Primary sources, newly translated
An independent press that has been putting Buddhist primary sources into print since 2009 — the Pāli Canon unabridged in its own language, first English translations of meditation manuals and story collections that had never been rendered at all, and a natural-method course in Pāli itself.
39 volumes·Seven first English translations·9,333 pages in print
Established 2009 CE · 2552 BE · Osprey, Florida
How the world learned to sit. Four editions recovering the oldest practical instructions in Buddhism — from An Shigao's breath scripture in second-century Luoyang, through the Gandhāran and Kaśmīri courses that reached China, to the lost Theravāda manual that Buddhaghosa rewrote.
The Mindfulness of Breathing Sutra of An Shigao — China's First Meditation Book
In the year 148 a Parthian prince who had renounced his throne reached the Chinese capital and began teaching people to watch their breath. The book of that teaching is the oldest meditation manual in the Chinese language — here translated whole for the first time.
Saṅgharakṣa's Yogācārabhūmi — the meditation manual of China's first meditators
Around the turn of the first century, in Gandhāra — where Greek art met Indian thought — the elder Saṅgharakṣa set down a complete course in how to meditate. In 284 CE it entered Chinese and became one of the first real answers China ever received to a simple question: how, exactly, is this done?
A Himalayan meditation manual — and the roots of Zen
Around the year 411 the Indian monk Buddhabhadra brought a living tradition of meditation from the mountain country of Kaśmīr and Gandhāra. The book he carried and translated into Chinese is this one — a complete and practical course, among the very first ever to reach China.
The Path of Freedom — a reconstructed Pāli edition
Before Buddhaghosa wrote the Visuddhimagga, there was another book — and its Pāli original vanished. This edition reconstructs all twelve chapters from the sole Chinese witness, in a four-tier typography that keeps the work honest on every line.
The books Buddhist Asia actually grew up on — story collections, lives of the elders, and island chronicles, copied onto palm leaf for seven hundred years and never before put into English.
The Rasavāhinī — Buddhist stories from ancient India and Sri Lanka
For seven hundred years these were the stories Sri Lanka grew up on — the deer who died listening to a sermon, the crow who paid his debts, the girl who crossed the sea on faith alone. All one hundred and three, in English for the first time.
Lost stories of enlightenment from the Pali commentaries
If you love Zen stories, meet their ancestors. Centuries before Zen was born, monks in the meditation caves of an ancient island told stories just like these — short, startling, and true.
The Garland of Offerings — a masterwork of classical Sinhala literature
Composed around 1270 at the court of Dambadeṇiya, the Pūjāvaliya presents a complete life of the Buddha and ends with the arrival of his relics on the island — a closing chapter that stands among the earliest written histories of Sri Lanka.
The Chronicle of the Hatthavanagalla Monastery
A new translation of the Hatthavanagallavihāravaṃso, the thirteenth-century Pali chronicle of King Sirisaṅghabodhi — the king who gave his own head rather than let a war be fought for him.
A natural-method course in the Buddha's own language, taught the way Lingua Latina teaches Latin: entirely in Pāli, with no translation anywhere, until you find yourself reading the canon in the words it was recited in.
Volume I: The Village — a natural-method course in Pāli
Learn Pāli, the Buddha's own language, by living in it. A world of farmers and potters, of festivals and monsoon rains, told entirely in simple Pāli that grows with you, page by page.
Volume II: The Blessed One — the Buddha's last years
Volume II follows the young monk Nando across northern India in the Buddha's last years — climbing from simple narrative to the suttas themselves, read in the exact words of the canon.
Volume III: The Message — keeping the Buddha's words alive through the age of empires
The Buddha's message crosses the sea. Six generations of reciters carry the words through councils and schisms, past Alexander's armies and under Ashoka's edicts — until a monk steps onto the sands of Egypt with a memorized sutta.
A picture dictionary of the Buddha's world — the first thousand words of Pāli, explained in Pāli
The world the Buddha walked through — drawn, and named. Twenty-nine full-page engravings, everything in them numbered, and every number named and explained in Pāli.
Books about how the canon works and how to read it — the ancient interpretive manual, a computational search for the Buddha's oldest words, and the meditation instructions hiding in plain sight.
How to Read What the Buddha Taught
The canon's own manual of interpretation: how the Buddha's teachings are to be analysed, related, and applied. A modern translation of the Nettippakaraṇa, with commentary.
A computational search for the Buddha's oldest words
Which words in the Pali Canon actually came from the Buddha? Scholars have debated it for 150 years. This book asks an algorithm — without telling it what to look for — and then translates what it heard.
The Buddha's meditation instructions, lost in translation
The texts describe meditators constantly and seem to instruct them never. The claim of this book: the answer was on the page all along — in the quotation marks that English translations wiped away.
