Essential Buddha Teachings

With poetry and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy – all qualities of enlightenment. “Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth.”—His...

This treasury of essential Buddhist writings draws from the most popular Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese sources. Among the selections are some of the earliest recorded sayings of the Buddha on the practice of freedom, passages from later Indian scriptures on the perfection of wisdom, verses from Tibetan masters on the enlightened mind, and songs in praise of meditation by Zen teachers.

This landmark collection is the definitive introduction to the Buddha's teachings - in his own words. The American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, whose voluminous translations have won widespread acclaim, here presents selected discourses of the Buddha from the Pali Canon, the earliest record of what the Buddha taught. Divided into 10 thematic chapters, In the Buddha's Words reveals the full scope of the Buddha's discourses, from family life and marriage to renunciation and the path of insight.

Mark Siderits's The Buddha's Teachings As Philosophy explores three different systems of thought that arose from core claims of the Buddha. By detailing and critically examining key arguments made by the Buddha and developed by later Buddhist philosophers, Siderits investigates the Buddha's teachings as philosophy: a set of claims—in this case, claims about the nature of the world and our place in it—supported by rational argumentation and, here, developed with a variety of systematic results.

Buddhism is practiced by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, from Tibetan caves to Tokyo temples to redwood retreats. To an outside viewer, it might be hard to see what they all have in common. In Buddhism, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and American Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron map out with clarity the convergences and the divergences between the two major strains of Buddhism - the Sanskrit traditions of Tibet and East Asia and the Pali traditions of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

This user’s guide to Buddhist basics takes the most commonly asked questions - beginning with “What is the essence of the Buddha’s teachings?” - and provides simple answers in plain English. Thubten Chodron’s responses to the questions that always seem to arise among people approaching Buddhism make this an exceptionally complete and accessible introduction - as well as a manual for living a more peaceful, mindful, and satisfying Life.

Long regarded as one of the best introductions to Buddhism, What the Buddha Taught draws on the actual words spoken by the Buddha to give a lucid and accurate account of the fundamental principles of Buddhist doctrine. Richly supported by extracts from the ancient texts, Walpola Rahula gives clear and direct explanations of Buddhism's essential teachings.

This unique biography, told in a lively manner through six 'voices', presents the Buddha's revolutionary solution for humanity that lends to the end of ill will, craving and delusion. It goes back to the earliest sources of the Buddha's life and teachings, drawing as it does from the Pali Canon which was said to record the words that the Buddha spoke, the events that happened, and his specific teachings on which the world-wide religion was based.

Buddha or Karl Marx is a comparative study of the two philosophies Buddhism and Marxism. It concludes by presenting in plain English that Buddhism through changing man's disposition is a superior way to achieve and most importantly maintain a society sans suffering, greed and fostering Maitri (universal love and brotherhood).

For nearly 1,000 years, from the destruction of temples and monasteries by Muslim invaders in the 11th and 12th centuries, followed by Hinduism’s increasing power, Buddhism vanished from the country of its origin. Though hugely influential throughout Asia, the religion was forgotten in India.

While many accounts of the Buddha’s life mix legend and history, this compelling new biography discriminates between fact and fiction to reveal Gautama, the remarkable human being behind the myth, and sheds new light on his teachings. Plunging us into the noises, smells and jostling streets of Gautama’s world, Vishvapani Blomfield brings the Buddha to life as a passionate and determined individual - a strikingly modern figure who rejected contemporary beliefs.

Twenty-four of the Buddha's most distinguished disciples are brought to life in ten chapters of rich narration. They include monks who were very close to him throughout his life, including Sariputta and Mahamoggallana; his cousin and companion Ananda; his principal women disciples, including the nun Isidasi and his lay disciple, the courtesan Ambapali; and the serial killer Angulimala, whose character was transformed after meeting the Buddha.

“To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize”. Commenting on anecdotes and haikus by the Zen masters, Osho explains that being a buddha is the easiest thing in the world - it has already happened without you knowing. The empty heart, a place beyond thoughts and feelings, is within everyone. Meditation, and becoming truly thoughtless, is the key. Osho presents Zen as potent, alive, and relevant to the modern world.

The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya) is the first of the five Nikāyas (Collections) in the Sutta Pitaka and has its own particular character. Unlike the others which contain thousands of shorter discourses (suttas), it comprises just 34 but of much longer length - as the name indicates! This makes it in some ways a more focused collection of teachings of the Buddha and especially accessible in audio.

This book offers a complete translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, or Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, one of the major collections of texts in the Pāli Canon, the authorised scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. This collection - among the oldest records of the historical Buddha's original teachings - consists of 152 suttas or discourses of middle length, distinguished as such from the longer and shorter suttas of the other collections.

Reiki master and best-selling author Diane Stein has been a dedicated hands-on healer since 1988. Stein believes strongly that this powerful healing art, once a closely guarded secret tradition, should be accessible and available to all. Since she began teaching in 1990, Stein has initiated...

Dessert with Buddha takes the eccentric, sort-of-Buddhist monk, Volya Rinpoche, and his skeptical, middle-of-the-road brother-in-law, Otto Ringling, on another enlightening road trip filled with meals, humor, social commentary, and good times. On this journey, the couple that traveled from New York to North Dakota in Breakfast with Buddha, Seattle to North Dakota in Lunch with Buddha, and North Dakota to Las Vegas in Dinner with Buddha heads down the Eastern Seaboard from Boston to points south.

What is the Dharma? To walk in the footsteps of the Buddha we need a clear and thorough guide to the essential principles of Buddhism. Whether we have just begun our journey or are a practitioner with more experience, What is the Dharma? is an indispensable exploration of the Buddha's teachings as found in the main Buddhist traditions. Constantly returning to the question "how can this help me?", Sangharakshita examines a variety of fundamental principles.

The Noble Eightfold Path is one of the most important teachings in Buddhism. In this series of eight lectures, given originally in 1965, Urgyen Sangharakshita introduces each stage, from right understanding to right meditation, explaining the deeper implications involved. Sangharakshita, the London-born Buddhist teacher, is one of the most influential figures in the development of Buddhism in the West.

Around 2500 years ago a thirty-five-year-old man named Siddhartha had a mystical insight under a peepul tree in north-eastern India, in a place now revered as Bodhgaya. Today, more than 300 million people across the globe consider themselves beneficiaries of Gautama Buddha’s insight, and...