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?"
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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After his attainment of buddhahood, the Buddha Śākyamuni is present in many locations simultaneously. The Ten Bhūmis takes place two weeks after his enlightenment, while he is sitting silently in meditation in the central palace in the highest paradise of the desire realm.
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This sūtra describes the thirty-eight weeks of human gestation. It discusses conception, the composition of the embryo, the gestation period, the newborn being, the course of life and its sufferings, and the need to practice for one’s own good and the good of others.
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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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