The Discourse on the Root of Existence: Mulapariyaya Sutta and Its Commentaries

by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Translator)

This profound and difficult discourse of the Buddha aims at exposing and eliminating the concept of the ego at its most fundamental level. The commentary offers a detailed explanation of the sutta while a long introduction investigates the text's meaning and its implications for philosophy and psychology.

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American Buddhist monk from New York City. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, he obtained a BA in philosophy from Brooklyn College (1966) and a PhD in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School (1972).

Drawn to Buddhism in his early 20s, after completing his university studies he traveled to Sri Lanka, where he received novice ordination in 1972 and full ordination in 1973, both under the late Ven. Ananda Maitreya, the leading Sri Lankan scholar-monk of recent times.

He was appointed editor of the Buddhist Publication Society (in Sri Lanka) in 1984 and its president in 1988. Ven. Bodhi has many important publications to his credit, either as author, translator, or editor, including the Buddha — A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (co-translated with Ven. Bhikkhu Nanamoli (1995), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha — a New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya (2000), and In the Buddha’s Words (2005).

In May 2000 he gave the keynote address at the United Nations on its first official celebration of Vesak (the day of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing away). He returned to the U.S. in 2002. He currently resides at Chuang Yen Monastery and teaches there and at Bodhi Monastery. He is currently the chairman of Yin Shun Foundation.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinarily informative introduction to, translation of, and presentation of canonical commentary upon a very compressed but enormously rich work of ancient phliosophy. Hard to know what more one could ask of a critical edition of this kind, which devotes 110 pages to a single sutta that, by itself, takes up less than eight.