Tuesday, December 22, 2009

"An Amazing Decade for Dharma"




(Dec. 22, 2009) Over the past ten years we Buddhists have been the beneficiaries of a staggering wealth of new resources. We've been incredibly fortunate in the number of new translations of sutras, commentaries, and new studies that have emerged over the last ten years. Whatever your particular area of interest, there is without question exponentially more to work with than there was even ten years ago.

Last year I singled out Snow Lion Publications for praise, so I won't repeat that at length here. But I would like to extent the appreciation and thanks to Wisdom Publications (a nonprofit organization), which has also been doing great work. In particular, I'm excited about four of their fantastic series:

  • Teachings of the Buddha Series - Excellent new translations of the Nikayas and other material from the Pāli canon, with exhaustive footnotes and explanations from leading experts like Bhikkhu Bodhi. Never has it been easier to explore for oneself directly what the Buddha taught.
  • Classics of Indian Buddhism - The counterpart to the above series, it features translations of Mahāyāna texts from Sanskrit. It's just getting underway with an avadāna collection published last year, but hopefully many more titles are to come.

Connecting Language and Actions (Frank Schaeffer)

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