Ajahn Brahm's 'Word of the Buddha' now available for download

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Hello everybody.

I just wanted to inform the Discuss & Discover members that The Word of the Buddha by Ajahn Brahm is now available for download and online reading at -

You can download EPUB and PDF versions of the book. There is also online viewing of the book available.

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For those unfamiliar with this wonderful book:

The Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon involves much redundancy. Many suttas covering the same subject, often with very little difference in content. Many individual suttas have many repetitions of text within them.

In 1907, the pioneering German monk, Venerable Ñāṇatiloka, published the English version of The Word of The Buddha. It is described as “An outline of the teachings of the Buddha in the words of the Pāli Canon.” Excerpts from the suttas are arranged in a logical order and without repetition. Only 100 pages long.

Ajahn Brahm created a new edition replacing the translations with translations in contemporary English made by native English speakers making The Word Of The Buddha much easier to understand.

It is a great way to get an understanding of what the Buddha’s teachings actually are.

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Thank you very much for this link. The book is wonderful!

With precious texts like this I know that I’m not alone in finding it easier to read, retain and refer to content with an actual printed (rather than electronic) book. However the font on this edition is much too small to print using an on-demand published such as Lulu (which commendably offers many of Bhikkhu Sujato’s books, among others).

I would love to be part of any effort to make this book as easily and readily available as Ajahn Brahm’s other books.

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If you have or can pick up some expertise the ePub edition is editable. You can set the fonts to your liking, then print.

Otherwise you can use an eInk reader and adjust the fonts there.

Good Luck.

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Thank you very much!

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are you referring to the font in the PDF?

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Yes. I decided to be content with reading the book on my e-reader. It’s a truly wonderful book and I do hope it’s eventually published in paperback so more people can benefit from it.

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Please, I would like to know if I can print this book for myself. :pray:

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You should be fine to take the PDF and print it but not to sell it

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there was a limited print of both editions, and this PDF is a scan of the second edition by the publisher with the preface updated. the size of the physical book is roughly 17x25cm, so if the PDF doesn’t print well at that size i guess its not optimised for printing

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It scales properly to 8.5 x 11 inches (standard US paper size) and 182 x 257 mm (a different size). I didn’t have a print option when opening it on my tablet (Adobe Reader) but I do have a print option in Adobe Pro. I don’t know if that’s just a bug with my tablet.

So technically you can open it in Adobe Reader and print it without any degradation.

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Thanks very much Beth! I will look into this.