The Buddhist Publication Society (BPS) is a publishing house with charitable status, whose objective is to disseminate the teachings of Gautama Buddha. It was founded in Kandy, Sri Lanka, in 1958 by two Sri Lankan lay Buddhists, A.S. Karunaratna and Richard Abeyasekera, and a European-born Buddhist monk, Nyanaponika Thera. Originally conceived as a limited effort to publish small, affordable books on fundamental Buddhist topics, the Society expanded in scope in response to the reception of their early publishing efforts. The Buddhist Publication Society's publications reflect the perspective of the Theravada denomination of Buddhism, drawing heavily from the Pāli Canon for source material.
The BPS supplies Buddhist literature to over 3,000 subscriber members in 80 countries. Its titles have been translated into many languages, including German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Hindi, and Chinese.
The BPS's English-language publications fall into three classes: two series of booklets called The Wheel and Bodhi Leaves, and full-size books.
The Wheel comprises booklets presented in a 4.8 x 7.2-inch size, usually containing 40 to 80 pages. Since the founding of BPS in 1958, around 250 titles have been published, although not all of them are currently in print. The booklets cover a wide range of topics, including specific Buddhist teachings (such as the Four Noble Truths), meditation and mind training, Buddhist history and culture, translations from the Pali Canon, and non-canonical Buddhist literature. All Wheel Publications have undergone digitization and are currently being reissued in bound volumes. Additionally, they are accessible on the BPS website.
Bodhi Leaves comprises compact booklets, roughly hand-sized, with a length ranging from 16 to 40 pages. Its categories mirror those of the Wheel, yet the style leans more towards conversation than exposition. Although the series has been discontinued, its issues are now accessible in digital format on the BPS website.
The BPS's line of full-size books includes both basic introductions and advanced texts on Buddhist doctrine and practice. Bhikkhu Ñanamoli's The Life of the Buddha is the most popular title. The BPS also publishes translations of several small classics from the Pali Canon, including Achariya Buddharakkhita's The Dhammapada and The Udāna and the Itivuttaka, translated by John Ireland.
Over the years BPS has published several works by the Burmese scholar-monk Ledi Sayadaw. The Manual of the Supreme Man (Uttamapurisa Dipani) and the Manual of Light and the Path of Higher Knowledge (Alin Kyan and Vijjamagga Dipani) were published in book form.
In the late 1990s, the BPS entered into co-publication agreements with Wisdom Publications in Boston to make its works more readily available to readers in the Americas and Europe. The BPS also co-publishes works on Theravada Buddhism first issued by Western publishers to make them more easily available for Asian readers.
BPS has also partnered with Pariyatti, a U.S. publisher and bookseller affiliated with the Vipassana Research Academy. As well as distributing BPS books in the Americas, Pariyatti has created an imprint called BPS Pariyatti Editions (BPE) to publish American editions of The Path of Purification, A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, The Noble Eightfold Path and other popular BPS titles.
Starting in 1960, the BPS has released a Sinhala-language version of The Wheel known as Damsak (= Dhamma-cakka) and a set of larger books in Sinhala titled Kalana Mithuru (= Kalyanamitra) Books. Starting in 1960, Damsak was edited by the Sri Lankan missionary monk Piyadassi Thera. After his passing in 1998, responsibility for the Sinhala publications was assumed by his assistant, A.G.S. Kariyawasam, until his passing in 2005. Currently, Mr. Senadheera is overseeing the Sinhalese publications.
Dhamma Dana Project
In 1993, the Society launched the Nyanaponika Dhamma Dana Project, named in honor of former Society president Nyanaponika Mahathera. Through this project, 50–150 copies of each new book published by the society are sent free of charge to libraries, monasteries, and Buddhist centers around the world. Copies of The Wheel are also sent to Buddhist temples and practice centers to be distributed free of charge.
Theravāda is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school's adherents, termed Theravādins, have preserved their version of Gautama Buddha's teaching or Buddha Dhamma in the Pāli Canon for over two millennia.
Buddhaghosa was a 5th-century Indian Theravada Buddhist commentator, translator and philosopher. He worked in the Great Monastery (Mahāvihāra) at Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka and saw himself as being part of the Vibhajjavāda school and in the lineage of the Sinhalese Mahāvihāra.
