Visuddhimagga (the pah of purification)

by Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu | 1956 | 388,207 words | ISBN-10: 9552400236 | ISBN-13: 9789552400236

The English translation of the Visuddhimagga written by Buddhaghosa in the 5th Century. It contains the essence of the the teachings found in the Pali Tripitaka and represents, as a whole, an exhaustive meditation manual. The work consists of the three parts—1) Virtue (Sila), 2) Concentration (Samadhi) and 3) Understanding (Panna) covering twenty-t...

Publisher’s Foreword to Third Edition

Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli’s translation of the Visuddhimagga not only makes available in fluent English this difficult and intricate classical work of Theravāda Buddhism, the high point of the commentarial era, but itself ranks as an outstanding cultural achievement perhaps unmatched by Pali Buddhist scholarship in the twentieth century. This achievement is even more remarkable in that the translator had completed the first draft within his first four years as a bhikkhu, which is also the amount of time he had been a student of Pali.

The Buddhist Publication Society first issued this work beginning in 1975, with the kind consent of the original publisher, Mr. Ānanda Semage of Colombo. This was a reprint produced by photolithographic process from the 1964 edition. The 1979 reprint was also a photolithographic reprint, with some minor corrections..

For this edition the text has been entirely recomposed, this time with the aid of the astonishing electronic typesetting equipment that has proliferated during the past few years. The text itself has not been altered except in a few places where the original translator had evidently made an oversight. However, numerous minor stylistic changes have been introduced, particularly in the lower casing of many technical terms that Ven. Ñāṇamoli had set in initial capitals and, occasionally, in the paragraphing.

Buddhist Publication Society,
1991

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