This new and expanded edition of The Living Thoughts of Gotama the Buddha makes once again available one of the most significant books dealing with the Buddhist tradition. Two of the best known authorities have combined their efforts in producing both an exposition of Buddhist metaphysics and a selection of texts taken from the Buddha’s own statements that provide the reader with a totoal view of both doctrine and the method of this religion which is dominating the middle and far eastern parts of the world. A.K. Coomaraswamy is renowned as a scholar, and a excellent selection of his essays has been published by Princeton University in the Bollingen Series, and more recently in their Mythic Series.  He is the author of the innumerable articles and texts on Buddhism such as Elements of Buddhist Iconography, Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism and Hinduism and Buddhism. I.B. Horner is equally well known as a scholar and translator of Pali texts, which contain, as far as is known, the actual words of Gotama the Buddha.  The selection provides his discussions on Causality, the Self, Death and “Transmigration”, The Way, Crossing Over, Rivers of Life and Death, The Great Ocean, Dhamma, Essence, Escape, Nirvana, The Deathless, and the Incomposite, which follow sections on “Training of The Soul” and Relationship with Others.”

The book includes and additional essay on Buddhism originally published in a collection entitled Religion in the Twentieth Century.  The text is of especial value in that it explains Buddhist doctrines in terms that are meaningful to western scholars familiar with the Christian terminology while at the same time it retains a clarity that makes the essence of Buddhism available to the more casual reader.  Anyone interested in the topic will find the text of incalculable value. It will for many years remain a standard source of explications.