buddhist books

[SUGREF]

Hey there,

I need to know really quickly, what is the common text for buddhism? i.e. the buddhis equivalent for Taoism - Tao Te Ching; Hinduism - Bhagavad Gita; Islam - Koran etc.

Can anyone tell me?


Cheers ;)

'He who says nothing, consents' JP Sartre

[Kung Lek]

There are many Sutras.

The Lotus Sutra and The Diamond Sutra are two of what are considered the "more important" books.

But they all have value.

My personal opinion is that the only thing one needs to know about buddhism is the original sermon from Deer mount. Which was a dissertation on what is suffering, what causes suffering and how do you stop suffering and the eight fold path.

Everything else is details.

peace

Kung Lek

Martial Arts Links (http://members.home.net/kunglek)

[kungfu cowboy]

Yeah, only that which came out of the Buddha's mouth should be considered his doctrine. Do they know what that is historically?

[shaolinboxer]

Well, I'd say the four noble truths and the eightfold path are a good place to start.

[SUGREF]

Thanks KungLek, any recommendations on a volume containing the aforementioned sermon?

'He who says nothing, consents' JP Sartre

[kungfu cowboy]

Buddhism Made Plain
by Antony Fernando
revised edition

[origenx]

I thought the Dhammapada was a key text? At least that's what I read on another thread here I believe...

http://www.cstone.net/~maxwell/Dhmpada.htm

[Kung Lek]

There are many references and plenty of interpretations of the sermon at Deer park. But here it is in a nutshell.

The Buddha Guatama spoke:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> (1) Know this, monks, is the Noble Truth of Suffering; Birth is Suffering; Decay is Suffering; Disease is Suffering; Death is Suffering; association with those one does not love is Suffering; separation from those one loves is Suffering; not to get what one wants is Suffering; in short, the five constituent group of existence which are the object of Clinging are Suffering.

(2) Know this, monks, is the Noble Truth of the cause of Suffering:

It is the Craving which gives rise to fresh rebirth, and bound up with lust and greed now here now there, finds ever fresh delight. It is the Sensual Craving (kamma-tanha), the Craving for Existence (Bhava-tanha), and the Craving for Self-Annihilation (Vibhava-tanha).

(3) Know this, monks, is the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering:

It is the complete fading away and extinction of this Craving, its forsaking and giving up, liberation and detachment from it.

(4) Know this, monks, is the Noble Truth of the Path leading to the Cessation of Suffering:

It is this very Noble Eightfold Path, namely: -

Right Understanding,
Right Thinking,
Right Speech,
Right Action,
Right Livelihood,
Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness, and
Right Concentration. [/quote]

- So, there it is. After the Buddha said this the rest is details IE: what are each of the eight fold paths directions meanings and how would one go about acting on these words and so on.

There's plenty of writings that further examine this sermon and reems of paper about each and every point.

I personally am of the opinion that it is self explanitory and action can be taken immediately.

peace

Kung Lek

Martial Arts Links (http://members.home.net/kunglek)

[crumble]

The Buddhist Bible is also a good source with all the major sutras.

I think that you will find that there is a lot of material out there and various texts speak to different levels of understanding. Ultimately, I don't think there is an essential text.

What are you looking for SUGREF?

-crumble

[toddbringewatt]

An important distiction to make with regard to Buddism are the two significant branches of Mahayana Buddhism (Greater Vehicle) and Hinanyana Buddism (Lesser Vehicle). Their approaches to the life and message of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha are very different. Very worth checking out.

Also there is Zen Buddhism which cannot be denied as one of the major forms of Buddhism practiced today and is intimately related to the history of Kung Fu itself. Also greatly worth a look.

Buddhism as a whole is far more fragmented than the Judeo Christian religions and as such really has nothing equivalent to the Bible. Also, as Siddhartha Gautama never wrote his teachings down as far as is widely accepted, there is no "Tao Te Ching" as in Taoism. The above mentioned Sutras are good texts as far as what is accepted as traditional Buddhism by the world of academia and worth reading as a broad look at the subject of Buddism.

