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(More customer reviews)Unlike the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism does not have an equivalent to the Torah, the Bible or the Qur'an. What we know of the Buddha's teaching comes largely from a vast collection of writings called the Tipitaka ("three baskets") in an ancient Indian language called Pali (thus, the Tipitaka is also referred to as "the Pali canon"). Of these, the second basket - the Sutta Pitaka ("Basket of Well-Spoken Utterances") - is the most famous. It contains the purported discourses (in Pali: suttas) of the Buddha himself, and are the oldest remaining documents in an Indian language to preserve his philosophy. Readers now have at least three very good English-language anthologies of suttas to choose from. By far the most comprehensive is Bhikku Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words. The other anthology of note is John J. Holder's scholarly Early Buddhist Discourses.
This new anthology is by Rupert Gethin of the University of Bristol, and current president of the Pali Text Society. It also happens to be an especially attractive edition, part of the newly revamped Oxford World's Classics series. As one would expect from both Gethin's credentials and the Oxford series, the introduction, explanatory notes and supplementary materials are scholarly and insightful, aimed toward a discriminating general reader more so than a Buddhist practitioner. Gethin is positioned at the forefront of Buddhist scholarship and, if you are interested in historical Buddhism, you will find his insights extremely fascinating.
The book includes a highly informative general introduction in which Gethin bypasses the mythology surrounding the Buddha's life for a refreshingly spare exploration of the development of Buddhism in India. Each sutta is prefaced with an insightful introduction outlining its content as well as its relative importance within the Pali canon. The translations of the suttas themselves are beautiful: modern, vivid and refreshingly free of archaism. Buddhists as well as the general reader have much to gain from Gethin's transparent translations. Scholarly translations of Pali literature can sometimes be unreadable. See, for example, John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana's translation of The Dhammapada (also in the Oxford World's Classics series), which is probably among the most accurate available but unfortunately incomprehensible in places. Gethin strikes the right balance between readability and accuracy.
Readers new to Buddhist scripture may be surprised to find a rich and vivid literature of fascinating and compelling characters. Stories in which, for instance, a distraught king travels to the Buddha with five hundred wives each mounted on one of five-hundred she-elephants on a beautiful moonlit night. Or the Buddha's exhortation to his monks to observe the various stages in which a corpse decomposes. Or a vivid and touching portrayal of an aging and ailing Buddha anticipating the coming of his own death. What also comes across in Gethin's translations that sometimes gets lost in others is a characteristic humor. For example, in the discourse entitled "The Fruits of the Aescetic Life", the aforementioned king has asked guru after guru what the rewards of a life of renunciation would be in the here and now. All except the Buddha give him a longwinded exposition of their respective philosophies. The king remarks, "it is as if someone asked for an explanation of a mango gave and explanation of a breadfruit." (Get it? "Fruits" of the Ascetic Life? Well, I found it funny.)
The selection of suttas is strategic: included are the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta ("Turning the Wheel of Truth" - the Buddha's first teaching in which he outlines the middle path and the four noble truths, the Samannaphala Sutta ("The Fruits of the Ascetic Life"), the Mahaparinibbana Sutta ("The Buddha's Final Enlightenment"), as well as the invaluable Satipatthana Sutta ("Establishing Mindfulness") among many, many others. The anthology as a whole culls from four of the five of the nikayas ("collections"), opting to skip out on material from the Khuddaka Nikaya (the so-called "minor collection"). Gethin's aim appears to have been to offer a representation of Early Buddhism as a whole, as opposed to a streamlined collection for Buddhist practitioners. What emerges is a Buddhism that is somewhat intermediate between indigenous Indian spirituality (there is much talk of karma, reincarnation and gods and demons - largely missing from many of the more Westernized introductions to Buddhism) and the agnostic/nontheistic adaptations of Buddhism developing later.
Of the three anthologies mentioned, Holder's would probably make the best textbook for a university course. It is scholarly, but much better focused on the philosophical foundations of Buddhism. Bhikku Bodhi's collection is indispensable for practitioners - the commentary and translations are extremely insightful. Gethin's lies somewhere in between: not as scholarly as Holder's and not quite as focused and streamlined for the modern-day Buddhists as Bodhi's. Still, I recommend it to anyone interested in getting a more accurate view of what early Buddhism may have looked like. The readability of the translations themselves are certainly worth the price of the volume.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Sayings of the Buddha: New Translations from the Pali Nikayas (Oxford World's Classics)
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