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From: Keith (d207-216-60-167.bchsia.telus.net)
In Reply to: Do you... posted by Camilla on June 1, 2005 at 11:28 pm:
I tried to post my favourites oin the post that got blocked. I'll try again. My favourite for insirational reading is the Lotus Sutra. It has a combination of vastness of vision and practical advice, including several parables that will be familiar to readers from Christian backgrounds. (Scholars debate who plagiarized from whom.) The Vimalakirti Sutra makes the point that you don't have to be a monk to be enlightened. The Diamond Sutra discusses emptiness, the true nature of reality. Note that emptiness is a pretty deep subject, and there is a whole body of literature devoted to it, known as the Pr*jnaparamita Sutras. The Diamond Sutra is one of the shorter of these. The shortest of them is the Heart Sutra, which is short enough to be memorized; many people recite it as their daily practice. For beginners' reading, I recommend the Dhammapada, and A guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life (by Shantideva), which is not technically a Sutra, but is an excellent introduction to implementing the Buddhist lifestyle. Note that these works were all originally written in Sanskrit or Pali, and have titles in those languages. Modern translators translate the titles too, which gives rise to several different English titles for the same book. To help in identifying the books in various translations, here are the original titles: Lotus Sutra: Saddharma Pundarika Sutra Keith P.S. Apparently, the word that was blocking my post was "pr*jnaparamita". That is pretty darned weird! The missing letter is "a".
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