A pretty wide-ranging collection of excerpts from Buddhist texts spanning several countries and millennia. Needless to say it's not an exhaustive or definitive volume, and given the sheer diversity of sources, rooted in different cultures and time periods and schools of thought, some chapters inevitably seem to contradict others. 

But as someone who has always had a casual interest in Buddhism but felt overwhelmed whenever I tried digging a little deeper, I still found this to be a valuable and insightful little primer. The chapter introductions by editor Donald S. Lopez Jr. are concise and provide much-needed context to the scriptures that follow, making them a lot more digestible than they would be otherwise. 

I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface of Buddhism, but I definitely have a deeper understanding now than when I started reading. And hey, enlightenment takes time, doesn't it?