Sources
The texts this site reads and cites, kept apart by kind as our source protocol describes.
Primary sources
- A Book of Contemplation the Which is Called The Cloud of UnknowingEvelyn Underhill’s edition, with modernized spelling and an introduction, of the anonymous fourteenth-century English guide to contemplative prayer, in which God is reached by love through a “cloud of unknowing”.
- Açvaghosha’s Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the MahâyânaD. T. Suzuki’s translation of the Awakening of Faith, a short treatise of great influence in East Asian Buddhism that joins buddha-nature and the Yogācāra analysis of mind in its doctrine of the one mind with two aspects. Modern scholars doubt the attribution to Aśvaghoṣa.
- Al-Ghazzālī’s Mishkāt al-Anwār: The Niche for LightsGairdner’s translation, with an introduction, of al-Ghazālī’s short treatise on the Qurʾānic Verse of Light and the tradition of the seventy thousand veils, describing God as the one true light and the ascent of the soul through degrees of light.
- An Ornament for Jewels: Love Poems for the Lord of Gods, by VenkateshaHopkins’s translations of devotional poems by Vedānta Deśika in Sanskrit, Tamil and Prakrit, addressed to Viṣṇu at the shrines of South India, with an introduction to the poet and his tradition.
- Avicenna on TheologyA short selection, translated by A. J. Arberry, of Ibn Sīnā’s writings on God, the soul and prophecy, with his autobiography, giving a brief first view of the philosopher’s theology and of his account of the soul’s return to its source.
- Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. FrancisCousins’s translation of three of Bonaventure’s works: the Journey of the Mind into God, written on Mount La Verna; The Tree of Life, a meditation on Christ; and the official life of Francis of Assisi.
- Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 49A volume of Mahāyāna texts: Aśvaghoṣa’s life of the Buddha, the Buddhacarita (Cowell); the Pure Land sūtras; and Müller’s translations of the Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā) and the Heart Sūtra, the classic short texts of the Perfection of Wisdom.
- Buddhist Suttas: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 11Rhys Davids’s translation of seven discourses from the Pali canon, including the Buddha’s first teaching, the Setting in Motion of the Wheel of the Dhamma, on the Four Noble Truths, and the Mahāparinibbāna Suttanta, the account of his last days.
- Caitanya Caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa KavirājaDimock’s translation of the great Bengali biography and theology of Caitanya, which presents him as Krishna and Rādhā in one body and sets out the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava doctrine of devotion and pure love.
- Confucian Analects: In The Chinese Classics, vol. 1Legge’s translation, with the Chinese text and notes, of the Analects, the sayings and conversations of Confucius and his disciples, on humaneness, ritual, learning, the gentleman and good government, published with the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean.
- Dionysius the Areopagite on the Divine Names and the Mystical TheologyRolt’s translation of two treatises of Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names, on the names of God drawn from scripture, and the short Mystical Theology, on the soul’s ascent beyond every affirmation and negation into the divine darkness.
- Duties of the HeartHyamson’s translation of Baḥya’s Ḥovot ha-Levavot, in its Hebrew version by Judah ibn Tibbon: ten gates on God’s unity, trust, sincerity, humility, repentance, self-examination, abstinence and the love of God.
- Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen BuddhismTranslations of short classic texts of the Huayan school, by Dushun, Zhiyan and Fazang, with Cleary’s introduction to Huayan thought and its vision of the interdependence and mutual containing of all things.
- Essays: First SeriesEmerson’s first collection of essays, including “Self-Reliance”, “Compensation”, “Circles” and “The Over-Soul”, the fullest statement of his teaching on the universal mind present in each person, and of the self-trust that follows from it.
- Ethics: Demonstrated in Geometrical OrderElwes’s translation of Spinoza’s Ethics, in five parts: on God or Nature, the mind, the emotions, human bondage, and human freedom, ending with the intellectual love of God and the eternity of the mind.
- Gaina Sûtras: Sacred Books of the East, vols. 22 and 45Jacobi’s translation of four early texts of the Śvetāmbara Jain canon: the Ācārāṅga Sūtra, on the conduct of monks and the life of Mahāvīra; the Kalpa Sūtra; the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra; and the Sūtrakṛtāṅga, on rival doctrines.
- Gitanjali: Song OfferingsTagore’s own English prose versions of poems from Bengali collections, with an introduction by W. B. Yeats: devotional songs addressed to a God met in nature, in human life and in the poet’s own longing, the book for which he received the Nobel Prize.
- Gravity and GraceSelections from Simone Weil’s notebooks, arranged by Gustave Thibon, on gravity and grace, the void, decreation, attention, affliction and the love of God: the book that made her thought known after her death.
- Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of MosesGregory’s reading of the life of Moses as the soul’s ascent to God: from the light of the burning bush, through the cloud, into the darkness on Sinai where God is, and on into an endless progress in a God who is infinite.
- Gregory Palamas: The TriadsA translation of selections from Palamas’s Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts, his answer to Barlaam on the method of prayer, the uncreated light, and the distinction between God’s essence and energies.
- Heaven and HellA sequel to The Doors of Perception, on visionary experience: the luminous landscapes of the mind’s “antipodes”, how fasting, breathing practices, light and art have been used to reach them, and their dark counterparts.
