Alexandria

Buddhism

Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

by Huineng

Ancient (before 500 CE)IntermediateSelf-Knowledge & Transformation

Questions of King Milinda

by Nāgasena

Ancient (before 500 CE)IntermediateSelf-Knowledge & Transformation

+6 more...

Zen

This alcove awaits its first volumes...

Taoism

Secret of the Golden Flower

by Unknown

Ancient (before 500 CE)AdvancedSelf-Knowledge & Transformation

Liezi (Selections)

by Lie Yukou

Ancient (before 500 CE)IntermediateSelf-Knowledge & Transformation

+2 more...

Chinese Philosophy

This alcove awaits its first volumes...

All Books in Eastern Philosophy & Religion

Cover of Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

Part autobiography, part sermon, the Platform Sutra presents the illiterate woodcutter Huineng who becomes the Sixth Patriarch of Chan, challenging gradual cultivation with sudden awakening. Through temple encounters and simple images of mirrors, dust, pounding rice, and wind in the pines, he teaches that our nature is originally clear, and that meditation and wisdom are one. Precepts, practice, and everyday work are shown as paths to liberating insight, equally open to laypeople and monks. If you are curious about how Zen speaks plainly yet pierces to the root, this living voice offers a bright lantern for the path.

The Rig Veda selections gather the earliest Sanskrit hymns where speech burns like fire and breath moves like wind. You meet Agni the sacrificial flame, Vayu the swift air, Indra the thunder bearer, Soma the ecstatic draught, the Dawn as a young goddess, and the vast guardians of order called Rita. Praise, petition, and wonder weave together as poets sing of cattle and rivers, stars and creation itself. The chants are mantras and mirrors, practical and visionary at once, carrying offerings from hearth to cosmos. Read to hear an ancient world still alive in bright syllables and steady reverence.

Questions of King Milinda is a bright dialogue between a Greek king hungry for truth and the monk Nagasena, set in the bustling city of Sagala. With parable and precise reasoning, they explore self and no self through the chariot image, the flow of rebirth like milk becoming curd, the nature of karma, mindfulness, and Nirvana as the cool extinguishing of thirst. The questions are sharp, the answers supple, like a flame lighting another without loss. Newcomers will find a lucid doorway into Buddhist thought, and seasoned readers a treasury of images that turn doubt into inquiry and inquiry into quiet insight.

Liezi is Taoism told as story, a river of parables where kings and wanderers, craftsmen and clouds teach by surprise. These selections move from celestial gifts to human fate, from the Yellow Emperor’s quests to quiet lessons on effort and destiny. In these brief tales you will meet a sage who rides the wind, hear how freedom grows when grasping loosens, and sense how effortless action lets life arrange itself. The book marries mythic travel with everyday clarity, inviting you to experiment with simplicity, humor, and supple awareness. If Zhuangzi sparks a smile, Liezi offers the echo that lingers like rain on stone.

Zhuangzi is Taoism at its most playful and profound, a stream of parables, jokes, and sudden silences that ask how to live lightly in a world of constant change. A giant fish becomes a sky crossing bird, a sage dreams he is a butterfly, a cook carves an ox with effortless ease. Through these shifting scenes the book loosens our grip on fixed truths and approved roles, inviting a trust in the Way that moves before thought. Burton Watson’s lucid translation lets the riddling voices sparkle. If you enjoy philosophy that laughs, stories that unmake certainty, and wisdom that feels like wind on open water, begin here.

The Lankavatara Sutra opens in a jewel bright palace above the ocean, where the Buddha speaks to Mahamati about the world as a mirror of mind. Part travelogue of the spirit, part manual for awakening, it teaches that things arise from consciousness and fall away when we see through habitual naming. Its heart is a turnabout in the deepest storehouse of awareness, a direct knowing beyond words and debate, ripening into compassion for all beings. Readers curious about Zen roots, Yogacara vision, and the mystery of suchness will find a challenging yet luminous guide, inviting meditation more than argument, experience more than belief.

The Lotus Sutra invites readers into a radiant drama where the Buddha reveals one vehicle leading all beings to awakening. Through parables of a burning house, a great rain cloud, and a conjured city, it teaches skillful means, showing how provisional paths guide us toward a single vast compassion. A jeweled stupa rises from the earth, countless bodhisattvas surge like waves, and time opens to the Buddha’s timeless presence. Both monks and householders are promised Buddhahood, and even small acts of faith shimmer with power. Part scripture, part cosmic theater, it offers courage, inclusivity, and devotion to anyone seeking a path that turns the ordinary world into a field of lotuses.

