Sept 2000 - Present - Of course there is really no such thing as a Buddhist Bible, at least in terms of a single work that encompasses all of the various philosophies and branches. However, this book is one of the closest ways to get such an overview, and it remains a constant resource in my library.

As I've read this, and practiced, over the years, I find something new all the time. I suspect it will be the type of work that I will turn to again and again, for the same reasons that Christians turn to the familiar Bible, but for different reasons. This work distills thousands of stories (many of them repetitive) down to the bare bones of the philosophy and mental science that is Buddhism.

But like any such work, it is somewhat incomplete in contemporary terms, so the interested reader is best off reviewing some of the Dalai Lama's writings and more modern writers who apply Buddhist thought to our complex lives.