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Over 250 translations of canonical Buddhist texts—more than 19,000 pages of wisdom—freely available today in our Reading Room

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84000 is a global non-profit initiative to translate all of the Buddha’s words into modern languages and provide free and open access to over 230,000 pages. Emphasizing engaging and interactive comprehension tools, and through collaborating with like-minded organizations and institutions, 84000 is creating an essential new resource for primary-source scholarship, independent study, and personal practice.

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Want to get involved? Translation grants offer a valuable opportunity to work on translating the Tibetan canonical literature. Our Opportunities page has up-to-date information on volunteer and job openings. Finally, subscribe to our quarterly newsletter to learn about new publications, newly translated sūtras and upcoming events.

News

NEW PUBLICATION
New Publications: Gayāśīrṣa Hill
26 May 2023

Set on Gayāśīrṣa, the hill near Bodhgayā from which its title is derived, the sūtra presents its teaching in the form of the Buddha’s inward examination, a conversation between the Buddha and the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, and dialogues between Mañjuśrī and three interlocutors‍—two gods and a bodhisattva.
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NEW PUBLICATION
New Publications: The Exposition of Karma
12 May 2023

In this Sūtra, the Buddha presents to the brahmin youth Śuka Taudeyaputra a discourse on the workings of karma. This is enlivened by many examples drawn from the rich heritage of Buddhist narrative literature, providing a detailed analysis of how deeds lead to specific consequences in the future.
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EDITORIAL
Sūtras in the Clouds: Making it Rain with Dharma
28 Apr 2023

“It’s in the cloud.” Though it has been less than twenty years since that metaphorical expression was first coined (by Eric Schmidt of Google at a conference in 2006), many of us are now as accustomed to understanding “the cloud” to mean a huge store of digital data, somewhere up there in cyberspace that we can access from anywhere, as we are to the real clouds up there in the sky. But Buddhist tradition has been using clouds in a similar metaphor for at least two thousand years.
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NEW PUBLICATION
New Publications: The Great Cloud (1) and The Great Cloud (2)
28 Apr 2023

Two new publications include, The Great Cloud—an important Mahāyāna sūtra, known particularly as one source of the idea that a tathāgata is permanent and does not really pass into parinirvāṇa, but strategically displays an illusory body; and The Great Cloud (2), a brief discourse identified more precisely in its colophon as a supplementary chapter from The Great Cloud on “the array of winds that bring down rainfall.”
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NEW PUBLICATION
Teaching the Eleven Thoughts
14 Apr 2023

Teaching the Eleven Thoughts takes place just before the Buddha attains parinirvāṇa, when he bequeaths his final testament to the assembled monks in the form of a brief discourse on eleven thoughts toward which the mind should be directed at the moment of death.
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NEW PUBLICATION
The Sūtra on Impermanence (2)
31 Mar 2023

The Sūtra on Impermanence (Anityatāsūtra) is a short discourse on the impermanence of conditioned states. The Buddha explains that it does not matter what one’s social status is, whether one is born in a heaven, or even if one has realized awakening and is an arhat, a pratyekabuddha, or a buddha.
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NEW PUBLICATION
The Wheel of Meditative Concentration
17 Mar 2023

While dwelling on Vulture Peak in Rājagṛha, the Buddha is absorbed in the meditative concentration called wheel of meditative concentration. In response to a series of questions posed by the Buddha, Mañjuśrī explains the nature of ultimate reality.
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NEW PUBLICATION
The Great Lion’s Roar of Maitreya
3 Mar 2023

In this sūtra, Mahākāśyapa poses a series of questions to the Buddha about proper monastic conduct and practice, which the Buddha answers at length. Mahākāśyapa then requests the Buddha to remain in the world in order to safeguard the Dharma, but when the Buddha initially predicts that Mahākāśyapa himself will do so in the future, Mahākāśyapa insists that for the Dharma to remain for long, it must be entrusted to a bodhisattva rather than a śrāvaka.
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FEATURE
Q&A | Publishing Translations from the Tengyur
28 Feb 2023

We are delighted to have recently announced the publication of our very first translation from the Tengyur: a commentary on the Long Perfection of Wisdom sūtras. We work on the research and translation of texts for years and spend hundreds …
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