Steve Katona:
I own the translation of the Majjhima Nikaya you mentioned. I appreciate your comments and find them sound advice. For budgetary reasons I need to spread out the purchase of the other volumes over several months. In what order to you rank their usefulness? Perhaps the answer is obvious that they are all similarly useful. I have found that more often than not I am referred to MN most frequently in my studies. That's why I purchased that first.
Your highlighted perception is perhaps closest to the truth. Yet, that said, here are some thoughts.
The first volume that I ever read was the
Majjhima Nikaya, and I found that it opened up a new world for me. There is a lot in that volume which relates to meditation and how to go about structuring what to do. But there is a lot more to the study and practice of the Dhamma than
just meditation, and that's where the other volumes come in handy.
I find that I am partial to the volumes that contain some of the oldest of the discourses, as they seem to bring alive the teaching in a way that is difficult to describe. I'd say that they seem to be more insightful (if that's possible) about the subject matter that they cover. The
Samyutta and the
Anguttara Nikayas are thought by scholars to contain some of the oldest of the discourses, having been among the first to be published. The
Majjhima and the
Digha came later chronologically and seem to show signs of having been cobbled together by committee. I think you would also find the
Sutta Nipata to be quite a jewel in itself; not to mention the
Udana and the
Itivuttaka. These latter three small volumes are taken from the
Khuddaka Nikaya, the fifth collection of 15 or more volumes of the lesser or shorter discourses, of which the
Dhammapada is one also.
Bhikkhu Bodhi is about to come out with his full translation of the
Anguttara Nikaya sometime soon, although when that will be no one really knows. He's been working on it a little here and a little there for the past ten years. The last I heard is that he has all the translations done, and is working on writing the introductions to the various sections. That will be a treasure to have when it is finally published.
Notwithstanding that, I found the anthology of the
Anguttara by Nyanaponika to be wonderfully instructive of questions I had about certain subtle aspects of meditation and the Dhamma in general, with excellent footnotes to help explain the nuances. While it contains only ten percent of the discourses that compose the whole
Anguttara, these discourses have been well chosen. Because it is less expensive than the
Samyutta, I would recommend reading it next.
There are several important discourses in the
Digha Nikaya, but many of those can be found online at ATI if push came to shove and you needed to consult one of them for further clarification.
When you get to a certain point of your practice you will find two small volumes written by Bhikkhu Nanananda to be invaluable in bringing to light certain subtle nuances of the teaching that will open up a new universe of understanding and appreciation of the Dhamma. These are
Concept and Reality, In early Buddhist Thought and
The Magic of the Mind, An Exposition of the Kalakarama Sutta. These along with Ven. Analayo's astoundingly thorough treatment of the practice of
satipattana in a volume titled,
Satipattana, The Direct Path to Realization and Nyanaponika's classic
The Heart of Buddhist Meditation can add tremendously to your understanding of the practice of the meditation technology. I found all four of these books to be tremendously helpful in my own practice.
That should give you a few more options for making decisions about what to purchase and in what order. I didn't read
Concept and Reality until
after I had already read three quarters of the discourses (the three full main volumes mentioned above along with the Anguttara anthology); but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be read before hand. I just found it personally helpful to be able to have those volumes of the discourses to refer back to in order to validate the translation of suttas referenced in Nanananda's books.
I hope that helps.
All the best,
Ian