Ethics

The Dhammapada

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Siddhartha Gautama

c. 300 BC

The most widely read text in the Pali Canon and the closest thing Buddhism has to a universally beloved scripture. Its 423 verses, organised into 26 chapters, distil the Buddha's teaching on the mind, ethical action, and the path to liberation into a form accessible to any reader. The opening verses — "Mind is the forerunner of all actions" — establish the text's central theme: that the quality of our experience is determined above all by the quality of our mental states. The Dhammapada has been translated into more languages than any other Buddhist text.