I keep reading over and over The Dhammapada. It is a collection of sayings from the Buddha recorded by his disciples during or shortly after his death, and is much more extensive, but akin to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the effect that if all other teachings from these two men were lost we would still be able to follow their ways.
There is a great 100 page or so introduction by Eknath Easwaran that goes into the life of the Buddha and some basics of Buddhism. It gives powerful parallels to other Religions and Physics and other sciences. Einstein is quoted a lot.
And the sutras themselves follow in fifteen or so chapters with lines at the same time practical and provoking of the spirit-mind. I don’t believe I will ever attain Nirvana, or dissolve completely my earthly passions or selfish desires, but the words make sense to me, and of any established Way of Life (I hesitate to say religion) seem the best suited to me for this world; mainly because they are of this world: about life, change, and renewal.
The teachings of the Buddha do not separate man and gods and animals and plants and rocks and oceans but teach that all is one, connected by the endless cause and effect of life, every ripple of a thought or action in an sea acting upon the other billions of ripples, and I like that. There are no arbitrary rules or rituals to follow, only to live a balanced life seeking to train the mind and live in accordance with all Life. Our world is determined by us, by how our own minds perceive are surroundings.
Observations and universal laws of life and the natural world, not Gods who bring horrible plagues upon Egypt, are the guides. And that works for me.
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