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?"
While the Buddha is residing on Vulture Peak Mountain, the bodhisattva Siṃhavikrāntagāmin asks him a series of questions about emptiness and the nondual view in which the dichotomy between subject and object has been left behind. The Buddha responds with a discourse in verse identifying the nature of phenomena as the single principle of emptiness.
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The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla is one of the earliest Mahāyāna sūtras and belongs to the Ratnakūṭa collection of the Chinese Tripiṭaka and the Tibetan Kangyur. Among the forty-nine works that constitute this collection, The Questions of Rāṣṭrapāla is one of the few texts for which Indian originals are extant.
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Applying academic methods to the study and translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts July 19, 2021, Toronto—The University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion has received a grant from global non-profit 84000: Translating the Words of the …
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The benefits of building stūpas and of honoring them are mentioned in numerous passages in the sūtras and vinaya texts, but this is one of only a small number in which this theme is the principal one.
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Global non-profit initiative 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha is partnering with the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) to establish the Buddhist Texts Translation Initiative at the university’s Department of Religious Studies, opening July 2021.
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In this sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamuni explains the connection between the bodhisattvas’ aspirations and the virtues of their future buddha realms. He describes the various qualities that help bodhisattvas bring their aspirations to fulfillment.
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On Chökor Düchen, Ven. Konchog Norbu will be exploring 84000’s recently published translation of The Chapter on Medicine, and will offer a distillation of the stories and teachings it contains with special emphasis on the unique and miraculous qualities of Śākyamuni Buddha; examples of the rare power of being in the presence of such a being and his teachings; and fascinating details about both medieval Indian spiritual and secular culture.
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Ascertaining the Vinaya: Upāli’s Questions is a sūtra focused on the relationship between and integration of the prātimokṣa vows of monastic discipline and the conduct of a bodhisattva who follows the Mahāyāna tradition.
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This discourse takes place while the Buddha Śākyamuni is with a large community of monks, along with numerous bodhisattvas. Ten of the bodhisattvas present in the retinue have become discouraged despite exerting themselves for seven years. The bodhisattva Undaunted therefore requests the Buddha to bestow upon them an instruction that will enable them to generate wisdom.
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The Buddha, while at the Jetavana monastery in Śrāvastī, tells Mañjuśrī of a buddha realm far above the world, in which lives the Buddha Aparimitāyurjñāna. He states that those who recite, write, hear, and so on, the praise of this buddha, or make offerings to this text, will have numerous benefits, including a long life and a good rebirth.
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In this brief sūtra, the Buddha proclaims the importance of respect for and service to one’s parents. By making use of similes to explain to the assembly of monks how exalted a child’s service to their father and mother is, he proclaims one’s parents worthy of gifts and tender care.
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