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.
Explore all of our publications by visiting the
84000 Online Reading Room
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 this sūtras, the bodhisattva Maitreya approaches the Buddha on Vulture Peak Mountain and asks him to explain the karmic results of teaching the Dharma.
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The Śrīgupta Sūtra tells the story of a plot against the life of Śākyamuni Buddha. At his guru’s instigation, a wealthy young Jain named Śrīgupta invites the Buddha to the midday meal at his house in Rājagṛha, where he has secretly prepared a fire trap and a poisoned meal.
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As a project that strives to translate the entire Tibetan Buddhist Canon for the general educated reader, maintaining the quality and readability of our translations is a non-negotiable. While we strive to maintain the highest academic standards in our research, methodology, and accuracy, we also try to make the language of our English publications accessible to the educated general reader.
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Teaching the Five Perfections is a compilation of five short sūtras that each present the practice of one of the five perfections in which bodhisattvas train on the path of the Great Vehicle: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, and concentration. These five perfections embody the skillful methods of the bodhisattva path, and, as these sūtras show, they should always be combined with an understanding of the state of omniscience, the sixth perfection of insight that is supposed to permeate the practice of the first five perfections.
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In this sūtra, Surata’s Questions follows Surata, a seemingly poor vagabond endowed with a wealth of ethical virtue. The juxtaposition of Surata’s poverty with the abundance of his moral merits forms a central theme of the sūtra. After being tested by the god Śakra, Surata finds a precious gem that he decides to give to the poorest person in the city.
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84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha (84000.co), a global nonprofit initiative to translate and make freely available the 231,000 pages of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon, announces the launch of its much anticipated mobile app for iOS and Android.
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In this lengthy final chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, while the Buddha Śākyamuni is in meditation in Śrāvastī, Mañjuśrī leaves for South India, where he meets the young layman Sudhana and instructs him to go to a certain kalyāṇamitra or “good friend,” who then directs Sudhana to another such friend.
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The translation into English of a major sūtra, The Stem Array (Gandavyuha), is nearing completion and our Founding Chair, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, will be giving a live teaching on this magnificent and mind-bending sūtra almost as soon as it’s out!
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Victory of the Ultimate Dharma presents the Buddha’s answers to questions posed by a non-Buddhist seer named Ulka concerning the origin of life, the end of the universe, and the nature of the soul.
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We recently sat down for an interview with Peter Alan Roberts, the translator of The Stem Array, to hear more about his experience of translating what he calls a sūtra that “overwhelms the mind.”
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Questions on Selflessness consists of a dialogue between a group of followers of the Mahāyāna tradition and a group of tīrthikas, who pose several questions on the doctrine of selflessness.
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