The most beloved book in the Pali Canon. 423 verses on the path.
If you read only one Buddhist text in your life, the Theravada tradition would tell you to read the Dhammapada — 423 verses of the Buddha's teaching, arranged in 26 chapters, on craving and freedom from craving.
The earliest complete Buddhist canon — preserved in Pali by the Theravada tradition and committed to writing in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE. Three baskets: discourses, monastic rules, and higher doctrine.
The oldest surviving school of Buddhism — the way of the elders. The tradition that preserved the Pali Canon, the monastic rule, and the path of the arahant across twenty-three centuries from Sri Lanka through Southeast Asia.
The opening episode of a serial reading and commentary on the Dhammapada — the Buddha's collected sayings, the most widely-read text in the Theravada world, rendered into a daily contemplation.
The second episode of the Dhammapada series. The verse held against the small frictions of daily life.
The third episode. Verse, story, and the small daily act of recollection.
The fourth episode. The Dhammapada read slowly enough that one verse can fill a day.
The fifth episode. A verse on heedfulness — the quality the Buddha names as the path to the deathless.
The sixth episode. The slow accretion of practice, one verse at a time.
The seventh episode. On the wise person and the foolish person — the central comparison of the text.
The eighth episode. Verse and ordinary life met at the same point.
The ninth episode. The Dhammapada's arithmetic of consequence.
The tenth episode. The crossing point — the verses on the act of taking up the practice.
The eleventh episode. The Dhammapada series moves into its long middle, verse by verse.
423 verses across 26 chapters. Pali on the left page, English on the right. Soft cover, 288 pages, hand-bound in Kathmandu. The reference edition for the Daily Dhammapada practice in the app.
