A Taste of Buddhism

I have decided once again to look into Buddhism.

This will be the second time.  From the beginning I was intrigued by Buddhism.  It's message seemed close enough to my own beliefs that it warranted some study.  So as an elementary school graduation prize, I chose a The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan which I started to read in my first year of high school.  Looking at my bookmark, I got through about 20% before giving up.

These were the days before the Amazon.com, before user reviews, and before the internet.  So my book choice was mostly random.  It took a scholarly approach to teaching about Buddhism, speaking dryly of the beliefs and going into great detail the differences between the lower vehicle and greater vehicle as if that was important.  It would be like teaching someone about Christianity by telling them the differences between Anglicans and Protestants.  The information may be interesting to historians but it's not important. 

Side note:  I do not know the difference betwen Anglicans and Protestants so I looked it up; the first link did not exactly clerify things.

This book turned me off my adventure.  I never dropped the desire to learn about Buddhism but I lost the drive.  Now as an adult I can look back at that experience and see that it was just the wrong book for me.  And I have the power to choose whatever book I like!  I chose What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula.  The title seems to imply that it describes the teachings of the Buddha, which is what I'm looking for.  However, despite the existance of Amazon.com, user reviews, and the internet, I bought this book at a local Half Price Books after reading the name and the back cover, not even considering to use all the fancy technology that would have saved me in the first place.

Second side note:  It is interesting to note how important a single experience can be in shaping one's path; a single bad book had the power to derail for more than 16 years an investigation I cared about and deemed important.

In high school I did walk away with a vague idea of some aspects of Buddhism and as I grew to understand Christianity I did not find many great differences between Christianity and my vague ideas of Buddhism.

I'll let you know what I turn up.  Might the Buddha's gospel of peace and detachment be similar to my beliefs?  Might Christianity and Buddhism turn out to be similar?  Might this new book be as unhelpful as the first?  Tune in to find out.