The Best Books on Eastern Philosophy

Tao Te Ching

Laozi · c. 4th century BCE

The founding text of Taoism, traditionally credited to Laozi, a sage said to have lived at the time of Confucius; scholars now date the text to around the fourth century BCE. In 81 short chapters it describes the Tao, the way of things, and wu wei, acting without forcing. Its favourite image is water: nothing is softer, yet nothing is better at wearing away what is hard.

Why read itIt is short enough to read in an evening and deep enough to reread for years. Ursula K. Le Guin’s version, from 1997, is one of the most readable in English.

Every book by Lao Tzu →Every book by Ursula K. Le Guin →

Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi · c. 4th century BCE

The second great book of Taoism, named after the thinker Zhuang Zhou; only its first seven “inner chapters” are usually credited to him. It is full of stories rather than rules: the butterfly dream, and Cook Ding, whose knife never goes blunt because he carves an ox along its natural joints.

Why read itWhere the Tao Te Ching is a poem, the Zhuangzi is funny, strange and sceptical of every certainty, including its own. Burton Watson’s translation is the classic one.

The Analects

Confucius · c. 5th–3rd century BCE

The sayings of Confucius and his conversations with his students, collected by his followers after his death in 479 BCE. They return again and again to the same questions: how to become a person of good character, why ritual and family matter, and how a ruler should lead by example rather than by force.

Why read itFor more than two thousand years this was the book every educated person in China, Korea and Japan grew up with. To understand East Asia, you need to know what it says.

The Bhagavad Gita

Anonymous · c. 2nd century BCE

Seven hundred verses from the epic Mahabharata. On the eve of a battle, the warrior Arjuna refuses to fight his own family, and the god Krishna, acting as his charioteer, answers him: do your duty, and let go of the fruits of your actions. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who read it in Sanskrit, remembered a line from it after the first atomic test: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Why read itIt asks the oldest question of all, what you should do when every choice causes harm, and it answers it in a single conversation. Eknath Easwaran’s translation comes with clear introductions.

The Dhammapada

Anonymous · c. 3rd century BCE

423 short verses attributed to the Buddha, in 26 chapters, from the early Buddhist scriptures in Pali. It opens with the mind: everything we experience is led by it, and whoever speaks or acts with an impure mind is followed by suffering, the way a cart’s wheel follows the ox.

Why read itThe quickest way to hear the Buddha’s teaching in something close to its original form, without a modern teacher in between.

The Upanishads

Anonymous · c. 800–500 BCE (oldest texts)

The philosophical texts at the end of the Vedas, the oldest of them composed before the time of the Buddha. Their central idea is that the self, atman, is one with the ground of everything, Brahman, summed up in three words from the Chandogya Upanishad: tat tvam asi, “you are that”. Arthur Schopenhauer called reading them the consolation of his life.

Why read itAlmost every later Indian philosophy, Buddhism included, is either built on these texts or argues with them.

What the Buddha Taught

Walpola Rahula · 1959

A Sri Lankan monk and scholar explains the core of the Buddha’s teaching in plain language: the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the idea that there is no fixed self, and meditation. The book ends with a small selection of the original texts.

Why read itMany introductions to Buddhism are either too vague or too academic. This one is short, exact and written from inside the tradition.

The Way of Zen

Alan Watts · 1957

Watts, a British writer living in California, traces Zen back to its roots in Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, then explains its practice: sitting meditation, the koan and its influence on Japanese art.

Why read itThe book that introduced a generation of Western readers to Zen, and still one of the clearest. It also works as a bridge between the Chinese and Indian books above.

Every book by Alan Watts →The best books about Zen →

Zen and Japanese Culture

D. T. Suzuki · 1959

Suzuki first published this in 1938 and revised it in 1959. He shows how Zen shaped the arts of Japan: swordsmanship and the samurai, the tea ceremony, haiku and the love of nature.

Why read itSuzuki did more than anyone to bring Zen to the West. This is the book of his that shows what Zen looks like in a culture, not just in a meditation hall.

Every book by D. T. Suzuki →

Religion and Nothingness

Keiji Nishitani · 1961

The major work of the Kyoto School, the Japanese philosophers who brought Buddhist thought into conversation with Western philosophy. Nishitani takes on Nietzsche and the problem of nihilism, and answers it with the Buddhist idea of emptiness, sunyata. It appeared in English in 1982.

Why read itThe hardest book on this page, and the one for readers who want Eastern thought argued at the level of Heidegger and Nietzsche.

Every book by Nishitani Keiji →

The Tao of Physics

Fritjof Capra · 1975

A physicist sets the ideas of quantum theory and relativity next to Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism and argues that they describe the world in strikingly similar ways. It became an international bestseller.

Why read itRead it for the questions it raises rather than as proof. Many physicists think the parallels are looser than Capra suggests, and that debate is part of what makes it interesting.

Every book by Fritjof Capra →

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse · 1922

In the time of the Buddha, a young Brahmin leaves home to find enlightenment. He meets the Buddha himself, but decides he must find his own way: through the courtesan Kamala, a life as a rich merchant, and finally a ferryman and his river.

Why read itThe one novel on this list, and the reason many Western readers first became curious about Eastern philosophy. It is short and can be read in an afternoon.

Every book by Hermann Hesse →The best books of 1922 →