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The Wisdom Never Written Down
A books series can only hold what was written. Here is the wisdom that was sung, spoken, and carved instead.
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The Hebrew Bible
The Jewish scriptures, and the root of all three Western religions: creation, the exodus from Egypt, the law, and the prophets' demand for justice. Read here the way Judaism reads it, through argument and never alone.
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The Analects of Confucius
The sayings Confucius's students wrote down, the book that shaped Chinese, Korean, and Japanese life for two thousand years. Less about gods than about how to be a decent person: family, learning, and treating others as you would want to be treated.
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The Tao Te Ching
Taoism's founding book, written in China about 2,500 years ago: 81 short, riddling poems on living in harmony with the Tao, the nameless way behind all things. The most translated book after the Bible, here in two dozen English versions at once.
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The Zhuangzi
The other great Taoist classic, and the funny one. Wild little stories that puncture our certainty, like the man who dreams he is a butterfly and wakes unsure which he is, walked in Brook Ziporyn's translation.
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The Dhammapada
Buddhism's most loved little book, 423 verses of the Buddha's teaching in its plainest form: the mind makes the world, hatred is never ended by hatred, and the way out of suffering is to want less. Seven English translations side by side.
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The Bhagavad Gita
Hinduism's best-known scripture. On the edge of a battle, a warrior loses his nerve, and his charioteer, who turns out to be God, talks him through how to act in a world of duty and loss. All 700 verses, including the line Oppenheimer quoted at the first atomic test.
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The New Testament
The Christian scriptures: the life and teaching of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and the letters of Paul that built a religion. Sixteen keystone passages in the Greek against nine English translations, from the one Tyndale was burned at the stake for to today.
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Nagarjuna's Middle Way
The deepest book in Buddhist philosophy, from about 150 CE. Its argument is that nothing, including you, exists on its own, and that this emptiness is not bleak but the very thing that lets anything change or ever be set free.
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The Quran
Islam's holy book, believed to be the literal words of God given to Muhammad in Arabic, which Muslims hold cannot truly be translated. Fourteen keystone passages in the Arabic against seven English versions, each only an interpretation of the meaning.
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The Guru Granth Sahib
The scripture of Sikhism, and the strangest case here: Sikhs treat the book itself as their living teacher, enthroned rather than merely read. One God, honest work, and the radical welcome of Hindu and Muslim saints into its own pages.