- Hōnen’s Senchakushū: Passages on the Selection of the Nembutsu in the Original VowA complete translation of Hōnen’s main work, which argues from the scriptures and the Chinese masters that Amida’s vow selected the recitation of his name as the one practice for all beings in the latter age, with an introduction and notes.
- I and ThouThe first English translation of Buber’s Ich und Du, a short, poetic book on the two basic attitudes of I–It and I–Thou, on relation as the meeting of whole beings, and on God as the eternal Thou met in every true relation.
- Ibn al’Arabi: The Bezels of Wisdom: Fuṣūṣ al-ḤikamAustin’s translation of Ibn ʿArabī’s most studied work: twenty-seven chapters, each on the wisdom revealed through a prophet, from Adam to Muḥammad, setting out the self-disclosure of God in the world and the perfect human being. Read with the introductions.
- In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov: Shivḥei ha-BeshtAn annotated English translation of the first collection of stories about the Baal Shem Tov, printed in Hebrew more than fifty years after his death: tales of his youth, his miracles, his disciples and his teaching, and the earliest source for his legend.
- Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of Tsung-mi’s Yüan jen lun with a Modern CommentaryGregory’s translation of Zongmi’s short treatise, which surveys Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist accounts of human origins and ranks them, culminating in the teaching of the one true mind, with an extended commentary for modern readers.
- Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings: by Wang Yang-mingChan’s translation of the Chuanxilu, the record of Wang Yangming’s conversations and letters, with his Inquiry on the Great Learning: the mind as principle, the extension of innate knowing, and the unity of knowledge and action.
- IslandHuxley’s last novel, the counterpart of Brave New World: a utopian island society that joins Mahāyāna Buddhist practice and attention to the present moment with Western science, and its destruction by a neighbouring state.
- Jñāna-YogaVivekananda’s lectures on the path of knowledge, given mostly in London in 1896, on māyā, the real nature of man, the freedom of the soul and the unity of existence. They present Advaita as a universal philosophy addressed to a modern audience.
- Karma-YogaLectures given in New York in 1895–1896 on the path of work: action done without attachment to its results, as a discipline that purifies the mind and as service to others, drawing on the Bhagavad Gītā.
- Kindly Bent to Ease UsGuenther’s translation of Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Natural Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum), on finding comfort and ease in the nature of mind, in meditation and in illusion, with his commentary on the Dzogchen view.
- Kitab al TawasinMassignon’s edition of al-Ḥallāj’s Kitāb al-Ṭawāsīn, short meditations in rhymed prose on the Prophet, on unity, and on Satan’s refusal to bow to Adam, the first critical edition of any of al-Ḥallāj’s works.
- Lalla-Vākyāni: or, The Wise Sayings of Lal Dĕd, a Mystic Poetess of Ancient KashmirThe first edition and English translation of the sayings of Lal Ded, from a manuscript and oral recitation, with notes on their Śaiva yoga and devotion and a vocabulary of the old Kashmiri in which they are composed.
- Masnavi i Ma’navi: The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-’d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (abridged)Whinfield’s abridged English translation of Rūmī’s Masnavī, the long poem of stories, parables and teaching in six books, beginning with the song of the reed. It gives a selection from each book, in prose, with notes.
- Maximus Confessor: Selected WritingsBerthold’s translation of Maximus’s Chapters on Love, Chapters on Knowledge, the Mystagogy and the Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, with an introduction to his theology of the Logos and deification.
- Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and DefenseA modern scholarly translation from the critical edition of Eckhart’s German and Latin works: selected German sermons, the treatises, the Latin commentaries on Genesis and John, his defence at Cologne and the bull of condemnation, with an introduction.
- Meister Eckhart: by Franz PfeifferEvans’s English translation of the German sermons and treatises in Franz Pfeiffer’s 1857 edition of Eckhart, long the fullest collection of Eckhart in English, including the sermons on the birth of God in the soul and the treatise on detachment.
- Meister Eckhart’s SermonsA short selection of Eckhart’s German sermons in an early English translation, presenting his teaching on detachment, the birth of God in the soul and the ground in which God and the soul are one. Modern critical translations should be used for close study.
- Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Fundamental Verses on the Middle WayNāgārjuna’s founding work of the Madhyamaka: some 450 verses in twenty-seven chapters that examine causation, motion, the self, time and nirvāṇa, and show that nothing has intrinsic existence. Chapter 24, on the four noble truths, identifies emptiness with dependent origination.
- Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya’Arberry’s abridged translation of ʿAṭṭār’s Memorial of the Saints, lives and sayings of the early Sufis, including Rābiʿa, Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Junayd and al-Ḥallāj, the main source for the sayings attributed to them.
- NatureEmerson’s first book and the founding statement of American Transcendentalism: nature as commodity, beauty, language and discipline, then as the expression of spirit, which the soul meets directly in solitude.
- New Seeds of ContemplationMerton’s revised meditations on contemplative prayer: the true and false self, solitude and community, faith and the dark knowledge of God, written for anyone, monk or not, who seeks the inner life.
- Of Learned IgnoranceHeron’s translation of De docta ignorantia, in three books on God as the absolute maximum, on the universe as a contracted maximum, and on Christ, uniting the two, setting out the doctrine of learned ignorance and the coincidence of opposites.
- Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles: Book IV, Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily XXVII on NumbersGreer’s translations of Origen’s principal spiritual writings, including his treatise on prayer, his account of the senses of scripture, and the prologue to his commentary on the Song of Songs, the founding text of Christian bridal mysticism.