Have fun! A great religion and wonderful spiritual and intellectual persuit!

"Bruce Leroy. That's who!"

[GeneChing]

Five Things to Know About the Diamond Sutra, the World’s Oldest Dated Printed Book (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/Five-things-to-know-about-diamond-sutra-worlds-oldest-dated-printed-book-180959052/?no-ist)
Printed over 1,100 years ago, a Chinese copy of the Diamond Sutra at the British Library is one of the most intriguing documents in the world

http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/9a/c6/9ac601c0-ce33-43f1-84c4-5821163e09ea/diamond_sutra.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg
Diamond Sutra
(British Library)
By Jason Daley
SMITHSONIAN.COM 2 HOURS AGO

No one is sure who Wang Jie was or why he had The Diamond Sutra printed. But we do know that on this day in 868 A.D.—or the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong in Jie’s time—he commissioned a block printer to create a 17-and-a-half-foot-long scroll of the sacred Buddhist text, including an inscription on the lower right hand side reading, “Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents.” Today, that scroll is housed at the British Library and is acknowledged as the oldest dated printed book in existence.

Chances are you know a little something about the Gutenberg Bible, the first book made with moveable type, which came along almost 600 years later. Bibliophiles might also have a working knowledge of other famous manuscripts like the Book of Kells, The Domesday Book, and Shakespeare’s First Folio. Well, The Diamond Sutra should be in that pantheon of revered books, as well. Here’s why:

Origins

The text was originally discovered in 1900 by a monk in Dunhuang, China, an old outpost of the Silk Road on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The Diamond Sutra, a Sanskrit text translated into Chinese, was one of 40,000 scrolls and documents hidden in “The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas,” a secret library sealed up around the year 1,000 when the area was threatened by a neighboring kingdom.

In 1907, British-Hungarian archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein was on an expedition mapping the ancient Silk Road when he heard about the secret library. He bribed the abbot of the monastic group in charge of the cave and smuggled away thousands of documents, including The Diamond Sutra. The International Dunhuang Project is now digitizing those documents and 100,000 others found on the eastern Silk Road.

Content

The Diamond Sutra is relatively short, only 6,000 words and is part of a larger canon of “sutras” or sacred texts in Mahayana Buddhism, the branch of Buddhism most common in China, Japan, Korea and southeast Asia. Many practitioners believe that the Mahayana Sutras were dictated directly by the Buddha, and The Diamond Sutra takes the form of a conversation between the Buddha’s pupil Subhati and his master.

Why is it Diamond?

A full translation of the document's title is The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion. As Susan Whitfield, director of the Dunhuang Project explains, the sutra helps cut through our perceptions of the world and its illusion. "[W]e just think we exist as individuals but we don’t, in fact, we’re in a state of complete non-duality: there are no individuals, no sentient beings,” Whitfield writes.

Why did Wang Jie commission it?

According to Whitfield, in Buddhist belief, copying images or the words of the Buddha was a good deed and way of gaining merit in Jie’s culture. It’s likely that monks would have unrolled the scroll and chanted the sutra out loud on a regular basis. That’s one reason printing developed early on in China, Whitfield explains. “[If] you can print multiple copies, and the more copies you’re sending out, the more you’re disseminating the word of Buddha, and so the more merit you are sending out into the world,” she writes. “And so the Buddhists were very quick to recognize the use of the new technology of printing.”

What is one quote I should know from The Diamond Sutra?

It’s difficult to translate the sutra word for word and still catch its meaning. But this passage about life, which Bill Porter, who goes by the alias "Red Pine," adapted to English, is one of the most popular:


So you should view this fleeting world—
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

About Jason Daley
Jason Daley is a Madison, Wisconsin-based writer specializing in natural history, science, travel, and the environment. His work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science, Outside, Men’s Journal, and other magazines.


Intriguing short article on the Diamond Sutra

[David Jamieson]

Geez, I wrote my responses as Kung Lek so long ago. :)

I still agree with myself these years later and would only add the the THRIPITAKAYA is regarded as "THE" religious text for Buddhism.