These were made to be carried. The aim was to squeeze a whole division of the canon into a single paperback — the Saṃyutta entire at 790 pages, the Visuddhimagga at 694 — so that the text travels instead of sitting on a shelf. One volume, or the four Nikāyas together, is enough to take into a forest and have everything, needing nothing else. Unabridged, in the language it was recited in, in Roman script — with the Majjhima also set in Brāhmī and in Sinhala.
The Basket of Guidance, in Pāli
The monastic code of the Pāli Canon, unabridged in the original Pāli.
The Long Discourses of the Buddha, in Pāli
The thirty-four long discourses — among them the Buddha's last days and the four foundations of mindfulness — complete in the original Pāli.
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, in Pāli
The middle-length collection, the heart of the Buddha's practical teaching, unabridged in the original Pāli.
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, in Pāli
The connected discourses — the four noble truths, dependent origination, the six senses, the eightfold path — complete and unabridged in Pāli.
The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, in Pāli
The numerical collection, arranged by number from ones to elevens, in the original Pāli.
The Collection of Little Texts, in Pāli
The second volume of the miscellaneous collection, in the original Pāli.
The Path of Purification — Pāli edition
Buddhaghosa's fifth-century summa of doctrine and meditation — the forty subjects of concentration and the stages of insight — complete in the original Pāli.
The Middle Sayings, set in the script of Aśoka
The middle-length discourses set in Brāhmī, the script of the Aśokan edicts and the ancestor of nearly every writing system of South and Southeast Asia.
The Middle Length Discourses in Sinhala script
The middle-length discourses set in Sinhala script, the hand in which the Pāli canon was carried and copied on the island for two thousand years.
A reader from the Pāli canon
A long reader drawn from the Pāli texts themselves, gathered on the principle that the canon is the most authoritative record we have of what the Buddha taught.
The earlier list, from 2010 to 2015: bilingual study editions setting Pāli beside English or German for readers learning to read the canon in its own words, and two short volumes of essays on practice.
The Solemn Utterances of the Buddha — bilingual edition
Eighty short suttas, each closing in a verse spoken by the Buddha — the source of the blind men and the elephant. Pāli and English set side by side.
Bilingual edition, Pāli and English
The Greek king Menander puts his questions to the elder Nāgasena, and gets answers that have been quoted ever since — the chariot, the flame, the debt. Pāli faced with English.
A Pāli–English bilingual study edition with the ancient commentary
The Dhammapada with its commentary, in a word-by-word bilingual setting made for readers working their way into Pāli. Volume one.
Zweisprachige Studienausgabe — Pāli und Deutsch
The verses of the elder monks in a Pāli–German study edition, the German-language volume of the bilingual series.
In the Buddha's own words
The path laid out in passages drawn from the canon itself, arranged so the texts do the explaining.
Pāli in ten lessons, with the complete bilingual Udāna
A beginner's Pāli course in ten lessons, built so the student reads real canonical text from the first chapter — with the whole Udāna set out sentence by sentence in Pāli and English.
Pāli in ten lessons, with the complete bilingual Milindapañha
The companion course, working through the same ten lessons against the Questions of King Milinda, given complete in Pāli with facing English.
Pāli–Deutsch zweisprachig: das Ambaṭṭha-Sutta
The Ambaṭṭha-sutta in a Pāli–German facing edition, from the German-language strand of the bilingual series.
Pāli–English bilingual study edition (2012)
The earlier bilingual setting of the Questions of King Milinda, Pāli faced with English throughout. Later reissued as The Questions of King Milinda.
Essays and brief studies, most of them read in a single evening — on what the canon actually says about concentration and insight, on how the forest monks train, and on how far east the roots of some familiar western ideas may run.
Uncovering Buddhism — Theravādin Essays
Essays on what the Pāli canon literally says about concentration and insight — early Buddhism hidden in plain sight, from the roots of Zen to what mindfulness was taken to mean.
A four-week course to inner peace
How the forest monks of Sri Lanka actually train concentration, set out as a four-week course — demanding, and aimed at the deep states the meditation masters describe.
Buddhaghosa, in the traditional account
The traditional life of Buddhaghosa, the fifth-century commentator whose reading of the Theravāda scriptures became the orthodox one — reissued from James Gray's translation.
And accidentally created Christianity
Part essay, part historical investigation: the spread of Buddhist ideas through the Middle East, Greece and Alexandria, and what it may have to do with the Gospels. Draws on Christian apocrypha, Greek artefacts and the Pāli suttas.
An essay on the eastern roots of a western faith
A companion essay pressing the same question further: how much of what became Christian teaching had already been said, and said plainly, further east.
“Count the breaths, one to ten, and begin again.”The Scripture on Ānāpāna · Luoyang, second century
