The Complete Idiot's Guide To Understanding Buddhism (Complete Idiot's Guide to)

Rating:
Summary: An good overview and a start on the White Path
Review: First, one has to accept what this book's (almost all of the series)
purpose is: overview and a guide/introduction. Also you have to
consider the style of these Idiot books (informal; light; humorous) as well.

Yeah, that's Right View :-)

In that light, this book is a very good (and most of the time funny)
introduction to Buddhism. It covers the basics: 4 Noble Truths,
8fold Noble Path and covers the basics of the major sects. All in
a relatively easy to understand manner in a conversational tone.

Of course, one can quibble about the depth of detail (and I do),
but again, I don't think that was the purpose of the book.

Yes, the books does slow down and gets less
cohesive once the author gets into the impact on other disciplines
(and that's what makes me take one star off), but overall, I would recommend this to anyone curious about Buddhism overall.

My only major quibbles are that it would have been nice if the
author mentioned where to go for more information about the sect in the text.

In Gassho,

Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time On This Book !
Review: I can't comment on the whole book, because I only got a few chapters into it. I have read a few other books on Buddhism, so I know a little about the subject. This book is hard to follow, the stupid remarks are annoying, and I think I found some grammer errors.

Rating:
Summary: Avoid this book...
Review: This book is just plain poor. I purchased the Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism because I had previously read the Understanding Hinduism and Understanding Islam book of the same series. I enjoyed those books and felt they were well done. This book fails to live up the other two.

As one of the reviewers below notes, right from the beginning you get a taste of what is to come when the author describes the first Noble Truth as "Life involves dissatisfaction". Please.

I have read several other introduction-to-Buddhism type books and they were all better than this. In fact, I think if one did not already have a basic understanding of the concepts of Buddhism they would not be able to understand anything in this book. Perhaps the author tires to do too much and as a result I felt the book lacks focus.

The 'humor' is kind of annoying but that is something I have come to expect in the Idiot's series. What I think is more annoying is the way the author dumbs down the subject matter and jumps around from topic to topic. Also, the author seems to focus more on Buddhist culture than the core Buddhist beliefs and the practice of Buddhism itself. For example, there are chapters on Buddhism and Fine Arts, Buddhism and the Sciences, Buddhism and Popular Culture and so on. All these topics are mentioned but none of them are addressed in any detail. The author barely scratches the surface then moves on.

The book is 409 pages long and only sixteen of them are spent talking about the core principals of the Three Jewels and Four Noble Truths. The Eight Fold Path gets twelve pages. Further, the book does a terrible job of describing the different schools of Buddhism (Mahayana, Theravada, etc.) and explaining their differences.

If you are looking to read an introduction-to-Buddhism type book, I would recommend "Buddhism" from the Teach Yourself series.