These teachings explore different aspects of human unawareness and emphasize Buddha's key message of raising our consciousness. Compiled by Buddha's disciples, these sutras capture the essence of his wisdom.

More than 2,500 years ago, Gautama the Buddha walked the earth, teaching to all who would listen. Buddhist lore has it that shortly after he passed away, his disciples met to recall all that they were able of the truths that Buddha had spoken. These sayings were complied into The Dhammapada, an anthology of 423 verses containing the essence of his principles. Osho is one of the most provocative mystics of our time, who inspires millions of people worldwide in their individual search for meditation and transformation.

Osho explains that these sutras are concerned with aspects of man's unawareness and that Buddha's whole message is concerned with the raising of our consciousness. These sutras were compiled by Buddha's disciples to contain the essence of all his teachings. This was the last turning of the Wheel of Dharma, 2,500 years ago. At the beginning of his commentaries on these sutras, Osho says he is setting the Wheel of Dharma in motion again.

Wisdom, says Buddha, arises from within, and is the only true knowledge. In The Dhammapada Osho speaks on wisdom, which he calls knowing, and on the difference between knowing and knowledge. Knowing, he says, is spontaneous response: it comes from inner silence, it is our own truth, an existential experience. Knowledge is dependent on the past, it is mechanical, it is second-hand, it comes from another, and hides the truth from ourselves. Knowing gives us inner direction; knowledge only outer direction. And the key to the intuitive faculty of knowing is meditation.

The Sutra of 42 Chapters is a scripture complied in the first century CE. Each saying comes from Buddha, but the whole work was a new anthology created especially for introducing Buddhism in a new country. That’s why it makes such a good, basic introduction to the world view of Gautam Buddha.