In The Buddha's Words

I recently did a 12 day jhana retreat led by Leigh Brasington and Mary Aubry.  In addition to giving guidance about entering the jhanas, they gave a more general talk everyday, based mainly on Brasington's interpretation of "early Buddhism" -- that is, Buddhism before the Theravada.  A lot of this is covered in his recent book Depedent Origination and Emptiness.  And many of Aubry's talks drew on her teaching experience with Bikkhu Analayo in which he transforms the Satipatthana Sutta into a practical meditation guide.  All of this is to say that they spent a lot of time reading from and analyzing the suttas in the Pali cannon.  Every time a teacher delves into this material, I end up finding it fascinating and useful.  But when I've tried to approach the original suttas myself (for example by simply ploughing through the Middle Length Discourses) I've been frustrated by their opacity.  So on the final day of the retreat, I asked Brasington how to approach reading the original suttas.  His suggestion was to read Bikku Bodhi's Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Cannon.  

I wish I'd heard of this book sooner.  Bikkhu Bodhi not only provides a greatest hits compilation, but he organizes these thematically and progressively, and introduces each aspect of the Buddha's teaching with a short overview essay.  This was immensely helpful.  It's the first time I feel like I've had a sense of the full sweep of what the Buddha taught, much of which has little to do with meditation.  In fact, close to half of the book is devoted to teachings on ethics, the proper behavior of householders, the attitude with which one should approach the dharma, etc ... It's only much later in the book that we reach the suttas most folks cite in meditation circles.  The book also makes these suttas much more readable by reducing the (for me) mind-numbing amount of repetition they contain.  I would definitely recommend this as a first stop for anyone interested in approaching the Pali cannon.