- Parā-trīśikā-vivaraṇa: The Secret of Tantric MysticismJaideva Singh’s translation of Abhinavagupta’s commentary on a short Tantric text, the Parātrīśikā, setting out the non-dual Śaiva doctrine of supreme speech, consciousness and the mantra in which Śiva and Śakti are one.
- Parmenides: In The Dialogues of Plato, third editionJowett’s translation of the Parmenides, in which the aged Parmenides presses the young Socrates with objections to the Forms, then works through a series of hypotheses about the One, which the Neoplatonists read as a theology of the One beyond being.
- Phaedo: In The Dialogues of Plato, third editionJowett’s translation of the Phaedo, set on the last day of Socrates’ life: philosophy as the practice of dying, the arguments for the immortality of the soul, knowledge as recollection, and the death of Socrates.
- Phaedrus: In The Dialogues of Plato, third editionJowett’s translation of the Phaedrus, on love and speech: the divine madness of the lover, the soul as a charioteer with two horses, its vision of the Forms beyond the heavens, and the limits of writing.
- Philo: Loeb Classical LibraryThe Greek text and English translation of Philo’s works, including the allegorical commentaries on Genesis, On the Contemplative Life, On the Creation of the World and the Embassy to Gaius.
- Poems from the Divan of HafizGertrude Bell’s verse translations of a selection of Ḥāfiẓ’s ghazals, with an introduction on the poet, his city and his times, long regarded as among the finest English versions of Persian poetry.
- Rabbi Nachman’s StoriesKaplan’s translation of Naḥman of Bratslav’s thirteen tales, among them “The Lost Princess” and “The Seven Beggars”, with the traditional Bratslav commentary on their hidden meanings, drawn from the notes of his disciple Nathan of Nemirov.
- Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal NatureVivekananda’s lectures on Yoga, given in New York in 1895–96, followed by his translation of the Yoga Sūtras with a commentary. It was one of the first presentations of classical Yoga to a Western readership, and read the Sūtras in the light of Vedānta.
- Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology Compiled by Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch’ienWing-tsit Chan’s translation of the anthology of the Northern Song masters that Zhu Xi compiled with Lü Zuqian, arranged in fourteen chapters from the substance of the Way to the investigation of things and self-cultivation, with later commentary.
- Revelations of Divine Love: Recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, Anno Domini 1373Grace Warrack’s modernized edition of the long text of Julian’s Revelations, which did much to make her known. It includes the sixteen showings, the vision of the hazelnut, the parable of the lord and the servant, and the teaching that all shall be well.
- Samayasara: The Soul-EssenceAn English translation, with commentary, of Kundakunda’s Samayasāra, the Digambara classic on the soul’s pure nature, which distinguishes the conventional standpoint, from which the soul is bound and acts, from the ultimate standpoint, from which it is pure consciousness.
- SciviasA complete translation of Hildegard’s first visionary work: twenty-six visions of creation, the Church, redemption and the end of time, each described and then explained, with an introduction to her life and thought.
- Selected Poems from the Divani Shamsi TabrizNicholson’s first book: Persian text and English translation of a selection of Rūmī’s lyric poems, written in the name of Shams of Tabriz, with an introduction and notes on their Sufi themes of love, union and passing away.
- Śiva Sūtras: The Yoga of Supreme IdentityJaideva Singh’s translation of the Śiva Sūtras, the aphorisms said to have been revealed to Vasugupta in ninth-century Kashmir, with Kṣemarāja’s commentary: “consciousness is the self”, and the paths by which it is recognized.
- Songs of KabirOne hundred poems attributed to Kabīr in Tagore’s free English versions, with an introduction by Evelyn Underhill. Beautiful and influential, but drawn from a late Bengali collection whose authenticity scholars question.
- Śrī Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa KathāmṛtaMahendranath Gupta’s record, in Bengali, of Ramakrishna’s conversations with his disciples and visitors from 1882 to 1886, written up from his diary and published under the pen name “M.” in five volumes; the source of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
- Srimad Rahasyatrayasara of Sri VedantadesikaAn English translation of Vedānta Deśika’s Rahasyatrayasāra, his major work in maṇipravāḷa on the three sacred mantras of the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas and on surrender (prapatti) to the Lord as a means of liberation.
- Sutra Spoken by the Sixth Patriarch, Wei Lang, on the High Seat of the Gem of LawThe first English translation of the Platform Sūtra, the story and sermons of Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan, including the verse contest with Shenxiu and the teaching of sudden awakening and the unity of meditation and wisdom.
- SymposiumPlato’s dialogue of speeches in praise of love at a drinking party, culminating in Socrates’ account of the teaching of Diotima: the ascent of love from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls and knowledge, and finally to Beauty itself.
- System of Transcendental Idealism (1800)Heath’s translation of Schelling’s System, which derives nature and history from the activity of the self and concludes that art, uniting conscious and unconscious activity, is the true organ of philosophy.
- Tales of the Hasidim: The Early MastersBuber’s retelling of the stories and sayings of the Hasidic masters, from the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezeritch to their disciples, with an introduction on the life of the Hasidim. A second volume covers the later masters.
- The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage; The Sparkling Stone; The Book of Supreme TruthThree of Ruusbroec’s major works in English: The Spiritual Espousals, The Sparkling Stone and The Little Book of Clarification, translated from the Flemish, edited with an introduction and notes by Evelyn Underhill.
