The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions

This book, filled with excerpts of sacred texts of many of the major world religions, is a planned companion in structure to Huston Smith's masterpiece, World Religions. It offers the sacred texts without commentary or judgement to support the reader in simply BE-ing with the texts and finding their own interpretation of the essence of the writings. "The World's Wisdom" is a book I will continue to reference throughout my ministry - and that I will share with interfaith students as a valuable source of inspiration and comparison.

On repeated visits to the bookstore, I kept getting drawn to this book, leafing through it and inevitably had to buy it. The author wrote this book because there was no handy reference book for his students in which he could draw from all the wisdom of the various religions. The book has great wisdom derived from all the worlds major religions. It even has creation myths from different parts of the world. Interesting to note the similarities and differences. For example with Buddhism, he includes A Sutra about the practice of right mindfulness, which I find incredibly useful and reassuring. I also love the passage Dear to Me from the Bhagavad Gita. I also appreciate the passage from Chuang Tsu about The Quiet Mind, which is brilliant. If you were to read you would discover chapters on Primal religions, and even Shamanism. Novak allows us to see the patterns, and draw our own conclusions. If you were to find this review helpful, please click yes.

An excellent compliation of primary materials on world religions. Excellent, but brief introductory notes make this book an excellent companion for introductory comparative religion courses.

Easily the best anthology of religious writings I've seen, and I've seen quite a few. Beautiful and educational; as a teacher, I've found it very useful for religion courses. If you've any interest in religion or spirituality, this book is a must for your collection.