What are some entry level books to help me learn about Buddhism?

Avoid anything written by Western authors like Watts etc.

In The Buddha's Words by Bhikku Bodhi

"The Mind Illuminated - A complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science" by Culadasa (John Yates, PH. D.) and Matthew Immergut, PH.D. with Jeremy Graves, Dharma Treasure Press.

OP here is a detailed answer

This is the best book entry level book that can be read in a few days

The wikipedia article can supplement that although there are some errors in how some of the terminology is used

This is the book to read "What the Buddha Taught", its a lot longer and takes more effort and time to read because its mostly discourses of the Buddha and there isn't as much hand-holding of the reader by the author but its the natural choice to read after Rahula

don't read Siddhartha until after you've read the other books because it actually has little to do with Buddhism and there is a decent chance it would just bias your interpretations when you finally do read quality books about Buddhism and cause you to be confused about it them

Ignore all the Alan Watts et al and all books about meditation, integrating buddhism, buddhism in daily life etc etc until you have a solid understanding of buddhism itself which you can get from reading the first two books in this post "what the buddha taught" and "in the buddhas words"

*This is the book to read after "what the buddha taught"

This is a good start...

"Buddhism: Plain and Simple" In my opinion is a good start, but you can also read the wikipedia and get the same outcome.

Idk if it's Buddhism specifically, more so zen philosophy and Taoism, but I recommend this list if you're trying to zen the fuck out. They changed my life:

>Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Easy read, high level of rereadability

>Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
This will likely make your top 5 favorite books of all time if you give it an honest try. Almost everyone I know who gave it an honest effort swears by it.

>The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
Alan Watts is one of the most underrated minds in the history of mankind, he loves zen philosophy and writes about it often, and this is a great place to start.

I know this is not Buddhism at all, but I find stoicism gives me a similar feeling as the Zen philosophy in a more real world practical sense.
>Letters From a Stoic by Seneca
>Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietszche gave me a similar feeling in an odd way

>Hesse
>Alan Watts
>Buddhism, "zen philosophy" or Taoism
>In any way

Bible

Bhuddist knowledge or enlightenment is more intuitive and experiential than analytical, or traditional. Just try meditating if you really are interested in learning about it, or else you might as well just read Kantian metaphysics.

What's wrong with Watts, you nig-nog?

>This entire post
No.

To add to this guy's post. Bodhi has great translations of the Tipitika, though each book are 1000-2000 pages.

SpiritUalism and metaphysics are pure cancer and will ruin your life

O venerable master, reveal what is the true path to a wholesome and fulfilled life.

Thanks Dr. Skeleton

...

I'm not trying to be a simplist, it's just the most honest and truthful approach, even if it might not satisfy the westerner's highly analytically-biased sensibilities

You described a religion where they maintain massive records of their lineages and successionship involves magically beaming auras into another persons brain as non-tradtional senpai.

Buddhism is so intuitive and experiential that it has the largest collection of religious canonical texts in the world.

>multiple thousands of pages of detailed instructions on how to ascend into balls of SFX light not enough for you?
>We see your having a hard time, here's thousands upon thousands more, we call it Buddhism 2.0

nah lad, just smoke dank weed and meditate for like 5 minutes a day instead.

I don't know..

Not in all sanghas, and the East's general traditional fixity is itself older than or independent of buddhism. I'm talking about the etymos of buddhism and the nature of its experience; you're talking about the ramifications and adaptations to already-existent rigid traditions, which is itself more an Historical/Literal approach than anything else. And it's also a bit like saying that Einstein's discoveries are about atomic bombs and GPSs

No shit Nietzsche gives you a similar feeling if you think Hesse is a proper way to get to know buddhism. Hesse is more western philosophy than he is eastern.

amazon.com/Buddhism-Plain-Simple-Steve-Hagen/dp/0767903323

The tao of pooh

This

It was bait

I got this. It is good.

Sounds retarded, but Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous and then Gurdjieff's All and Everything Series. Buddhism has been watered down in modern Western culture, Gurdjieff gives it the proper degree of hardness it really has, Buddhism isn't fun shit.

The essence of it is that you are totally mechanical and have no freewill and everyone else around you has no freewill; however, if you keep constant watch over your emotions and thoughts ("mindfulness"), you might have a chance of becoming less of a robot and destroying all the useless suffering in your life (negative emotions have no purpose whatsoever according to Buddhism and the wise person would do best to remove them).

Nirvana can be reached in this life through self-awareness and fully realizing and controlling one's mechanicality.

Gurdjieff explicates Buddhism such that reading the actual source-texts (Dhammapada, Abhidamma Pitaka, etc.) of it makes much more sense afterwards, if you read it dry you're liable to get totally wrong stuff from it. If you've read those works, you can basically read whatever books on Buddhism you want and you'll get much more than you would've without having read them beforehand.

is it

My diary, desu

This book is rather awesome, but it has little to no buddhism in it, save for what's mind-related. Still if OP wants the tastiest parts without the spirituality bullshit, this is the book.

>If you want spirituality without the spirituality
I guess

Anyone who reads Gurdjieff should make sure to read the initial translations approved by Gurdjieff and not the later editions that were butchered and completely changed.

Michael and the Sex Goblin.

You will become more zin than you ever imagined.