Buddha by Deepak Chopra

Chopra does an excellent job of pulling together what little is known of the life of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, who lived roughly from 563-483 B.C. His story is told in easy-to-read contemporary English and gets inside what it must have been like to live as a sheltered prince of that time. Isolation, loneliness, friendship, strife, romance, and marriage all figure into Buddha's life before he leaves at age 29 to become a monk. The experience of reaching nirvana that we connect with Buddha is briefly described because it is essentially ineffable, impossible to put into words.

The human predicament is said to be that people are unconscious of their true nature which is that everyone is Buddha or God. Suffering is caused by the illusion that we are separate from each other and from God. Good and evil, summer and winter, light and darkness are described as all just part of nature, and Buddha says that he did not conquer evil or embrace good; he simply detached himself from both. Going beyond good and evil is very scary to many of us because the concepts of good and evil seem so necessary to organizing human life on earth -- they have served us well. But if you are moving more deeply into philosophy and spirituality, they are seen more as human tools, not absolute truths.