- The Bhagavadgîtâ, with the Sanatsugâtîya and the Anugîtâ: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 8An early scholarly English translation of the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa’s teaching to Arjuna on the battlefield, by the Indian jurist and scholar K. T. Telang, with two related dialogues from the Mahābhārata. The Gītā’s paths of action, knowledge and devotion are a foundation for every school of Vedānta.
- The Cherubinic WandererA selection, in English verse, of Angelus Silesius’s rhymed epigrams on the soul’s union with God, the birth of God in the soul and the life without why, with an introduction to the poet and his sources.
- The Collected Works of ShinranA complete English translation of Shinran’s writings in two volumes, including the Kyōgyōshinshō, his letters, hymns and shorter works, with introductions, notes and a glossary of Pure Land terms, prepared by a team of translators for the Jōdo Shinshū.
- The Complete Works of Swami VivekanandaThe collected lectures, writings, letters, conversations and poems of Swami Vivekananda, including the four Yogas, the Chicago addresses, the lectures on Practical Vedānta and his letters from India and the West.
- The Conference of the BirdsA verse translation of ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr, the allegory of the birds’ journey through seven valleys to the Sīmurgh, with the many stories the hoopoe tells along the way, and an introduction to the poem and its Sufi background.
- The Confessions of Al Ghazzali: al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl (Deliverance from Error)A short English version of al-Ghazālī’s autobiography, Deliverance from Error: his search for certainty among the theologians, philosophers and esoteric teachers, his crisis in Baghdad, and his discovery that the Sufis alone had reached what he sought.
- The Confessions of S. AugustinePusey’s translation of Augustine’s Confessions, the account of his restless search for God, his reading of the Platonists, his conversion in a Milan garden and the vision at Ostia shared with his mother, followed by meditations on memory, time and creation.
- The Dark Night of the SoulDavid Lewis’s nineteenth-century English translation of John’s commentary on his poem “On a dark night”, describing the passive purifications of sense and spirit through which God brings the soul to union.
- The Desert FathersHelen Waddell’s translations from the Latin Lives of the Fathers: lives of desert saints and a selection of the sayings of the abbas, with an introduction that made the desert tradition widely read in English.
- The Devotional Poems of MīrābāīAlston’s English translation of some two hundred songs attributed to Mīrābāī, with an introduction on her life and legend and on the devotion to Krishna that the songs express, in moods of longing, union and defiance.
- The Dhammapada: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 10, part 1Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses attributed to the Buddha and among the best-loved texts of the Pali canon, on the mind, the path and the awakened life. The volume also contains V. Fausbøll’s translation of the Sutta-nipāta.
- The Dialogue of the Seraphic Virgin Catherine of SienaThorold’s translation of Catherine’s Dialogue, the soul’s conversation with God on self-knowledge, discretion, the bridge of Christ, tears, providence and obedience, dictated to her secretaries near the end of her short life.
- The Discourses of Epictetus: with the Encheiridion and FragmentsLong’s translation of the lectures of Epictetus as recorded by Arrian, with the Handbook and the surviving fragments: the Stoic teaching on what is and is not in our power, on judgment, and on the divine reason within.
- The Doors of PerceptionHuxley’s account of taking mescaline in 1953, and his argument that the brain acts as a reducing valve on a wider awareness he called “Mind at Large”, which the drug opened; the book began a long debate on drugs and mystical experience.
- The Elements of Theology: A Revised Text with Translation, Introduction and CommentaryDodds’s edition and translation of Proclus’s Elements of Theology, 211 propositions with proofs that set out the principles of late Neoplatonism, from the One through the henads, intellects and souls, with a classic commentary.
- The EnneadsStephen MacKenna’s celebrated English translation of the fifty-four treatises of Plotinus, arranged by Porphyry in six groups of nine, together with Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. The last treatise, VI.9, “On the Good, or the One”, describes the soul’s union with the One.
- The First and Last FreedomKrishnamurti’s best-known book, drawn from his talks, with a foreword by Aldous Huxley: on self-knowledge, the observer and the observed, fear, desire, belief, and freedom from all authority, with answers to listeners’ questions.
- The First Philosophers of GreeceFairbanks’s edition of the fragments of the early Greek philosophers, from Thales to the atomists, with the Greek text, an English translation and the principal ancient reports of their views, including the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides’ poem.
- The Gospel of Sri RamakrishnaSwami Nikhilananda’s English translation of the Kathāmṛta, the record of Ramakrishna’s conversations kept by his disciple Mahendranath Gupta from 1882 until Ramakrishna’s death in 1886. It is the principal source for his teaching on the many paths to God.
- The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuanAn annotated translation of the first chapter of Zhiyi’s Mohe zhiguan, his great treatise on calm and insight, with a study of its place in Tiantai thought and of the threefold truth on which its meditation rests.
- The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment: Lam rim chen moTsongkhapa’s great treatise on the graduated path, from reliance on a teacher and the precious human life through the mind of awakening to calm abiding and insight into emptiness. The third volume contains his influential account of the Madhyamaka view.
- The Guide for the PerplexedMichael Friedländer’s complete English translation of Maimonides’ Guide, on the interpretation of the Bible’s language about God, the negative attributes, creation, prophecy, providence and the reasons for the commandments, ending with the perfection of knowing God.
