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Unlike stiff biographies of the Buddha or biographies that are replete with mystery and magic, Footprints in the Dust enables us get to know the Buddha as a human being—a deeply compassionate and wise person who not only actualized the path to enlightenment but also shared the way to accomplish that path with countless others so that they too may gain supreme peace. We learn of the challenges Gotama faced—many similar to our own—and how he dealt with them. We see his responses when praised and blamed, when confronted with crises within the Order and disputes among kings and couples. We see how he guided monastic and lay disciples with their diverse personalities and dispositions. In getting an insider’s glimpse into how his wisdom and compassion manifested when engaged in situations that we too may experience, we learn how to work in a constructive way with whatever life brings us. This is an inspiring and engaging book that you will read and reread many times.

What was the Buddha like as a human being? How did he relate to others? With great care and an eye for detail, Venerable Dhammika pieces together the life events we can 'read' from very early texts. The result is a truly authoritative biography. It shows that as a man, as well as a teacher, the historical Buddha was remarkable indeed. The chapter headings are refreshingly original: a day in the life of, his humour, his debating style, his background. I really enjoyed thinking about Gotama Buddha simply as a person - and clearly an extraordinary one, as Ven. Dhammika shows us. I recommend this book to anyone who would like a down-to-earth, accurate and readable appraisal of the founder of this great world religion, seen through modern eyes.

There are literally hundreds of biographies of the Buddha ranging from the Lalitavistara written in the First Century AD to the 1993 film Little Buddha.

Without exception these and the countless others include all the much loved stories about Prince Siddhattha’s confinement in a beautiful palace, his marriage to Yasodhara, saving a swan from his jealous cousin Devadatta, his encounter with an old man, a sick man, a corpse being taken for cremation and a wandering monk, and so on. And show they should, for such stories illustrate in a colourful and ingenious manner some of the central teachings of the Buddha.

But as a new book tells us, most of these stories cannot be found in the Pali Tripitaka, the oldest record we have of the Buddha’s life. A new biography of the Buddha, entitled "Footprints in the Dust: The Life of the Buddha from the Most Ancient Sources" reveals to us these and many other little-known facts about the Buddha.

For example, the name Siddhattha is not to be found in the Tripitaka, nor is the name Yasodhara, indeed there is no mention at all about the Buddha’s marriage. We learn that Kapilavastu was not a great city – it hardly qualified to be a large town, a fact confirmed by archaeology. Everyone knows that King Bimbisara was a disciple of the Buddha, but strangely, of the several thousand dialogues of the Buddha in the Tripitaka there is not one between him and Bimbisara.

For me, these and other ‘facts’ were a bit disconcerting. But having read several other books by the author, Venerable Shravasti Dhammika Thera, I had at least some confidence that he knew what he was talking about. One of his earlier books, Nature and the Environment in Early Buddhism, published by Kandy’s prestigious Buddhist Publication Society specializing in works on Theravada Buddhism, is a meticulously referenced account of everything the Tripitaka says about plants, animals and the natural world and is a fascinating read. ... Read the full book review by Paul Carr, Lanka Daily News.

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I dipped into this book some time ago and filed it away for later reading — as you do. It was only recently, on the recommendation of a friend, that I set about reading it page by page. I then read it again — so that now I have now read it twice, cover to cover. I want to share my views of it. I have deliberately not read any other reviews as that might influence my opinions. Bhante Dhammika has not gone into the philosophy or practice of Buddhism in any detail. Instead, what he has done is derive information from the earliest texts of the Pāli Canon about the historical Buddha: the sociopolitical and religious context, how he and his early followers subsisted and taught others, and how his monk and nun communities developed. Dhammika has organised the material into different chapters of accessible, attractive prose, and it is all thoroughly referenced so that the curious can look up the source material in question.

The work is full of fascinating detail with which he paints a picture of the world the Buddha inhabited. He conveys something of this being who was human, yet also extraordinary. As a Buddhist I found some of the images evoked very moving. Buddhists seek inspiration by various means such as thangkas, mantras, koans, chants, meditation, pilgrimages. One way is to imagine the historical Buddha living, teaching and walking the byways of ancient India. This book helps one do that.

To give some flavour of the book I am going to offer certain excerpts that stood out for me. So it is a very personal selection determined by what I didn’t know or had forgotten, or what I am particularly interested in. ... Read the full book review by Roger Farmer at Dhammaseeker's Substack.

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Another instalment in my plans to highlight good books I read, this is a book by the well-known monk S. Dhammika, ordained Theravadan but now non-denominational, with a general affinity to the "EBT" movement (Early Buddhist Texts). While he is known to some for expressing controversial views, he is extremely well versed in early Buddhist texts and the classical Pali and Sanskrit languages and his works as a scholar are universally well received.

In this book he covers the life of the Buddha using only content from the Pali Canon, with an eye more towards discussing his character than establishing a strict chronology, for there is actually no framework in the Canon for establishing when in his life the majority of Suttas were given. Where traditional well-known stories are not attested in the canon, or even contradicted by it, he highlights it.

The author, to get additional information on the Samana movement and the general worldviews in Gotama's time and place, embarked additionally on several years of study of the earliest Jainist and Upanishadic texts. As especially the Jainist texts are an infrequent topic for scholar-monks, they provided much background information that I hadn't heard before. ... Read the full review by The Green Alchemist at Reddit.

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