The Canon Itself
Standard edition of the Thai Pāḷi Canon [Wikipedia image, CC BY-SA 2.5]
To place the corpus of Buddhist scriptures in context, I suggest beginning with three lectures by Ajahn Sujato and Ajahn Brahmali, which are available on YouTube.
Texts of Early Buddhism
These (and much more) may be accessed at our webpage, Early Buddhism—Lectures.
Pāḷi Canon Online has an excellent discussion of the evolution of the Pāḷi Canon through the six Buddhist Councils.
The latest Council (held in Burma) was relatively recent, taking place during the years 1954-1956. If you are curious, Pariyatti has a free download of the Sixth Buddhist Council’s massive (160 Mb) Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Souvenir Album.
John Schlembach has generously made available this Google drive link to an excellent repository of material. Quoting from the Buddhadhamma Facebook post of May 9, 2017:
It is with the most supreme delight that this link is offered:
https://drive.google.com/open…
What you see here is a copy of all of the Pāḷi Canon that is available in English along with selected post-canonical works. Study this; share the link to those in need of dhamma.
Ānandajoti Bhikkhu’s Ancient Buddhist Texts website is also a rich source of information. It includes
Materials from the early and medieval Buddhist tradition covering texts in Pāḷi and Sanskrit; line by line (interlinear) texts and translations; translations in English only; studies of grammar, prosody and compilation; maps, reference works and audio files.
For users of Palemoon (a Firefox alternative), Pāḷi.Sirimangalo.Org offers a truly remarkable Waterfox extension, the Digital Pāḷi Reader. It has both Pāḷi and English versions of the entire canon as well as Pāḷi-English and English-Pāḷi dictionaries, Pāḷi proper names, Pāḷi roots, Duroiselle’s Pāḷi Grammar, and the Concise Pāḷi Dictionary, (and optionally Sanskrit roots and dictionary).
The Digital Pāḷi Reader (DPR) is a tool, much like a hard-copy language reader, facilitating study of the Pāḷi language at an advanced level. It contains the entire Myanmar version of the Pāḷi Tipiṭaka as found on the Vipassana Research Institute’s CSCD 3, as well as commentaries and sub-commentaries where available. It also includes the Visuddhimagga, Abhidhammatthasangaha and several ancient grammatical texts composed in Pāḷi, all available for analysis and translation. Additionally, it is possible to install the Thai Tipiṭaka and commentaries (a work in progress) as an alternative to the VRI tipitaka.
For Android-based phones and tablets, there is even a Theravāda Buddhist Texts app designed to be used in conjunction with an archive of Pāḷi and English texts loaded onto the device’s SD card. A deep bow to Yuttadhamo Bhikkhu for his commitment to the Dhamma.
DharmaNet International has a wonderful portal worth exploring at their virtual Insight Meditation webpage.
A Taste of Salt (edited by Mark Breneman) is available for download at suttapitaka.org.
The Sutta Pitaka is made of five collections of suttas; the Digha Nikaya, the Majjima Nikaya, the Samyutta Nikaya, the Anguttara Nikaya, and the Khuddaka Nikaya. These texts remain the most complete record of early Buddhist teachings. The suttas fill thousands of pages, and it is a daunting task for most readers to read through the many volumes. A Taste of Salt draws 350 pages containing the central teachings of the Buddha from the roughly 5,000 pages of the Sutta Pitaka. The purpose of this collection is to make these essential texts more accessible to meditators and students of Buddhism
An Analysis of the Pāḷi Canon, edited by Russell Webb is freely available as Wheel Publication No. 217 of the Buddhist Publication Society. It includes The Pāḷi Alphabet and its Pronunciation and BPS Fonts.
For a more extensive exploration, Ancient Buddhist Texts, Access to Insight‘s Tipiṭaka, the Pāḷi Canon Online, and Pāḷi Tipiṭaka are highly recommended. At www.tipitaka.org, the entire Pāḷi Canon (Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka Version 4.0) is available along with dedicated search software. There are two Tipiṭaka-related English publications of note by the Vipassana Research Institute — Essence of Tipiṭaka and the very important Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta (either as Pāḷi in Roman script with parallel English translation on the right or Pāḷi in Roman script followed by an English translation).
Http://www.audtip.org/ has Sutta readings in Pāḷi and English from DN, MN, SN, AN, KN, and the Vinaya.
For yet more canonical material and discussions, it is worth exploring the sitemaps of the Buddhist Publication Society and the Pāḷi Text Society.
Bodhi Monastery‘ s Online Dharma Lectures include:
- A Systematic Study of the Majjhima Nikaya, consisting of over 150 lectures by Bhikkhu Bodhi that explore
the direct teachings of the Buddha himself as preserved in some of the oldest records of his discourses. The first part of the series, covering fifty-two of the discourses (Parts I to IX), constitutes a systematic study program in the teachings of Early Buddhism. The later part of the series (Part X) takes selected discourses from the book in sequence, explaining their meaning and practical relevance.
- Sutta-Nipāta, a series of 40 lectures by Bhikkhu Bodhi discussing the Paritta suttas, and suttas from the Uragavagga, Cūḷavagga, and Mahāvagga chapters.
Reading Faithfully‘s Web page, Canonical Collections For Practice has many useful links for those who aspire to daily Sutta study.
Since the Chinese Madhyama Āgama is equally as early as the Pāḷi Majjhima Nikaya, the comparison of corresponding pairs of Majjhima chapters is especially interesting. Bhikkhu Anālayo has spent many years studying these (as well as Sanskrit) parallels. He was a coeditor of the BDK English Tripiṭaka, which is available on the BDK America website as a series of free downloads. See his Madhyama Āgama lectures,
- Tranquility and Insight in Early Buddhist Texts (11 lectures) and
- Purification, Ethics, and Karma in Early Buddhist Discourse (11 lectures).
BuddhaSutra.com has the Mahayana Canon of Sutras listed in alphabetical order. They can be read online (individually) or downloaded in 15, multi-hundred-page groups — either as Word documents or PDF files. Each sutra may also be heard via a text-to-speech facility.
BuddhaSasana has links to many excellent books and articles available in English or Vietnamese.
A wealth of excellent material is available at A Buddhist Library‘s Theravāda section. Be sure to see their massive list of writings by 90 relevant teachers.
For a taste of the world of academic Buddhist studies, check out Early Buddhism—Articles and Early Buddhism—Lectures. In addition, our Buddhology page links to over 1000 items available through the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and the Journal of Global Buddhism.
Finally, there is a huge wealth of canonical and post-canonical material sequestered in a public DropBox here. Though organized by source rather than by subject, it is still an awesome collection of material and well worth a browse. It includes items once freely available on now-defunct websites. A deep bow of thanks to the dedicated person who has spent years intent on providing a safe harbor for such Dhamma.
