Eastern philosophy books

Short Buddhist verses connect everyday thought and conduct with restraint, care, suffering and freedom from craving.

The Buddha's conversation with Subhuti explores giving and helping others without attachment to fixed ideas.

A poem follows Siddhartha Gautama from sheltered princely life into a search for an answer to suffering.

A continuous narrative joins the Buddha's life and awakening with his teaching, sayings and parables.

A Buddhist monk crosses deserts and mountains in search of texts governing monastic conduct.

A warrior's hesitation before battle opens a dialogue about duty, devotion, action and the enduring self.

Teachings and conversations examine the self, death and underlying reality, contrasting outward possessions with inward knowledge.

Short teachings present mental stillness as a discipline for distinguishing the self from passing thoughts and overcoming suffering.

Prose poems address God through joy, doubt and longing, seeking a relationship with an unseen divine presence.

A royal family's rivalry grows into war, testing duties to relatives against promises and wider responsibilities.

A prince's exile becomes a search for his wife after her abduction by a demon king.

Exiled princes and Draupadi enter a royal court in disguise, facing further exile if their identities are discovered.

Short teachings explore the way of nature, showing how restraint and softness can guide human conduct.

Sayings and conversations link learning, family duties and honest conduct with personal virtue and good government.

Stories, jokes and arguments question fixed judgments, human knowledge and the impulse to control the world.

Sixty-four symbols describe changing situations and offer guidance on how to act within them.

A military treatise examines planning, knowledge and deception as means of achieving victory while avoiding battle.

Arguments about law, authority and government examine how rulers can secure a state and control officials.

The Japanese tea ceremony becomes a way to explore beauty, daily life and the appreciation of imperfect things.

Short poems weigh life's brevity and uncertain purpose against companionship and the pleasures of the present.

A study of samurai ethics considers how inherited habits and ideals shaped moral education in Japan.

An essay explores Japanese national character through the connections between history, belief, art and daily habits.

Four-line poems place fleeting earthly pleasures beside reflections on death, doubt and spiritual longing.