Buddhist Scriptures (Penguin Classics)

I was wanting to familiarize myself more with Buddhist thought and this book proved an invaluable resource. There are many different stories from different sects which helps provide a broad picture of Buddhism both in a historical and present sense.

The book was great. Enjoyed it. this book is great for the new buddhist to get into this religion. This book is not like a bible, but selective scriptures and stories. Stories such as buddha's past lifes( all have a meaning to them of genorosity) and the idea of the six realms, what you have to be if you want to be reborn in this or that realm. i suggest you should get this book if you want to know about boddhistava( sorry if i cant spell), teachings of buddha here and there, and the the history of how it spread and who spread them to keep this faith going. really interesting.

I have been practising Buddhism for a few years now in a fairly specific way. I have been interested lately in the differing belief systems and interpretations of other streams of Buddhism. After all all dharma is interrelated to all other dharma. This book is a very good overall snapshot of different beliefs and will be quite complimentary to your own practise no matter what it is.

It has been almost five decades since the Penguin Classics series last launched an anthology of Buddhist texts onto the market, during which time interest in the religion throughout the English-speaking world has grown to more than justify a new anthology well over twice the size of the original. That first volume was largely the work of E. Conze, working from Sanskrit, with heterogeneous scraps of translation from other languages, provided by E. M. Hare, David Snellgrove, Trevor Leggett and D. T. Suzuki, mixed in here and there. In this new work the editor has made less of a personal contribution through translation, but has done a far superior job of orchestrating a much more balanced whole and equipping it with a reflective and highly readable introduction, which in itself provides a succinct commentary (pp. xiv-xviii) on the history of such anthologies over the years--including in its final paragraph some delightfully (and justifiably) acerbic comments on the codswallop that in all too recent times past was excerpted to represent his own area, Tibetan Buddhism. The generous list of books for further reading on pp. xlii-xlix also deserves commendation. Inevitably the need to include translations reflecting the current state of Buddhist textual studies has all but wiped out the contribution of United Kingdom-based scholars to the enterprise, though for example the translations of K. R. Norman represent a standard of work unlikely to be matched elsewhere for some time to come, and so still find a place amongst a much longer roster of translations mostly carried out specifically for this anthology and largely undertaken on the other side of the Atlantic. One or two sacrifices have clearly been made in order to find room for such a wealth of materials, notably the exclusion of any of the finding lists cross-referencing the contents by language or by contributor that formed such a useful feature of the editor's earlier anthologies for Princeton University Press, but by and large there is very little here to complain about. That is not the same, however, as declaring this anthology perfect. Such an ambitious enterprise is bound to entail errors, though mostly (one hopes) errors of the trivial sort that can be readily corrected in future printings.[...] [...]drawing attention to these lapses is by no means intended to discourage any would-be purchaser: at under ten pounds a copy, one certainly gets a remarkable quantity of good, accurate translation and up-to-date introductory remarks for one's money. No one at all interested in Buddhism should hesitate for a second to make the investment. T. H. BARRETT

I had been looking for a book that would give me a good overview on the Buddhist sutras, and stumbled upon this one. Initially sceptical, Conze's book turned out to be an indispensible companion which I still refer to contrantly. I am reading it through again the second time, as once is never sufficient to grasp the contents. The strength of this book is that it keeps external commentaries to a minimum and lets the sutras and scriptures speak for themselves. Where Conze interposes is where the book is weakest, eg in his summary of the "Morality" passages where his own moral standards ultimately impinge on the translation. Conze is also a good guide to some of the main scriptures and his selection covers a sufficiently wide enough array of topics to provide any reader with a good starting point for understanding Buddhist teachings. What I found most invaluable was the introduction, which mapped out roughly the timeline of the past and future Buddhas. I have not seen this elsewhere, and here Conze does a good job of putting the historical Sakyamuni Buddha in perspective of the buddhas of the past, in particular Dipankara, and the next Buddha Maitreya. The selections of the Past Lives and Birth Stories also gives a good overview to the historical Buddha Sakyamuni's past incarnations and his life story, which include many fantastical details which the Western writer has often obliterated in order to make the Buddha more believable to readers, at the expense of His true magnificence (sadly, even our Asian writeups on the Buddha Sakyamuni in English often sidestep the more supernatural aspects of the Buddha and in this way has led to much ignorance even amongst Asians of the greatness of the Buddha's powers). Reading these chapters was thus a real eye-opener. Also very interesting were the chapters on Doctrinal Disputes, which give some perspective into how the differences in schools have been tackled in a positive way. The sections on Meditation are perhaps a bit too brief, as is the section on Other Worlds, but there is enough here to entice the reader to delve deeper into the scriptures, for which a book such as this will necessarily serve mainly as a taster. This does not mean, however, that the contents do not have substance. Conze does a good job of extracting the pith from the scriptures he offers, so that the core messages from the scriptures come through pretty complete. And that is why this book is an invaluable companion to anyone interested in Buddhism. The only aspect that could do with some improvement is the referencing of sources, which could be more detailed. For example, when Conze tells us that he extracted from Ashvaghosa, there is nothing in the book to tell us which edition, the exact title, bibliography etc, so that hunting down the exact text has been a challenge. Otherwise, Buddhist Scriptures is both essential reading and a good spiritual companion.

While I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book as a primer for beginners, it is an excellent introduction to basic Buddhist texts and sources. I have found this text to be quite useful as a reference work and can recommend it as such. The primary value of this work, as I see it, is in demonstrating the essential elements of Buddhism as a philosophy in development. What the Buddha himself taught, and what his most perceptive students understood, was that there is a way for human beings to consciously guide their own evolution to such a point that greed, hatred, anger and deluded thinking could be minimized or eventually eliminated, taking one beyond the normal conception of what it is to be human. One was to train the mind and body through meditation and intellectual and ethical development. In this way, one could be of greatest benefit to all living beings. Over time, the majority of people wanted or needed the trappings of a religion and the Buddha's teaching, the Dharma, began to acquire the nature of a faith, complete with ritual and lore, stories of miracles, and specialized garments and paraphernalia, just as happened with the original teachings of the Jewish rabbi Jesus whom Paul turned into "Christ." Still, the genius of the Buddha and subsequent Dharma teachers is evident in this volume.