The Study Hall · Cross-tradition readings
The texts themselves, side by side — not our opinions about them. Every quote links to its verse in context.
Every tradition begins here, because every life ends here. Set side by side, the texts disagree on what death is — a change of state, a teacher, a ret…
9 passages · Bhagavad Gita · Dhammapada · Yoga Sutras · Tao Te Ching · Meditations
The traditions treat anger less as a moral failure than as a mechanism — the Gita traces its causal chain, the Buddha prescribes its antidote, Lao Tzu…
8 passages · Bhagavad Gita · Dhammapada · Tao Te Ching · Meditations
Arjuna’s complaint — that the mind is as hard to hold as the wind — may be the most relatable sentence in scripture. Every tradition answers it, and t…
9 passages · Bhagavad Gita · Dhammapada · Yoga Sutras · Tao Te Ching · Meditations
The diagnosis is shared — craving grows by being fed — and so is the surprising remedy: contentment is not the reward of getting what you desire but t…
6 passages · Bhagavad Gita · Dhammapada · Tao Te Ching · Yoga Sutras
Three very different books arrive at one instruction for Monday morning: do the work in front of you, do it fully, and let go of the credit. The Gita …
8 passages · Bhagavad Gita · Tao Te Ching · Meditations · Dhammapada
Impermanence is the one doctrine no tradition disputes, because no life escapes the evidence. The texts differ only in tone: the Buddha makes it a spu…
4 passages · Dhammapada · Tao Te Ching · Bhagavad Gita · Meditations
Before the traditions ask anything of the world, they ask something of the reader: turn around. The vocabulary differs — Self, seer, Tao, soul — but t…
7 passages · Bhagavad Gita · Dhammapada · Tao Te Ching · Yoga Sutras · Meditations
None of these texts promises happiness as an outcome. All of them describe it as a by-product — of hatred released, desire quieted, enough recognised,…
7 passages · Dhammapada · Bhagavad Gita · Tao Te Ching · Meditations
All passages are drawn from the Study Hall’s complete texts — Sivananda’s Gita, Johnston’s Yoga Sutras, Müller’s Dhammapada, Legge’s Tao Te Ching, Casaubon’s Marcus Aurelius — all public domain, all readable in full, verse by verse.