Many people in the West base their ideas of religion on the three monotheistic Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (in alphabetical order). These three spiritual paths share another characteristic besides believing in one God and acknowledging the legacy of Abraham.
The followers of all three are “people of the book,” just different books. In Judaism, the holy book is the Tanakh, known to Christians as the Old Testament; in Islam, the Qur’an, also transcribed as Koran; in Christianity, the Bible made up of the Old and New Testaments.
So, people in the West interested in Buddhism look for a “Buddhist Bible,” a single volume that can be easily held in one hand. Although Buddhism enjoys a huge library of scriptures, there is no one single book or collection with a role in Buddhism comparable to the role of the single “holy book” of each of the three Abrahamic faiths.
Online collections of Buddhist scriptures in English
You can download for free many Buddhist scriptures and other Buddhists texts in English from the ebook library of Buddhanet.net or from the Buddhism page of the Internet Sacred Text Archive, a library of texts from world religions.
You can also find a huge collection of texts in English in the Theravada Buddhist tradition at the Access to Insight website , and a collection of Mahayana Buddhist texts at an index page titled “Mahayana Buddhist Sutras in English.”
The Dhammapada: the Buddha’s greatest hits
The most accessible and popular canonical Buddhist scripture is the Dhammapada (Wikipedia article), a collection of 423 verses attributed to the Buddha. For many people, this is their first Buddhist scripture, and they are in for a surprise. There are no teachings about how to meditate, how to ring temple bells, or how to accessorize your home with Buddhist imagery. Instead, the teachings are about how to be a decent person, living a moral and productive life, here and now in the real world, not floating away on clouds of incense.
Many translations of the Dhammapada into English are available online. The Internet Sacred Text Archive offers an 1881 translation here, with rather dated English. Access to Insight offers a variety of contemporary translations and commentaries here , and Buddhanet offers four versions in PDF on this page, including texts with the traditional stories behind the verses, as well as an online version with explanations here.
Gil Fronsdal is a contemporary Western Buddhist teacher and translator. Although the text of his translation of the Dhammapada is not available online, his reading of his complete translation, together with two talks over a half hour each, is available for free listening and downloading here.
Modern compilations of Buddhist scriptures
The Internet Sacred Text Archive provides two compilations by Westerners for Westerners. Buddha, the Gospel, by Paul Carus, published in 1894, is dated in its language, and the framework and terminology of a “gospel” are not necessary for modern readers. A Buddhist Bible is the first edition of Dwight McDonald’s compilation (1932), which should have more properly been called A Zen Buddhist Bible, since its emphasis is on the Zen (Wikipedia article) tradition. A second edition, more than twice as long, extended the range of texts to include other Buddhist traditions and even texts from other spiritual traditions, such as Taoism.
The Teaching of Buddha was first published in Japanese in 1925 and was translated into Engish in 1934. Now available in over forty languages, the book has been placed by the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (BDK) (Society for the Promotion of Buddhism) in hotel rooms around the world, on the model of the Gideon Bible. It is a concise, nonsectarian collection of Buddhist writings, with thorough citations. Check the source of this information to find out how to obtain a free copy of the text, which is available online here.
