Why Read Early Buddhist Texts?

Why and how should we read the early Buddhist texts? We’ll go through three reasons to read them, and outline three strategies to use when approaching them.

Four texts to start with:

(1) The Buddha’s “First Sermon”
(2) The Kālāma Sutta
(3) The Water Snake Sutta
(4) The Dhammapada (There is also a very good translation of this done by Gil Fronsdal).

Good sources: Bhikkhu Bodhi’s book “In the Buddha’s Words”, and websites suttacentral.net, accesstoinsight.org.

The idea for this video was suggested in a thread over at Sutta Central.