In the Buddhist tradition, the five hindrances are identified as mental factors that hinder progress in meditation and in daily life. In the Theravada tradition, these factors are identified specifically as obstacles to the jhānas within meditation practice. Within the Mahayana tradition, the five hindrances are identified as obstacles to samatha (tranquility) meditation. Contemporary Insight Meditation teachers identify the five hindrances as obstacles to mindfulness meditation.
Ledi Sayadaw U Ñaṇadhaja was an influential Theravada Buddhist monk. He was recognized from a young age as being developed in both the theory (Abhidhamma) and practice of Buddhism and so was revered as being scholarly. He wrote many books on Dhamma in Burmese and these were accessible even to a serious lay person, hence he was responsible for spreading Dhamma to all levels of society and reviving the traditional practice of Vipassanā meditation, making it more available for renunciates and lay people alike.
In Buddhism, the Seven Factors of Awakening are:
Upekṣā is the Buddhist concept of equanimity. As one of the Brahma-viharas, virtues of the "Brahma realm", it is one of the wholesome mental factors cultivated on the Buddhist path to nirvāna through the practice of jhāna.
Maitrī means benevolence, loving-kindness, friendliness, amity, good will, and active interest in others. It is the first of the four sublime states and one of the ten pāramīs of the Theravāda school of Buddhism.
Bhikkhu Bodhi, born Jeffrey Block, is an American Theravada Buddhist monk ordained in Sri Lanka. He teaches in the New York and New Jersey area. He was appointed the second president of the Buddhist Publication Society and has edited and authored several publications grounded in the Theravada Buddhist tradition.
The Ānāpānasati Sutta (Pāli) or Ānāpānasmṛti Sūtra (Sanskrit), "Breath-Mindfulness Discourse," Majjhima Nikaya 118, is a discourse that details the Buddha's instruction on using awareness of the breath (anapana) as an initial focus for meditation.
Nyanaponika Thera or Nyanaponika Mahathera was a German-born Theravada Buddhist monk and scholar who, after ordaining in Sri Lanka, later became the co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society and author of numerous seminal books and articles on Theravada Buddhism. He mentored and taught a whole generation of Western Buddhist leaders such as Bhikkhu Bodhi.
Indriya is the Sanskrit and Pali term for physical strength or ability in general, and for the senses more specifically. The term literally means "belonging to Indra," chief deity in the Rig Veda and lord of the Trāyastriṃśa heaven hence connoting supremacy, dominance and control, attested in the general meaning of "power, strength" from the Rig Veda.
In Buddhism, the bodhipakkhiyā dhammā are qualities conducive or related to awakening/understanding, i.e. the factors and wholesome qualities which are developed when the mind is trained.
Piyadassi Maha Thera was a preacher of the Dhamma both in Sinhala and in English. He was born on 8 July 1914 at Kotahena in Colombo, Sri Lanka and was educated at Nalanda College, Colombo, thereafter at the University of Sri Lanka and the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University as a research student.
Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu was a British Theravada Buddhist monk and translator of Pali literature.
Ven. Nyanatiloka Mahathera, born as Anton Walther Florus Gueth, was one of the earliest Westerners in modern times to become a Bhikkhu, a fully ordained Buddhist monk.
Island Hermitage on (Polgasduwa) Dodanduwa Island, Galle District, Sri Lanka is a famous Buddhist forest monastery founded by Ven Nyanatiloka Mahathera in 1911. It is a secluded place for Buddhist monks to study and meditate in the Buddhist tradition, and it contains an English and German library.
Ven. Kaṭukurunde Ñāṇananda Mahathera was a Sri Lankan Bhikkhu and Buddhist scholar. He is best known for the research monograph Concept and Reality in Early Buddhist Thought and the exploratory study The Magic of the Mind. Ven. Ñāṇananda was the abbot of Pothgulgala Aranya, a small forest monastery in Devalegama, Sri Lanka.
The Abhidhammattha-saṅgaha is a Pali Buddhist instructional manual or compendium of the Abhidhamma of the Theravāda tradition. It was written by the Sri Lankan monk Ācariya Anuruddha some time between the 8th century and the 12th century.
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