- The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler of Strasbourg: with Twenty-Five of His SermonsWinkworth’s translation of twenty-five of Tauler’s sermons, preceded by the “History and Life”, the legend of his conversion by a Friend of God, now regarded as a later fiction, with a preface by Charles Kingsley.
- The Hundred Thousand Songs of MilarepaChang’s translation of the classic collection of Milarepa’s songs and the stories of their occasions, in which the yogin teaches disciples, demons and passers-by through spontaneous verse on impermanence, devotion and the nature of mind.
- The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the RationalHarvey’s translation of Das Heilige, Otto’s account of the holy as a unique category of experience, the numinous, mysterium tremendum et fascinans, with examples from the Bible, Luther and the religions of India.
- The Imitation of ChristBenham’s English translation of the four books of the Imitation: admonitions for the spiritual life, on the inner life, on inward consolation, in which Christ and the disciple speak in turn, and on the sacrament of the altar.
- The Interior Castle: or The MansionsAn early twentieth-century English translation of Teresa’s Interior Castle, her account of the soul as a castle of seven dwelling places through which the soul passes in prayer, from self-knowledge to the spiritual marriage at the centre where God dwells.
- The Kashf al-Maḥjúb: The Oldest Persian Treatise on ṢúfiismNicholson’s translation of al-Hujwīrī’s Revelation of the Veiled, the earliest treatise on Sufism in Persian, which describes the Sufi schools and their doctrines, including the debate between the partisans of sobriety and of intoxication.
- The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra: A Mahāyāna TextSuzuki’s translation of the Laṅkāvatāra, a Mahāyāna sūtra that joins the Yogācāra teaching of mind-only and the storehouse consciousness with buddha-nature. Early Chan tradition associated it with Bodhidharma, who is said to have passed it on to his successor as the sūtra to rely on.
- The Life DivineSri Aurobindo’s major philosophical work, which sets out the involution of the divine in matter and its evolution through life and mind toward supermind, and argues against both materialism and the ascetic denial of the world.
- The Life, Personality and Writings of al-JunaydA study of Junayd’s life and teaching, with an edition of the Arabic text and an English translation of his surviving letters and treatises, the main source for his doctrine of the covenant, passing away and remaining.
- The Mândûkyopanishad, with Gaudapâda’s Kârikâs and the Bhâshya of ŚankaraAn English translation of the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, Gauḍapāda’s verse treatise on it, and the commentary traditionally attributed to Śaṅkara. The Kārikā is the earliest surviving systematic work of Advaita, analysing waking, dream and deep sleep and arguing that nothing real is ever born.
- The Palm Tree of DeborahJacobs’s translation of Cordovero’s Tomer Devorah, a short ethical treatise teaching the imitation of God through the qualities of the sefirot, with an introduction on Cordovero and the Kabbalah of Safed.
- The Path of Light: Rendered from the Bodhi-charyāvatāra of Śānti-DevaAn early, abridged English version of Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, in the Wisdom of the East series. The poem leads from the arising of the mind of awakening through patience, meditation and the exchange of self and others to the Madhyamaka analysis of wisdom.
- The Path of Purity: Being a Translation of Buddhaghosa’s VisuddhimaggaThe first English translation of Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, the comprehensive Theravāda manual of the path, organized around ethics, concentration and wisdom, with its forty subjects of meditation and its analysis of insight.
- The Phenomenology of MindBaillie’s translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which follows consciousness from sense-certainty through self-consciousness, reason, spirit and religion to absolute knowing, with its preface on the true as the whole.
- The Philosophy of Illumination: A New Critical Edition of the Text of Ḥikmat al-ishrāqAn Arabic edition with facing English translation of Suhrawardī’s major work, which criticizes the Aristotelian logic and metaphysics of Ibn Sīnā and sets out a philosophy of light, from the Light of Lights down to the darkness of bodies.
- The Poems of TukārāmaA translation, with notes, of a large selection of Tukārām’s abhaṅgas: songs of longing for Viṭhobā, of struggle and doubt, and of scorn for hypocrisy, arranged by theme, with an introduction to the poet and the Vārkarī tradition.
- The Practice of the Presence of GodThe maxims, letters and conversations of Brother Lawrence, first published by Joseph de Beaufort, on keeping a simple, loving attention to God in every task; one of the most widely read books of Christian devotion.
- The Praktikos; Chapters on PrayerBamberger’s translation of Evagrius’s two classic works on the monastic life: the Praktikos, a hundred chapters on the passions and the eight thoughts, and the Chapters on Prayer, on prayer as the laying aside of thoughts.
- The Questions of King Milinda: Sacred Books of the East, vols. 35 and 36A dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Milinda (Menander) and the monk Nāgasena, preserved in Pali. Its image of the chariot, nothing apart from its parts yet rightly named, became the classic illustration of non-self.
- The Qur’ân: Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9Edward Henry Palmer’s English translation of the Qurʾān for the Sacred Books of the East, in two parts. The Qurʾān is for Muslims the word of God revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad, and the source of all Islamic thought, Sufism included.
- The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in IslamIqbal’s lectures on religious experience as a source of knowledge, the human self and its freedom, God and time, and the principle of movement in Islam, in dialogue with Bergson, Whitehead and modern physics.
- The Record of LinjiSasaki’s translation of the Linji lu, the sermons, dialogues and record of the travels of Linji, with an extensive commentary on its language and allusions, edited after her death by Kirchner.
