Suppose humanity was about to be all but wiped out, by an asteroid, or plague, or too many Big Macs. Suppose a remnant will survive to rebuild things. And suppose you get to leave them, from our pre-disaster world, a Buddhism legacy in paper form ('cos none of the e-readers will work!)

Your aim is not to leave them history per se. You're not trying to tell people *about* Buddhists or the Buddha or even Buddhism as a socio-philsophico-religious phenomenon. Rather, you are trying to give them the best head start you can on re-figuring-out what the Buddha originally figured out. You're trying to help them *do* Buddhism. You're trying to help them re-establish practice. You're trying to help them rediscover Enlightenment and the path thereto.

You can choose from any source you want, across traditions or even outside of any specific tradition. You can include extracts from pre-existing whole-volumes, you can draw from multiple authors, and you take from various different times. You are the editor and you get to choose what goes in. The only restriction is, you have to produce a single volume. Let's make it roughly Bible-sized; no more than 1,000 to 1,500 pages. So you can't just shove the whole Tipitaka in a concrete bunker and be done with it.

So, what would be in your legacy Buddhism "Book of Books"?

[Edit: removed 1,000 year restriction. But please don't fill the thing with issues of Tricycle or Brad Warner's blog...]

I was going to answer "Your practice journal" - but that's not 1000y old.

I don't know... old texts can be really inaccessible. How does selecting for obscurity prevent a selection bias? To understand the really old texts, you'd need lots of explanatory material...

Why are you asking? Convoluted way of getting reading recommendations? Ideas for your next novel? Hmmm... steam-punk post zombie-apocalyptic retro-dharma... Or are you trying to re-create the Orance Catholic Bible?

Mix traditions. Some Pre-Socratics, Epicurus, Sappho, some bits of Plato's Socratic dialogues, a few technical suttas (Anapanasati Sutta, Bahiya Sutta, Satipatthana Sutta, Dhammapada, Fruits of the contemplative life, Songs of the Nuns/Therigatha ... you get the picture), St. Augustine's refutations of the Manicheans, the Tao Te Ching, the story of Rabia Basri, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mark... Oh, and the verse form of the "Perfection of Wisdom" Sutra, what's it called: the Ratnaguna (to save space, since the PoW is so long).

What would you put in there?

Cheers,
Florian

I may make an exception for my journal

I'm trying to avoid the same problem you get with a "What are the greatest 50 works of literature" and someone says "Harry Potter". The bias is towards things we recall more easily, which usually means more recent and more widely publicized.

But my 1,000 years is a bad way of doing it. For example, I think I'd want to include some of Mahasi Sayadaw's work and that wouldn't get in by my rule.

OK, I realize I said each person gets to choose, so it's your call. But Christian gospels, gnostic or otherwise? Why would you choose those?

insight can be found in all traditions, it maybe worthwile to revisit books that have been read prior

even though there was initial aversion to all things christian, once I investigated this conditioning I have enjoyed contemplating the gosple of thommas

whats written wont change from the last time you read it but with fresh eyes what you see will be different

Because of the Jesus quotes. There are a lot of great Dharma pointers contained in them. They are also really obscure, but that's what you get from 1000+ year old books.

Cheers,
Florian