
here before you is the supreme bliss—
Here, O ceaseless wanderers, is your fulfillment!

And so, within the sight of all protectors,
I summon every being, calling them to buddhahood—
And till that state is reached, to every earthly joy!
May gods and demigods, and all the rest, rejoice!”