Reading the Buddha's Discourses in Pali: A Practical Guide to the Language of the Ancient Buddhist Canon

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.


About the Author
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American Buddhist monk from New York City. After completing his PhD in philosophy he traveled to Sri Lanka, where he received full ordination in 1973, both under the leading Sri Lankan scholar-monk Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Mahanayaka Thera. 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 Mahathera at the Forest Hermitage. 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 1995, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha 2000, and The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha 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.