Renowned scholar-monk and bestselling translator Bhikkhu Bodhi's definitive, practical guide on how to read ancient Buddhist texts in the original language.

Bhikkhu Bodhi's sophisticated and practical instructions on how to read the Pali of the Buddha's discourses will acquaint students of Early Buddhism with the language and idiom of these sacred texts. Here the renowned English translator of the Pali Canon opens a window into key suttas from the Samyutta Nikaya, giving a literal translation of each sentence followed by a more natural English rendering, then explaining the grammatical forms involved. In this way, students can determine the meaning of each word and phrase and gain an intimate familiarity with the distinctive style of the Pali suttas--with the words, and world, of the earliest Buddhist texts.

Ven. Bodhi's meticulously selected anthology of suttas provides a systematic overview of the Buddha's teachings, mirroring the four noble truths, the most concise formulation of the Buddha's guide to liberation. Reading the Buddha's Discourses in Pali shares with readers not only exceptional language instruction but also a nuanced study of the substance, style, and method of the early Buddhist discourses.

Reading the Buddha's Discourses in Pali: A Practical Guide to the Language of the Ancient Buddhist Canon, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, Hardcover, 552 pp, $49.95

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American Buddhist monk from New York City, born in 1944. He obtained a BA in philosophy from Brooklyn College and a PhD in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School. After completing his university studies he traveled to Sri Lanka, where he received novice ordination in 1972 and full ordination in 1973, both under the leading Sri Lankan scholar-monk Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maitreya (1896-1998). From 1984 to 2002 he was the editor for the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy, where he lived for ten years with the senior German monk Ven. Nyanaponika Thera (1901-1994) at the Forest Hermitage. He returned to the United States in 2002. He currently lives and teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York. Ven. Bodhi has many important publications to his credit, either as author, translator, or editor. These include The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikaya, 1995), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha (Samyutta Nikaya, 2000), and The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha (Anguttara Nikaya, 2012). In 2008, together with several of his students, Ven. Bodhi founded Buddhist Global Relief, a nonprofit supporting hunger relief, sustainable agriculture, and education in countries suffering from chronic poverty and malnutrition.

Preface	vii
Abbreviations	xiii
Detailed Contents	xv
General Introduction	1
A Very Brief Overview of Pali Grammar	11
Common Sentence Patterns in the Nikayas	49
Key to Grammatical Terms Used in This Book	81
1. The Four Noble Truths: The Matrix of the Teaching	85
2. The Five Aggregates: The Meaning of Suffering in Brief	139
3. The Six Sense Bases: The Ccannels through which Suffering Originates	221
4. Dependent Origination: The Origination and Cessation of Suffering	291
5. The Path and the Way: The Practices Leading to the End of Suffering	377
6. The Unconditioned: The Goal	495
Pali-English Glossary	503
Bibliography	529
About the Author	531