Therigatha

After a long and fruitful life, the Buddha is now 80. For 50 years after his Enlightenment, he has been walking the hot, dusty roads of Northeastern India with just a robe and bowl, tirelessly and selflessly teaching and inspiring. He knows death is approaching. This is the background to the Maha-Paranibbana Sutta, the original account of the Buddha’s last months. It is extremely moving because it is so personal, detailed and vivid.

The Eightfold Path is the most widely known formulation of the Buddha's teaching. It is ancient, reaching back to the Buddha's very first discourse, and it is highly venerated as a unique treasury of wisdom and practical guidance. The teaching of the Eightfold Path challenges us to grasp the implications of that vision, and asks us to transform ourselves in its light. Like the teaching itself, this work covers every aspect of life.

It is widely accepted that the Sutta Nipata contains the earliest recorded version of the Buddha's teaching. It is an anthology of poetry and prose - 70 titled suttas of varied instruction and temperament arranged in five chapters.

The Theragatha is one of the most striking texts in the Pali Canon. It is a collection of 264 poems or verses - some short, some long - by monks who, traditionally, lived at the time of the Buddha, and which expressed their experience of insight, the culmination of their spiritual path. In fact, it is generally recognised now that this collection was added to over the years, so that some of the verses date from a later time.

Written in India in the early eighth century CE, Santideva's The Bodhicaryavatara takes as its subject the profound desire to become a Buddha and save all beings from suffering. The person who enacts such a desire is a Bodhisattva. Santideva not only sets out what the Bodhisattva must do and become; he also invokes the intense feelings of aspiration which underlie such a commitment, using language which has inspired Buddhists in their religious lives from his time to the present.