Announcements

New Publications: The Third Well-Spoken Branch: An Exact Account of How All the Victorious One’s Teachings Extant Today in the Land of Snow Mountains Were Put into Print

29 Mar 2024

This is the third chapter of the Degé Kangyur Catalog, which describes the publication history of the Degé Kangyur. Authored by the Degé Kangyur’s main editor, Situ Paṇchen Chökyi Jungné, at the conclusion of the five-year project in 1733, it is a document rich in historical detail.
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New Publications: The Accomplishment of the Sets of Four Qualities: The Bodhisattvas’ Prātimokṣa

22 Mar 2024

In The Accomplishment of the Sets of Four Qualities: The Bodhisattvas’ Prātimokṣa, Venerable Śāriputra requests the Buddha Śākyamuni to explain the conduct of bodhisattvas. The Buddha responds by describing how bodhisattvas train in many practices and in the cultivation of many qualities, here presented in sets of four, related to generosity and diligence in particular, and more broadly to their attitude, conduct, learning, insight, and teaching. In this way bodhisattvas swiftly progress along the path to buddhahood.
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New Publications: The Shorter Devatā Sūtra

1 Mar 2024

While staying in Śrāvastī, the Buddha is approached by an unnamed “divine being,” who inquires as to what behavior merits rebirth in the higher realms. In response, the Buddha explains, in a series of concise and powerful verses, that abandoning each of the ten nonvirtues‍—killing, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, telling lies, slander, harsh words, idle talk, covetousness, ill will, and wrong views‍—and embracing their opposites, the ten virtues, will lead to rebirth in the higher realms.
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New Publications: The Devatā Sūtra

1 Mar 2024

A radiant divine being appears before the Buddha shortly before dawn and asks a series of questions, in the form of riddles, about how best to live a good life. The Buddha’s responses constitute a concise and direct teaching on some of the core orientations and values of Buddhism, touching on the three poisons, the virtues of body, speech, and mind, and providing wisdom for daily life.
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New Publications: The Collected Teachings on the Bodhisatva

23 Feb 2024

In The Collected Teachings on the Bodhisatva, the Buddha describes in detail the views and practices that are to be followed by the bodhisatva, the ideal Mahāyāna practitioner. Through his interactions with human and nonhuman interlocutors, and through stories of various past buddhas, we are led step by step through the topics of renunciation, the mind of awakening, the four immeasurables, and the six perfections.
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New Publications: The Secrets of the Realized Ones

16 Feb 2024

In this sūtra, the narrative largely revolves around the figures of Vajrapāṇi, the yakṣa lord and constant companion of the Buddha, and the Buddha himself. In the first half of the sūtra, Vajrapāṇi gives a series of teachings on the mysteries or secrets of the body, speech, and mind of bodhisattvas and the realized ones. In the second half of the sūtra, Vajrapāṇi describes several events in the Buddha’s life: his practice of severe asceticism, his approach to the seat of awakening, his defeat of Māra, his awakening, and his turning of the wheel of Dharma.
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New Publications: The Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines

8 Feb 2024

The Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines is the longest of all the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras and fills no fewer than twelve volumes of the Degé Kangyur. Like the other two long sūtras, it is a detailed record of the teaching on the perfection of wisdom that the Buddha Śākyamuni gave on Vulture Peak in Rājagṛha, setting out all aspects of the path to enlightenment that bodhisattvas must know and put into practice, yet without taking them as having even the slightest true existence.
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