Essential Sacred Writings

Formerly published as "From Primitives to Zen", this book is a collection of religious writings from traditions other than Christianity and Judaism.

Selections are excerpted from texts such as the Quran, the Book of the Dead, the Rig Veda, the Bhagavad Gita, the Homeric Hymns and the Popul Vuh. The thematic arrangement allows readers to compare the essential structure and the divergent variety of religious expression throughout the ages and around the world.

Descriptions of deities from various sources are arranged together as are myths of creation and of origin, understandings of death and depictions of the afterlife, teachings on the relationship between humanity and the sacred, various religious rituals and practices, prayers and hymns.

Indexes allow the reader to substitute an ethnic or geographic arrangement for the thematic one.