As a grants-based translation project and online publication house, we leverage and integrate new technologies to make our digital library of the Buddha’s wisdom as accessible and beneficial as possible to readers, practitioners, and scholars around the world.
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With a strong editorial team, we award text-specific grants to translation teams around the world, working collaboratively to ensure accurate and credible translations of Classical Tibetan Buddhist texts that will form a cohesive Canon upon completion. We integrate new publication technologies in order to deliver these 231,800 pages of the wisdom to you, in English, online, for free.
As of 2010, only 5% of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon had been translated out of Classical Tibetan—a language facing a serious threat to its survival. In ten years, we have published or have in-translation over 36,000 pages of the Kangyur, not only making deeper international academic inquiry possible, but as our readership grows around the world, we put the wisdom that the Canon contains at the fingertips of readers like you.
Our work relies upon the dedicated and collaborative effort of scholars, professionals, volunteers, advisors, and sponsors around the world. We work remotely and online, across timezones and continents, and we greatly value each and every member of our team. This virtual teamwork has been a major source of both pride and humility as we produce accurate and credible translations and make them available to you online, for free.
There are more answers in our frequently asked questions, such as "What are the Kangyur and Tengyur?", "What else do you do other than translate?", and "How can I get involved?"
In The Questions of Śrīvasu, the Buddha is approached by a young merchant named Śrīvasu, who requests instruction on how to live his life as a novice bodhisattva. Delighted by this request, the Buddha offers some pithy advice regarding the bodhisattva path that neatly summarizes the principal altruistic aims and practices of the Great Vehicle.
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The Seal of Engagement in Awakening the Power of Faith consists of two lengthy discourses that address two separate inquiries voiced by the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. At the beginning of the sūtra, the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī requests the Buddha to show how his followers should practice in order to attain the first bodhisattva level.
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Subhūti sets off for town to collect alms. Eventually he arrives at the home of Strīvivarta, who immediately poses challenging questions to the monk on a series of profound subjects. In exchange after exchange, Subhūti does his best to reply to the laywoman, but she continuously confronts him with ever more provocative questions.
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Distinctly Ascertaining the Meanings is a step-by-step contemplation of all facets of reality and freedom from suffering. It starts with the five aggregates that constitute the common basis of defilement and purification and goes through the teachings on selflessness, the path to realize selflessness, and the higher stages of realization, and it culminates in the special features that belong exclusively to a fully awakened buddha.
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Bouquet of Flowers is a Great Vehicle sūtra in which the Buddha describes a vast array of wondrous, far-off world systems each inhabited by buddhas who teach the Dharma there.
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This short discourse was taught to an audience of monks in Śrāvastī, in the Jetavana. The Buddha details thirty-seven ways in which the wise give gifts, how those gifts are properly given, and the positive results that ripen from giving such gifts.
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Our second 84000 In Conversation episode is ‘Studying Buddhism in the New Millennium’ in which Joie Chen, will speak with Dr. Kate Hartmann (Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Wyoming, and Director of Buddhist Studies Online) and together they will explore the rewards and challenges of studying and teaching Buddhism in our world today.
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The Gold Sūtra presents a very brief but meaningful teaching on the mind of awakening, the aspiration to attain the unsurpassed and perfect awakening of a buddha for the benefit of all beings. It consists of the Buddha’s answer to a single question posed by Venerable Ānanda about how the mind of awakening should be viewed.
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Film director Queena Li–creator of our tenth anniversary #SaveWisdomNow video–has just seen her debut feature premiere to widespread acclaim. Here, Queena shares with 84000 how her interest in exploring the mind has inspired her creativity, the role film can play in reminding audiences of the relevance of Buddhist wisdom today, and what offerings she finds most beautiful.
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We sat down recently with Dr. Fumi Yao, the translator of “The Chapter on Medicines,” to learn more about how she came to specialize in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, what she has learned about the differences and similarities across various traditions’ Vinaya literature, and how broad the notion of “medicine” may have been in ancient India.
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This month, we are thrilled to announce that 84000 is launching partnerships with both the University of Toronto, and with the University of California Santa Barbara. These partnerships will transform our ability to make our vision a reality, and to ensure that the future generations continue to be able to easily read, practice, and study the words of the Buddha.
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