A BUDDHOBIBLIOGRAPHY — Bruce Burrill

This is an annotated list of Buddhist books that I hope will be useful and entertaining

We will first look at some basic books that will help one get a feel of the issues as presented by the three basic traditions of Buddhism in the West–Theravada, Mahayana, and Zen. Secondly, we shall look at a wide variety of popular and scholarly works. They will be presented in no particular order. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Bad books will be scrupulously avoided.

40 Meditation Exercises as listed in the Path of Purification

By Bhikkhu Khantipalo

 

If one has no meditation teacher from whom one may request a meditation subject, then one has to rely upon one’s knowledge of one’s character in order to prescribe for oneself a suitable meditation. There are forty meditation exercises (kammatthana) noted by the great teacher Buddhaghosa as being suited to certain types of character. For the purposes of meditation, he considers six characters: faithful, intelligent, and speculative (in which the skillful roots of non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion are variously dominant); and greedy, hating, and deluded (in which greed, hatred and delusion, the unskillful roots, are dominant). The trouble here is twofold: firstly, very few “pure” types can be found, most people being mixtures of two or more of them — and moreover ever-changing mixtures; and secondly, it is rather difficult to judge which class one’s character belongs to since one’s own delusion and pride are apt to blur one’s judgments.