The Dhammapada: The Path of Perfection (Penguin Classics) Paperback – May 30, 1973

The Dhammapada is such a short read, but what a read! It is literally 90 pages. You can finish it in a couple of hours, OR take your time, read a chapter a day and just let the knowledge soak in. This was required school reading (years ago). I remembered the name and purchased the book once more. This is a fantastic translation; I can't imagine another edition being as easy and understandable.I think we can all come to an agreement that many religions have a similar universal truth. Those interested in the "I Ching" and the "Tao Te Ching" - you need to add this book to your collection. Here we find another short masterpiece filled to the brim with words of wisdom. I mean it really makes you think that if everyone read this book and made a small conscious effort, the world would be a much better place to live in. Well, forget world peace for a second; if you're looking for inner peace, get this book and you'll be on the right track...Let me end off with a few precious notes:"To live one day full of virtue, wisdom, courage & deep contemplation is better than 100 years without it". Every day, one should take a few minutes to reflect and appreciate all of the little things that life has to offer.We are all filled with pride - way too much pride. It is imperative that we rid ourselves of this awful trait, and fill its' void with healthier qualities such as virtue, humility, meekness, simplicity, humbleness, sincerity and truth above all. Every day, we need to strive for the betterment of ourselves: to seek wisdom from others and apply it so that we can perfect our own personality, our own nature. In this life, you reap what you sow therefore; take advantage of the true treasures around you while you can. For once these priceless gifts are gone - they will not return so, use your time wisely and live in harmony.Goodness is a habit - a beautiful habit!!! Plant its' seed and watch it grow and cultivate!!!

This is by far the shortest book I own and yet also the densest. It is so brilliantly composed that hardly ever did a single word or phrase seem unnecessary. I like to collect my favorite passages from the books I read and soon found myself transcribing the entire work. This may only represent a tiny portion of the Buddhist canon, but you will find yourself wondering why any more writings are even necessary if you are able to comprehend the depth and scope of this brief text.Juan Mascaro quickly became a translator I had to read more from and I made sure to get his renditions of The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita as well as his rare personal collection of meditative aphorisms The Creation of Faith. What makes Mascaro so valuable as a representative of these spiritual texts is that he had not only an exceptional talent for translating and capturing the essence and flow of ancient works, but he was very much on a spiritual quest of his own. You can feel how respectful and careful he was in balancing the archaic rhythm and tone of the texts and the need to make them equally beautiful and sensible in a foreign language and for modern readers.

I'm something of a christian theologian and I've long felt the need to learn a bit about buddhism. Juan's introduction is exactly what I wanted to find and has been most helpful to me in understanding what it is that so many people find in this discipline. The differences between my christianity and a buddhist's belief it seems to me are simply different ways of expressing very similar world views - using different explanatory models to represent as best we can the underlying reality of existence.I was delighted to find, actually to confirm, the existence of this common ground between us. I'd go further and say that as I read this book I felt a very familiar sense of inner elation and discovery similar to what I get when reading parts of the bible. My early impression is that the effect with the Dhammapada if anything seems to be concentrated in far fewer words, though that may just be due to long familiarity with the christians' bible. I remember feeling the same sense of excitement when first reading the books of the old and new testaments.I am gratified to have become slightly less ignorant in this subject and would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in theology and who has not yet bothered to read anything about buddhist beliefs.

I've read the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada, and I'm working on the Bodhicaryavatara. The Dhammapada is, by far, my favorite. I'll let others debate the value of Juan Mascaro's translation, as I'm no authority on translations, nor have I read the scholarly literature on the subject -- all what I've seen is people debating it here on Amazon, and I don't know those people from Adam. Let me just say that I really enjoy the Penguin classics edition, and his introduction to the volume is quite good.