New edition: Buddhist Stories from the Khandhakas: Selections from The Book of the Discipline—Epub, Kindle, PDF

Other than BPS’s Life of the Buddha according to the Pali Canon, there aren’t many books out there that make it easy for people to approach the Vinaya. I had the idea there might be interest in having a collection of just the stories that are found in the Khandhakas. So here it is.

I took the ebook edition from the download page and optimized it for story reading by removing the footnotes and trimming down to just the story bits. It, of course, would not be possible without the hard work of Bhante Brahmali and Sujato in preparing the original file.

I thought it might be fun for people to share their favorites from the collection.

One of my favorites, although there are many, is the story of the training and life of Jivaka, the Buddha’s physician. People may not realize that in ancient ayurvedic literature he is one of the most highly esteemed doctors of antiquity. Here we have the story of him tricking someone (without lying at all) into a very difficult treatment. He performs surgery on a man and matter-of-factly show’s the wife how the man’s intestines had gotten twisted up from too many somersaults. Oh, and his tricky final exam at medical school.

Power tip: His story is not in the medicine chapter where one would expect it. You find all this in the chapter on robes because he was the first person to offer robes to the sangha.

So what’s your favorite?

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There was a request for a PDF version, so one has been added for A4 and Letter size.

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