The Way of the Bodhisattva, composed by the monk and scholar Santideva in eighth-century India, is a Buddhist treatise in verse that beautifully and succinctly lays out the theory and practice of the Mahayana path of a bodhisattva. Over one thousand years after Santideva's composition, Kunzang Sonam (1823-1905) produced the most extensive commentary on the Way of the Bodhisattva ever written. This book is the first English translation of Kunzang Sonam's overview of Santideva's notoriously difficult ninth chapter on wisdom.

The ninth chapter of the Way of the Bodhisattva is philosophically very rich but forbiddingly technical, and can only be read well with a good commentary. Kunzang Sonam's commentary offers a unique and complete introduction to the view of Prasa:ngika-Madhyamaka, the summit of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet, as articulated by Tsongkhapa. It brings Santideva's text, and Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasa:ngika-Madhyamaka, into conversation with a vast Buddhist literature from India and Tibet. By articulating the integral relationship between emptiness and interdependence, this text formulates a sustained and powerful argument for emptiness as a metaphysical basis of bodhisattva ethics. This volume makes the ninth chapter accessible to English-speaking teachers and students of the Way of the Bodhisattva.

Profound Reality of Interdependence, Kunzang Sonam, Oxford University Press, 2019, Hardcover, 312 pages, $99.00

Kunzang Sonam of Minyak studied widely, especially in the Geluk tradition, before becoming one of the principal disciples of Patrul Rinpoche and Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. After his studies, he returned to his homeland of Minyak, where he spent time in isolated hermitages.


Douglas Duckworth is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University. He is the author of Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition (2008) and Jamgon Mipam: His Life and Teachings (2011). He also introduced and translated Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies: Illuminating Emptiness in a Twentieth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Classic by Botrul (2011). He is the author of Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature (OUP 2019).