> I unfortunately came upon this group too late, so I don't
>understand what is being learned now. Is there a beginning somewhere I should

start?


Dear Ryan,

Cool that you're ordaining and are interested in Pali. My experience has been that beginners are very welcome here. You don't have to already be at the level of the regular translation series to ask questions.

Here's a link to de Silva's pali primer on-line, which can be a good start while you wait for ordered books to arrive:

http://www.vri.dhamma.org/publications/pali/primer/

A more comprehensive introduction that can really get you reading the suttas is Warder's _Introduction to Pali_. Here's a link to its page at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/002-4893247-8395200?url=index%3Dstripbooks%3Arelevance-above&field-keywords=warder+pali&Go.x=6&Go.y=4&Go=Go


Both these books presuppose that you're something of an autodidact, but if you run into trouble there are lots of people to ask.

A couple of members have started web-based sites collecting links and so on (Dmytro and Alan, for example). One is:

http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php?showforum=50

And this group has a link collection (including some beginners' courses) at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pali/links

I don't have the link to Dmytro's site at the moment but I remember it as being very comprehensive.

Hope this helps,

/Rett