I noticed that many buddhists today read a lot of the books published by monks of today. But my question how much do you study the old texts and gain wisdom from the old teaching from the time buddhism was written down instead of the books of today?
It seems to me that one can do both.
I've read lots of Pali suttas (in translation, which introduces difficulties), but feel that it's difficult to do so without a commentary. There are thousands of suttas, arranged in no particular order, and many of them are rather technical or seemingly contradict others. Many are discourses delivered to particular people in particular situations over a period of many years.
And the suttas are
suttas, they originally were little pieces of condensed and abbreviated teaching, compiled in the century or two after the Buddha's decease, presented in very mnemonic style to aid memorization, that include various formulae that recur over and over again that the monks could have been expected to recognize. The whole thing existed within the context of an extensive oral teaching. So in many cases the suttas seem to be memory aids intended to remind the early monks of teachings and ideas that they had already heard.
The problem for modern people, particularly those of us who aren't monastics, is to duplicate the intellectual context as best we can. That might not be not entirely possible for most of us in this day and age. That's why I feel that commentaries are useful. Ideally a commentary that addresses the suttas in terms of our modern cultural context.
There are certainly ancient commentaries, like Buddhaghosa's
Visuddhimagga (around the 6th century CE?), but a modern commentary might be better for modern readers.
I personally like the commentary that Piya Tan is laboriously compiling in Singapore at the present time. It's already massive (thousands of pages, multiple volumes) and represents his life's work. I suppose that he falls into the category of 'modern monk', since he spent something like 20 years as a monastic in Thailand before returning to lay life. He goes at it sutta by sutta, organizing them by themes. He translates them, explains them and brings modern academic scholarship to bear on them when appropriate. (But unlike many professors, he never loses sight of the suttas' use in practice.)
You can track it down here.
The Dharmafarers | Suttas with commentaries (Early Buddhism)
An example
http://www.themindingcentre.org/dha...ds/2009/12/10.1-Bodhipakkhiya-Dhamma-piya.pdf
I like when people from other Religions or spiritual paths come and join in the discussion 
