 As a Mahāyāna Buddhist, Śāntideva advises practitioners to adopt the Awakening Mind (Sanskrit bodhicitta), the altruistic intention to become a Buddha and then remain in cyclic existence for the benefit of others until all sentient beings have been saved from suffering. Someone who adopts the Awakening Mind is thereafter known as a bodhisattva, a being in the process of waking up. Śāntideva expresses his own commitment to the Awakening Mind in a justly famous verse, BCA X.55: “As long as space abides and as long as the world abides, so long may I abide, destroying the sufferings of the world”. The whole of BCA III focuses on the Awakening Mind from two points of view. First, the chapter expresses thoughts and sentiments that might be experienced by someone who was taking up the Awakening Mind for the first time. The second, shorter portion of BCA III is a soaring evocation of the value and importance of this quality of the mind and heart. This chapter contains some of the finest Buddhist poetry ever written: