I just recently finished reading a book by Stephen Batchelor: Alone With Others
I read this book during the tour, and while difficult at times it was very rewarding. The author uses modern 20th century language to write about Buddhism.

Buddha does not represent a transhuman absolute value, but stands for the optimum mode of being that man himself is capable of realizing.

And

The phrase ‘the optimum mode of being’ is a way of decontaminating the misused and misunderstood term ‘Buddha’. As we have seen, ‘Buddha’ or ‘Buddhahood’ refers to a mode of being in which all that is disruptive and distorted has been eliminated, and all that is to be actualized has been actualized.

There is a nice quote by Shantideva:

In the same way as the hands and so forth are regarded as limbs of the body, likewise why are embodied creatures not regarded as limbs of life.

buddhism, current reading, book