  According to traditional biographies, Śāntideva was born the son of a king but abandoned the royal household for life as a Buddhist monk. Best estimates of the time of his activity place him at the end of the seventh century. His best-known (and most frequently translated) work is Bodhicaryāvatāra (Introduction to the practice of enlightenment), also called Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra (Introduction to the practice of the bodhisattva). He also compiled Śikṣāsamuccaya, an annotated collection of passages from Mahāyāna scriptures for students, and he authored a commentary to Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā, a key text in the Yogācāra tradition. Partly because he was a masterful stylist and wrote delightfully beautiful Sanskrit verse, and partly because his work exerted a strong influence on Tibetan Buddhism, Śantideva has been the focus of a considerable amount of modern scholarship in Japan, Europe and North America. All this makes him a good access point into Madhyamaka philosophy for those who are not specialists in Indian philosophy.