(Penguin Classics)

The Dhammapada is a collection of aphorisms that illustrate the moral teachings of Buddha - the spiritual path to the supreme Truth. Probably compiled in the third century BCE, the verses are arranged according to theme, covering ideas such as self-possession, good and evil, watchfulness and endurance. Together they describe how an individual can attain the enlightenment of Nirvana, the supreme goal of Buddhism. The road to Nirvana, as illustrated in The Dhammapada, is narrow and difficult to negotiate, but the reward of eternal life gives hope and determination to the traveller.

I'm not silly enough to review the Dhammapada; I'm reviewing this edition. So, just know that the Roebuck translation in Penguin Classics is probably not great if you don't know much about Buddhism, but is glorious if you do. The notes are mostly stories that have been used to explain individual verses, which are often very fun, and give you more insight into the religion than more sanitized, Western readings (in which Buddhism is mostly about stabilizing your brain-wave patterns).

Roebuck's introduction focuses on the textual history of the Dhammapada, which is useful for some scholarly purposes, I'm sure, but, again, not very useful if you're coming to ancient Buddhism for the first time. The glossary is very useful, though.

So, all in all, a very nice edition. The translation is readable without straining for poetry, which I liked. ( )

The teachings of Buddha in twenty-six poems or chapters total 423 verses. They have been ""transcreated"" here by a young Sanskrit scholar from the original Pali in a direct, contemporary idiom. They comprise a complete expression of Buddhist thought--about the nature of suffering and cessation of suffering, the wise man and the fool, craving, anger, punishment, the enlightened one, the saint. One must follow the eight-fold way of right views, right intentions, right speech, right action, etc., and ""Like a connoisseur picking a flower, the good man chooses Dhamma,"" so that he may become ""loving, fearless, serene."" A cleanness of line and phrasing characterizes this translation and is appropriate to a text which even in the reading frees the mind of the banal, the mundane and the transitory.

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Over the summer I've collected Penguin's Little Black Classics, a collection of 80 little booklets from all parts of world literature. Now, I'm reading them in a random order.

This booklet contains 'Captivating aphorisms illustrating the Buddhist dhamma, or moral system. '

I must admit that I read and rated it purely based on reading it as a piece of literature, rather than spiritual. And, to be quite frank, it was not an easy read. It was not even a nice read. The aphorisms (at least the ones collected) are often almost the same and just stated slightly different, or one is stating it positively and another one negatively. This made it so far my least favourite of the Little Black Classics even though I thought it was interesting to read something for a change that I perhaps wouldn't have picked up on my own. ( )