Discover the birth of Buddhism and the essentials of Buddhist teachings with this clear, comprehensive explanation of early Buddhism's key doctrines. You'll come away with:

- insight into the beginning of Buddhism and the significance of its core beliefs - dependent arising, non-self, moral life, the diagnosis of the human condition, the critique of theoretical views, and the nature of Nibbana;

- a lucid understanding of the Buddha's challenge to the concept of the subject as a self-entity and the reality of both the subject and object, perceiver and perceived, as a dynamic process;

- a grasp of early Buddhist teachings as representing a middle position (equally aloof from spiritual eternalism and materialist annihilation) and a middle path (equally aloof from self-mortification and sensual indulgence); and

- the experience of the Buddha's teachings on attaining liberation as comprehensible, sensible, and something we can make part of our own practice.

Early Buddhist Teachings, Y. Karunadasa, Wisdom Publications, Paperback, 248 pp, $29.95

Y. Karunadasa is Professor Emeritus at the University of Kelaniya and a former director of its Graduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of London, the University of Toronto, and the University of Hong Kong, and as the Numata Chair at the University of Calgary. He lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka.