This book is designed to offer a concise, informative and easy-to-read description of the main features of one of the world's oldest and most popular religions -- Buddhism.

'The aim of Buddhism is happiness,' writes the Dalai Lama. This no-nonsense approach is very appealing. But the teachings of Buddhism are many, varied and sometimes highly sophisticated, so it's not always easy to convey them clearly and succinctly. What makes this book distinctive is it structure and approach -- the simple device of using numbers as a way into the subject. Here, in 10 short chapters, the most important aspects of Buddhism are set out and analysed:

TEN worlds: NINE consciousnesses: EIGHTfold Path: SEVEN seas: SIX parameters: FIVE precepts: FOUR noble truths: THREE jewels: TWO but not two: ONE-eyed turtle and the floating sandalwood log: ZERO and beyond.

You could think of this, perhaps, as a countdown to enlightenment -- hence the rather provocative subtitle.

Buddhism by Numbers: A Countdown to Enlightenment, Tony Morris, Mud Pie, Paperback,
160 pages, $8.95

Tony Ray Morris was born in North Carolina and spent his childhood years in the Appalachia Mountains of North Georgia and Eastern Kentucky. Much of his fiction and poetry reflect this region's influence on his imagination. Until his mid-thirties, Morris worked a series of odd jobs (bicycle repairman, window glazer, and encyclopedia salesman) and ended up spending the last ten years before he started writing as a machine operator in a paper factory. In 1992, Morris quit his factory job, started college, and found a life in journalism. He began writing poetry and fiction in 1995, earned a Ph.D. in English from Florida State University, and currently teaches creative writing at Georgia Southern University. He�s the associate editor of Southern Poetry Review, and director of the Ossabaw Island Writers� Retreat. His poems have been awarded the Louisiana Literature Prize, and the Tennessee Writers Alliance Poetry Award and have three time been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Along with his debut novel, Deep River Blues, and four books of poetry, his work has also been widely published in anthologies and journals.