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    • College of Arts and Sciences
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    • CAS: Philosophy: Scholarly Papers
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    The compassionate gift of vice: Śāntideva on gifts, altruism, and poverty

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    Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
    Date Issued
    2013
    Author(s)
    Lele, Amod Jayant
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    Permanent Link
    https://hdl.handle.net/2144/18054
    Citation (published version)
    “The Compassionate Gift of Vice: Śāntideva on Gifts, Altruism and Poverty.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013): 702-34.
    Abstract
    The Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker Śāntideva tells his audience to give out alcohol, weapons and sex for reasons of Buddhist compassion, though he repeatedly warns of the dangers of all these three. The article shows how Śāntideva resolves this issue: these gifts, and gifts in general, attract their recipients to the virtuous giver, in a way that helps the recipients to become more virtuous in the long run. As a consequence, Śāntideva does recommend the alleviation of poverty, but assigns it a much smaller significance than is usually supposed. His views run counter to many engaged Buddhist discussions of political action, and lend support to the “modernist” interpretation of engaged Buddhist practice.
    Rights
    Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
    Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alteration is made to the content. Reproduction in any other format, with the exception of a single copy for private study, requires the written permission of the author. All enquiries to: cozort@dickinson.edu.
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    • BU Open Access Articles [3866]
    • CAS: Philosophy: Scholarly Papers [83]


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