A Buddhist Bible

A Buddhist Bible
by Dwight Goddard

This is the first edition of A Buddhist Bible to appear on the iPhone. One of the favorite books of the Beat writers, particularly the ultimate Dharma Bum Jack Kerouac, A Buddhist Bible has had a huge influence on the growth of Buddhism in the English-speaking world in the 20th century and beyond.

The first edition, which was tightly focused on source documents of Zen Buddhism, was self-published in Vermont by Goddard and had 316 pages. The ebook also includes introductions by Robert Aitken and Huston Smith.

Goddard, particularly in this first edition, took the best available translation of key documents and edited them heavily to eliminate repetitious passages and extraneous material. So this is a readers edition, not a critical edition, of these texts. However, he did nothing to water down or simplify the message of the sutras; quite the contrary. One can read this book repeatedly and still come back with new insights on each reading.

Contents:
The Favorite Scriptures Of The Zen Sect, History Of Early Zen Buddhism, Self-Realisation Of The Noble Wisdom, The Diamond Sutra, The Prajna Paramita Sutra, The Sutra Of The Sixth Patriarch

About the Author
Dwight Goddard was a pioneer in the American Zen Buddhist movement. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1861. After graduating from college as an industrial engineer, he made his fortune in service to the United States Government during World War I. Greatly disillusioned by the brutality of war, Goddard became a missionary for the American Board. He was sent first to China, and later to Japan, where he lived in and studied at a Zen Buddhist monastery outside Kyoto for nearly one year. In 1924, having moved back to the States, he began writing books on Buddhism. By the time of his death in 1939, he had authored and edited nine titles, among them, The Buddhist Bible, the book credited with influencing the views of Jack Kerouac, iconic Beat Generation author.