Among the earliest printed books, the Diamond Sutra opens in a quiet grove near Sravasti, where the Buddha and the monk Subhuti trace a path that slices through appearances like a jewel cutting glass. Through spare question and response, it teaches the bodhisattva’s art of giving without clinging, seeing no fixed self, person, being, or span of life. Words are used to loosen our grip on words, until all phenomena are recognized as dream and dew and lightning. A brief narrative that invites practice as much as thought, it frees compassion to move unbound.

The Laws of Manu is a classic of Hindu dharma, part cosmogony, part civil code. It opens in primordial darkness, then unfolds like a woven tapestry of order, giving duties by caste and stage of life, rules of purity and penance, the rights of kings, and the conduct of householders, ascetics, and judges. It links daily acts to cosmic law and karma, promising harmony when each thread holds. The text’s rigor is striking, including hierarchies and gender norms that can jar modern readers, yet its vision of a universe bound by dharma and consequence remains a potent window into ancient Indian thought.

On a chariot paused between two armies, the Gita unfolds as Krishna counsels the bewildered archer Arjuna. In Sivananda’s lucid rendering and commentary, this ancient dialogue becomes a manual for modern life, uniting the paths of action, devotion, meditation, and wisdom. Duty without attachment, love offered to the Highest, steady mind in the midst of turmoil, and insight into the immortal Self are woven into clear practice. The text moves from intimate guidance to the awe of the cosmic vision, then back to the heart’s quiet surrender. If you seek a guide that is practical yet luminous, this edition invites you to walk with courage and clarity.

The Dhammapada is a slim treasury of Buddhist verse, where the Buddha speaks in crisp couplets that turn the mind toward clarity and freedom. Each chapter gathers images of flowers, elephants, flames, and flowing water to teach how thought shapes world, how restraint ripens into peace, and how compassion loosens the knot of suffering. It is not a story but a path in distilled lines, urging attention, right speech, and the cooling of anger and craving. Read it for guidance you can carry like a small lamp in the palm, steady enough to light the next step.

Cover of Translations Of The Heart Sutra

Translations Of The Heart Sutra gathers multiple renderings of Buddhism’s most distilled teaching, letting you hear the famous declaration form is emptiness and emptiness is form in varied voices. Read side by side, the versions reveal how tone, rhythm, and word choice shape the sutra’s sweeping negations of self, suffering, and attainment. The result is a turning jewel effect that is both scholarly and contemplative, helpful for students and newcomers who want nuance without losing the pulse of practice. You will notice how translators handle the five heaps, the play of dharmas, and the closing mantra, and feel the text open like a clear sky.

Swami Paramananda’s Upanishads invite you into the quiet forest schools where sages speak in images of fire, breath, and the sun to reveal a single truth the Self is one with the Infinite. This graceful translation with lucid commentary opens the Vedic scriptures for modern readers, balancing scholarly care with a devotional heart. Dialogues and parables lead from ritual to inward vision, from name and form to the still center named Om. You will meet the teaching neti neti that peels away illusion and the promise that fearless freedom arises from self knowledge. A gentle doorway to Vedanta’s deepest light.

Siddhartha follows a gifted Brahman’s son who abandons inherited answers to seek his own awakening. He studies with ascetics, listens to Gotama, tastes the sweetness and ache of the world through love and commerce, then breaks under the weight of craving. By a wide river and a quiet ferryman he learns to listen, to hear the Om that holds joy and sorrow in one timeless flow. Hesse offers a serene tale where wisdom grows not from doctrine but from lived experience. If you are drawn to meditative journeys, luminous imagery, and gentle insights into unity and self, this short novel invites you to linger.

The Tao Te Ching is a slim book of 81 verses that points beyond words to the silent source of all things. Laozi invites you to loosen your grip on names and certainties and to move like water, gentle yet unstoppable. Its teaching of wu wei suggests a way of acting that does not strain, where clarity arises from quiet and strength from humility. Power is reimagined as yielding, leadership as nourishing, virtue as the natural fragrance of a simple life. Paradox opens the heart and sharpens perception. For seekers of stillness in a restless age, this is a lantern and a mirror.