- The Religion of Man: Being the Hibbert Lectures for 1930Tagore’s lectures at Oxford on his religious philosophy: the human spirit’s reach toward the infinite, the divine as the universal person, the religion of the Bāuls and of the Upaniṣads, and his conversation with Einstein on the nature of reality.
- The RepublicPlato’s dialogue on justice in the soul and the city. Books VI and VII contain the images of the sun, the divided line and the cave, and the Form of the Good, “beyond being”, which shaped the whole later tradition of ascent.
- The Sánkhya Káriká: or, Memorial Verses on the Sánkhya PhilosophyColebrooke’s translation of Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṃkhyakārikā, the classical text of the Sāṃkhya school, with Wilson’s translation of the commentary attributed to Gauḍapāda and his own explanatory notes. The first English version of the work.
- The Secrets of the Self: Asrār-i KhudīNicholson’s translation of Iqbal’s Persian poem on the self (khudi), which argues that the self is to be strengthened through love and action rather than dissolved, with an introduction based on Iqbal’s own account of his ideas.
- The Signature of All Things: with Other WritingsAn English version of Boehme’s Signatura Rerum, on how the inward spiritual world is expressed in the outward forms of things, with shorter devotional writings, in the old English translations reprinted for the general reader.
- The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and AuthorsMacauliffe’s six volumes of lives of the Sikh Gurus and the bhagats, with translations of many of their hymns, including the Japjī, prepared with the help of Sikh scholars. For decades the main English source for the Sikh scriptures.
- The Summary of the Great VehicleKeenan’s translation, from Paramārtha’s Chinese version, of Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha, a systematic summary of Yogācāra teaching on the storehouse consciousness, the three natures, the path and the bodies of the Buddha.
- The Tâo Teh King: In The Texts of Tâoism, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 39James Legge’s translation of the Daodejing, the eighty-one short chapters on the nameless Way, its power, non-forcing action and the sage ruler. Legge’s notes are learned but read the text through Confucian and Christian eyes.
- The Tarjumán al-Ashwáq: A Collection of Mystical OdesNicholson’s edition and translation of Ibn ʿArabī’s Interpreter of Desires, love poems written in Mecca, together with an abridgement of the author’s own commentary reading them as poems of divine love and mystical knowledge.
- The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius AntoninusLong’s translation of the Meditations, the private notebook of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in which he reminds himself of the Stoic teaching on the reason that orders all things, the brevity of life and the duties of a human being.
- The Travels of an Alchemist: The Journey of the Taoist Ch’ang-ch’un from China to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz KhanWaley’s translation of Li Zhichang’s record of Qiu Chuji’s journey across Central Asia to meet Chinggis Khan in 1222, with the master’s poems and his teaching on long life, moderation and the Dao.
- The Upanishads, Part I: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 1The first volume of Müller’s Sacred Books of the East, translating the Chāndogya, Talavakāra (Kena), Aitareya-āraṇyaka, Kauṣītaki-brāhmaṇa and Vājasaneyi-saṃhitā (Īśā) Upaniṣads, with an introduction. Its version of the sixth book of the Chāndogya, the teaching “that thou art”, shaped the Western reception of Vedānta.
- The Upanishads, Part II: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 15The second volume of Müller’s Upaniṣads, translating the Kaṭha, Muṇḍaka, Taittirīya, Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Śvetāśvatara, Praśna and Maitrāyaṇa Upaniṣads. It contains the Bṛhadāraṇyaka’s teaching of “not this, not this”, the Kaṭha’s image of the self as the rider in a chariot, and the Taittirīya’s definition of Brahman.
- The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human NatureJames’s Gifford Lectures on religion as personal experience, drawn from the testimony of saints, mystics and converts: healthy-mindedness and the sick soul, conversion, saintliness, and in lectures XVI and XVII mysticism, with his four marks of mystical states.
- The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Sri MadhwacharyaAn early English translation of Madhva’s commentary on the Brahma Sūtras, the foundational text of Dvaita Vedānta, which reads the aphorisms as teaching the eternal difference between the Lord, individual selves and the world.
- The Vedânta-Sûtras, with the Commentary by Râmânuga: Sacred Books of the East, vol. 48Thibaut’s translation of Rāmānuja’s Śrībhāṣya, the classic statement of Viśiṣṭādvaita. Its long opening section is a sustained critique of Advaita, arguing against the doctrines of an attributeless Brahman, cosmic ignorance and the unreality of difference.
- The Vedânta-Sûtras, with the Commentary by Sankarâkârya: Sacred Books of the East, vols. 34 and 38Thibaut’s complete translation of Śaṅkara’s commentary on the Brahma Sūtras, the foundational text of Advaita Vedānta. It opens with Śaṅkara’s analysis of superimposition (adhyāsa) and argues against Sāṃkhya, Buddhist and other rival schools. Thibaut’s introduction compares Śaṅkara’s reading with Rāmānuja’s.
- The Vision of GodSalter’s translation of De visione Dei, written for the monks of Tegernsee, which begins from an icon whose gaze follows every viewer and leads to God beyond the wall of the coincidence of opposites, with an introduction by Evelyn Underhill.
- The Wisdom of the Throne: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mulla SadraMorris’s translation, with a long introduction, of Mullā Ṣadrā’s late treatise al-Ḥikma al-ʿArshiyya, on God, the soul and the return to God, a concise statement of his philosophy of being and its spiritual purpose.
