 Śāntideva regards generosity as having a crucial role in the bodhisattva path, and his interpretation of generosity is quite demanding and rigorous, as indeed is the case for many of our premodern Buddhist sources. He extols the transcendent generosity of those bodhisattvas of the past who were willing to sacrifice parts of their own body, even at grave risk to their own lives, in order to relieve the suffering of others and advance their own spiritual development. According to Śāntideva, though, the true perfection of generosity is a mental attitude that consists in the renunciation of the very idea of owning anything. At ŚS 18–19, he quotes the Vows of Individual Liberation for Bodhisattvas as teaching that “a bodhisattva thinks of everything as belonging to someone else, and doesn’t own anything. Why? Because ownership is fear” (SS-G: 22; and see BCA V.10). 