Free Books & Periodicals:

When I first became interested in Insight Meditation ( vipassana bhavana )  I was a graduate student living off of  little more then $500 a month. I found it hard to find affordable educational materials on Buddhism that were written for a modern, intelligent, and non-academic audience.

I found a friend in the Internet.  I found many good reading materials for free and of an educational quality superior to what I could have gotten from a book store.   The links below will guide you to these places on and off of this site.

                      
 

By agreement with the publishers, all materials that can be obtained from this page may be redistributed.  However these materials may not be sold,  nor may the contents of these materials be altered.

 

Dhammapada ( Sayings Of The Buddha ):

Mindfulness In Plain English by Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
Probably the best introductory Insight Meditation ( Vipassana ) book written for English speakers. An exceptionally clear, step-by-step, nondenominational guide with everyday examples that everyone can easily relate to.   Hard copies of the book can be obtained from Wisdom Publications.
 

The Eight Fold Path by Venerable Bhikku Bodhi
The fourth noble truth of the Buddha's "The Four Noble Truths" is that suffering can end by following "The Noble Eight Fold Path". This booklet is an excellent introduction as to why Buddhist meditate, basic Buddhist teachings, and the Buddha's "Noble Eightfold Path". Approx. 61 pages.  If  you  read this book you will gain much by also reading this short excerpt from "The Wings To Awakening" concerning the use of kasinas to achive jhana ( deep states of concentration ). Excerpt
 

The Word of the Buddha :
In this superb little work compiled & edited by Venerable Nyanatiloka Mahåtherayou  you can read the basic Buddhist teachings in the Buddha's own words,  as taken from the suttas in the Pali Canon.  The sutta quotations are compiled into one smooth flowing  logical order to enable the reader to easily read the most important Buddhist teachings recorded in the Pali Canon.   My special thanks goes towards David Cortesi for producing the HTML and PDF versions of this book, as well as Venerable Bhikku Bodhi of  The Buddhist Publication Society  for granting permission for electronic distribution . Read The PDF version*
 
 

The Wings To Awakening by Thanissaro Bhikku
Toward the end of his life the historical Buddha created "The Seven Sets", a means of preserving his most important teachings across time and culture. The "Seven Sets" are lists that describe personal qualities, that if fully developed will lead the meditator to rediscover the Buddha's teachings. This book is an anthology of freshly translated suttas that describe the "The Seven Sets". This is an excellent introduction to what is truly important in the Pali Canon. Anyone concerned with what the historical Buddha's teachings actually are, should read this book.

*PDF ( Portable Docment Format ) files  preserve  the original appearance of the hard copy  document and makes printing easier.  You can get a  FREE Adobe Acrobat PDF reader  ( you don't need to register)  from  Adobe.com  that will automatically integrate itself into your web browser.  This will allow you to read PDF files on the web with your web browser as you would for any HTML file.  Just point and click.