The following renditions of selected Discourses from the Pali Canon were prepared for a class I’ve taught at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Cincinnati, and at St. John’s Unitarian/Universalist Church. None of them pretend to word-for-word accuracy as translations, but all, I hope, are faithful to both the spirit and the letter of the originals. All are accompanied by links to more scholarly translations available on the web.

• The Cetanakaranaya Sutta, The Discourse on How Things Progress. In this discourse from the Anuttara Nikaya, the Buddha shows how a life devoted to virtue progresses by stages to the condition of Awakening.
• The Kalama Sutta, The Buddha’s Teaching to the Kalamas. The Kalama people in the town of Kessaputta were confused; all these teachers, each promoting his own view and attacking the others. The Buddha showed them that they could evaluate the worth of a teaching using their own experience and good common sense as a guide.
• The Gotami Sutta, The Buddha’s Advice to Gotami. The Buddha, in response to his stepmother Gotami’s request for him to teach her “the dhamma in brief”, instead gives her a list of eight qualities by which she might tell the true dhamma from other statements posing as the dhamma.
• The Dighajanu Sutta, The Discourse to the Householder Dighajanu. When Dighajanu comes to the Buddha asking for a dhamma for householders like himself, with lots of kids filling the house and businesses to run, the Buddha gives him some practical advice, about how to manage his householder’s life and about how to insure his happiness, now and in the future.
• The Mahaparinibbana Sutta, The Buddha’s Final Days. The translation here is by the German nun Sister Vajira, edited by Mr. Francis Story; I’ve added comments, intended mainly for the discussion we had in our class on The Teachings of the Buddha.
• The Satipatthana Sutta, The Discourse on the Four Bases of Mindfulness. The Buddha teaches the Sangha how to practice mindfulness of the body, the feelings, consciousness, and the dhammas in a way that will lead them toward enlightenment. This is not so much a translation as a précis, with long sections summarized for easier use of the sutta as a subject for classroom discussion.
• The Cula-Malunkyaputta Sutta, The Buddha’s Teaching to the Monk Malunkya. In this sutta, which is the source for the famous simile of the man struck by the poisoned arrow, the Buddha shows Malunkya why the “big questions” concerning ultimate truths about the universe, the soul, what happens after death, have nothing to do with the task of maintaining one’s sanity and happiness in a life characterized by contingency.
• The Vacchagotta Sutta, the Buddha’s Teachings to the Wanderer Vacchagotta. Vacchagotta is puzzled by the nature of nibbana, and the Buddha uses a simile based on the nature of fire to explain.
• The Canki Sutta, the Buddha’s Teaching to the Brahmin Canki. The teaching is actually directed toward Canki’s student, a smart-ass kid who tries to impose Brahmin dogma on the Buddha; the Buddha shows him how to speak so as to preserve truth in his utterances, and, further, how to discover the true Dhamma and how to develop that as a life practice.
• The Anattalakkhana Sutta, the Buddha’s Teaching on the Not-Self Characteristic. Speaking to a gathering of fire-worshipping ascetics, the Buddha shows them that our problems lie in creating and clinging to a self that has no basis in reality.
• The Dhammacakkappavatthana Sutta, the Discourse Setting the Wheel of the Dhamma in Motion. In his very first Discourse, the Buddha outlines the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path that leads to an end to dukkha and an awakening to direct experience of the here and now.