- The Works of John Cassian: In A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 11Gibson’s translation of Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences, the record of the Egyptian monks’ teaching on the eight vices, discretion, chastity, grace and unceasing prayer, as it was passed to the Latin West.
- The Works of Mencius: In The Chinese Classics, vol. 2Legge’s translation, with the Chinese text and notes, of the Mencius: conversations with rulers on humane government, debates with rival thinkers, and the teaching that human nature is good, with its four sprouts and its innate knowing of the good.
- The World as Will and IdeaThe first complete English translation of Schopenhauer’s main work: the world as representation and as will, the arts as release from willing, and the ethics of compassion and of the denial of the will, with references to Indian and Buddhist thought.
- The World’s Parliament of ReligionsThe official record of the World’s Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in September 1893, edited by its chairman, with the papers and addresses of its speakers, including Swami Vivekananda’s addresses, which made him known in the West.
- The Writings of Kwang-ze: In The Texts of Tâoism, Sacred Books of the East, vols. 39–40Legge’s complete translation of the thirty-three chapters of the Zhuangzi, with its stories of the butterfly dream, Cook Ding and the useless tree, and its arguments on perspective, freedom and the equality of things.
- The Yoga-System of Patañjali: Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 17Woods’s scholarly translation of the Yoga Sūtras together with the commentary attributed to Vyāsa and Vācaspati Miśra’s sub-commentary, the Tattvavaiśāradī. It remains a standard English rendering of the classical commentarial tradition of Yoga.
- The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected WritingsYampolsky’s translation of three of Hakuin’s works: a letter on the practice of kōans and meditation in action, a letter to a sick monk, and his account of his own training, with an introduction to his life.
- The ZoharThe first large English translation of the Zohar, covering much of its commentary on the Torah, though not all of its parts. It is dated and sometimes paraphrastic, but long the standard English version.
- The Zohar: Sefer ha-Zohar, the Book of RadianceThe central work of Kabbalah, a mystical commentary on the Torah in Aramaic, presented as the teaching of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai. Modern scholarship attributes it to Moses de León and his circle in Castile; tradition holds to the ancient attribution.
- Timaeus: In The Dialogues of Plato, third editionJowett’s translation of the Timaeus, Plato’s account of the making of the cosmos by a divine craftsman looking to the eternal Forms, the world-soul, and time as the moving image of eternity; the most influential of his dialogues in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
- Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo GenzoA complete English translation, by Tanahashi and collaborators, of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, his collection of essays in Japanese on practice and realization, buddha-nature, time and being, including the essays “Genjōkōan” and “Uji”, with notes and a glossary for the general reader.
- Waiting on GodSimone Weil’s letters to Father Perrin, including her spiritual autobiography, with essays on the right use of school studies, the love of God and affliction, and the forms of the implicit love of God.
- Walden: or, Life in the WoodsThoreau’s account of his two years in a cabin by Walden Pond, arranged as a single year of seasons: an argument for simplicity and self-reliance, and an extended practice of attention to the natural world.
- Wei Shih Er Shih Lun: or, The Treatise in Twenty Stanzas on Representation-OnlyHamilton’s translation, from Xuanzang’s Chinese version, of Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses, a short work arguing that what appear as external objects are representations in consciousness, answering objections with the example of dreams.
- Who Am I?: Nān Yār?Ramana Maharshi’s answers, given in writing around 1901–1902, to questions put by an early visitor, Sivaprakasam Pillai, later edited into a short prose text. It is the classic statement of self-enquiry, the practice of tracing the thought “I” to its source.
- Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the HeartAn English selection, translated from the Russian Dobrotolubiye, of texts from the Philokalia on the Jesus Prayer and the prayer of the heart, by writers from the desert fathers to the late Byzantine hesychasts.
Scholarship
- A Source Book in Chinese PhilosophyWing-tsit Chan’s anthology of Chinese philosophy in translation, from Confucius and Laozi through the Buddhist schools to the Neo-Confucians and modern thinkers, with introductions to each, long the standard English reader in the subject.
- An Introduction to Mādhva VedāntaA short introduction to the Dvaita school of Madhva for students: its sources, its doctrines of difference and dependence, its view of selves and their destinies, and its life as a living tradition.
- Beyond Compare: St. Francis de Sales and Śrī Vedānta Deśika on Loving Surrender to GodA comparative theological reading of Francis de Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God alongside Vedānta Deśika’s writings on surrender, asking what each tradition can learn from the other about giving oneself wholly to God.
- Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and Self-Transformation in Early Quanzhen DaoismA study of the practice and experience of the first generation of Quanzhen Daoists, Wang Chongyang and his disciples, drawn from their poems and writings, with translations, on asceticism, inner alchemy and mystical transformation.
- Early Greek PhilosophyBurnet’s classic study of the Greek philosophers from Thales to the atomists, with translations of their fragments, which argued that their work was a rational inquiry into nature and remained the standard English account for decades.
- Grey Eminence: A Study in Religion and PoliticsHuxley’s life of Father Joseph of Paris, the Capuchin mystic who served as Cardinal Richelieu’s adviser, used to ask how a man of real contemplative experience could lend himself to the politics of war, and what contemplation requires of action.
