Buddha's Words for Tough Times

Twenty translations from the vast corpus of Buddhist literature come alive in this full-color anthology of ancient wisdom for turbulent times, as a master scholar uncovers their sources and significance.

Change and loss have always been part of the human condition, but in today’s world, the pace and intensity of uncertainty has reached new extremes. The Buddha observed the truth of impermanence more than 2,500 years ago and diagnosed the source of the anxiety it engenders so incisively that his prescription still resonates and heals here and now.

In Buddha’s Words for Tough Times, Peter Skilling, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Buddhist scripture, brings the reader face to face with the wealth of Buddhist literature, from a teaching in a single word, to a seminal collection of verses on impermanence, to narrations of the Buddha’s teaching journeys across the Gangetic Plain. Translating from sources in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali, he uncovers the complex history of the vast writings of the Buddhist canons, and his skill in revealing the meaning of twenty gems from within those riches brings them alive for English readers. We could have no better guide for this exploration, an exploration whose value is more urgent than ever.

Peter Skilling is a special lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, and an honorary associate, Department of Indian Subcontinental Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. Until his retirement in 2017, he was a professor of the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) based in Bangkok. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in the humanities by Chulalongkorn University in 2020. He is an honorary member of the Siam Society, Bangkok, and in 2017 he was elected an honorary fellow of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. He has been visiting professor at Harvard University (2000), the University of California at Berkeley (2001), Oxford University (2002), Sydney University (2009), Soka University (2009), and Savitribai Phule Pune University (2016–17). He has published widely on the Buddhist literature, history, and epigraphy of South and Southeast Asia.