What is the Dharma?
Sangharakshita
Windhorse,1998, £9.99/$19.99 p/b
The editors of Windhorse Publications’ Spoken Word project are slowly turning Sangharakshita’s huge output of lectures and seminars into a seemingly endless stream of ‘new’ books. What Is The Dharma? is a beautifully edited addition to the series and an excellent introduction to basic Buddhist teachings. It contains many teachings of the sort that everyone wanting to understand Buddhism should learn by heart, but most probably don’t know properly. Sangharakshita’s distinctive achievement here is to communicate profound teachings in a highly accessible way – helped by his mastery of the evocative metaphor and the stimulating allusion. In particular the first part, ‘The Truth’, offers an account of Buddhist ‘metaphysics’, which manages to be exceptionally clear and yet remains true to the elusiveness of its subject. What Is The Dharma? offers riches far beyond many of the books expounding Buddhist teachings that are currently being published. It deserves to avoid being submerged in the deluge.
reviewed by Vishvapani, Dharma Life 9, Winter 1998
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