- History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its LiteratureThe standard history of the Dvaita school, from Madhva to modern times, with detailed accounts of the works of Jayatīrtha, Vyāsatīrtha and later thinkers, including the Nyāyāmṛta and the debate with Advaita that it provoked.
- Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of IndraA clear introduction to Huayan philosophy for Western readers: its account of emptiness, identity and interdependence, the image of Indra’s net, and the ethics that follow from seeing every being as bound up with every other.
- Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures Delivered at the Royal InstitutionMax Müller’s lectures setting out the programme of a comparative science of religion: the study of all religions, in their own scriptures, by the methods that comparative philology had applied to languages.
- Major Trends in Jewish MysticismScholem’s lectures that founded the modern study of Jewish mysticism, tracing it from the early throne mysticism through the German pietists, Abulafia, the Zohar and Luria to Sabbatianism and Hasidism. Much revised by later scholarship, it remains the classic overview.
- Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Praeternatural ExperienceZaehner’s reply to The Doors of Perception, which argues that mystical experiences are not all of one kind, distinguishing nature mysticism, the isolation of the soul, and theistic union with God, and denies that drugs produce the last.
- Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic FellowshipLawrence Fine’s study of Isaac Luria and his circle in Safed: his life, his teaching on creation, exile and repair, and the practices of prayer, penitence and meditation by which his disciples sought to heal their souls and the world.
- Polemics and Patronage in the City of Victory: Vyasatirtha, Hindu Sectarianism, and the Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara CourtA study of Vyāsatīrtha as philosopher and public figure at the Vijayanagara court, showing how his polemical works against Advaita and other schools were bound up with royal patronage and the competition among religious institutions.
- Rābiʿa the Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in IslamMargaret Smith’s study of Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya, gathering the sayings and stories told of her in the Arabic and Persian sources, with chapters on her teaching of love and on the place of women saints in early Islam.
- Ramakrishna: His Life and SayingsMax Müller’s short life of Ramakrishna, written from accounts supplied by his disciples, with a collection of his sayings: the first book on Ramakrishna published in the West, which introduced him to European readers as a living example of Vedānta.
- Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of PosterityFriedmann’s study of Sirhindī’s thought from his letters, including his doctrine of the unity of witnessing, his idea of prophecy and his relations with the Mughal court, and of how later generations remembered him.
- Singing the Body of God: The Hymns of Vedantadesika in Their South Indian TraditionA study of Vedānta Deśika’s hymns in Sanskrit and Tamil, read alongside the Tamil poetry of the Āḻvārs, showing how the philosopher of Viśiṣṭādvaita was also a poet of devotion to the embodied Lord.
- The Mystical Experience in Abraham AbulafiaIdel’s study of Abulafia’s prophetic Kabbalah: its techniques of letter combination, breathing and recitation, the experiences of light, speech and union they produced, and their place in the history of Jewish mysticism.
- The Mystics of IslamA short introduction to Sufism by one of its great Western scholars, on the path, illumination and ecstasy, the gnosis and love of God, saints and miracles, and the unitive state, with many passages translated from Arabic and Persian sources.
- The Passion of al-Hallāj: Mystic and Martyr of IslamMason’s English translation of the revised edition of Louis Massignon’s life work, a study in four volumes of the life, death, teaching and later reputation of al-Ḥallāj, first published in French in 1922.
- Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of BratslavGreen’s biography of Naḥman of Bratslav, reading his life and teaching together: his inner struggles, his journey to the Land of Israel, his conflicts with other Hasidic leaders, and his faith in the face of doubt.
Secondary sources
- Essays in Zen Buddhism: First SeriesThe book that introduced Zen to a wide Western readership, on enlightenment, satori and the history of Chan. Scholars now read it as an interpretation shaped by modern Japanese thought as much as a description of the tradition.
- Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual ConsciousnessUnderhill’s large study of the mystical life, mainly from Christian sources: its relation to vitalism, psychology, theology and magic, and the stages of the mystic way from awakening and purgation to the dark night and union.
- Mysticism and PhilosophyStace’s philosophical study of mystical experience across cultures, which distinguishes extrovertive and introvertive types, separates experience from interpretation, and discusses the objectivity of mystical claims, pantheism, ethics, logic and language.
- Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of MysticismOtto’s comparison of Meister Eckhart and Śaṅkara, showing a striking kinship in their mysticism of the one and arguing for deep differences of spirit, a pioneering and still debated work of comparative mysticism.
- The Perennial PhilosophyHuxley’s anthology of passages from the mystics of many traditions, arranged by theme, from “That Art Thou” and the nature of the ground to grace, prayer and contemplation, with his commentary arguing for a common core of mystical teaching.
Contemporary commentary
- Jnaneshwari: BhāvārthadīpikāAn English verse translation of Jñāneśvar’s Marathi commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā, which expands each verse of the Gītā with images from ordinary life and joins devotion to a non-dual vision.
- The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang BiLynn’s translation of the Daodejing together with Wang Bi’s commentary, reading the text as Wang Bi did, as a philosophy of nonbeing as the root of all things; the commentary that shaped the received text and its interpretation.
- The Tattva-Kaumudi: Vachaspati Mishra’s Commentary on the Samkhya-KarikaJha’s translation of Vācaspati Miśra’s Tattvakaumudī, the most widely studied commentary on the Sāṃkhyakārikā, which explains each verse and defends the Sāṃkhya account of causation, the guṇas and the many selves against rival schools.