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2024 Year in Review

Impact
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As 2024 draws to a close, we share some of our major accomplishments and widespread activities of the past year, thanks to the collective dedication of our community of supporters, translators, volunteers, team members, and so many others who make this invaluable work possible.

Exceeding Translation Goals

In 2024, we published 74 texts representing 4,722 Tibetan pages, which exceeds our annual publication target of 4,500 pages. As of December 1, we have published 42 percent of the primary collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, known as the Kangyur, and are on track to meet our goal of translating 100 percent of the collection by 2035.

Some of the most notable texts in the Kangyur that were translated this year include:

  • Chapters 1-13 of The Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines (Toh 8)
  • Three chapters of the Vinaya section of the Kangyur:
    • “The Chapter on the Restoration Rite” (Toh 1-2)
    • “The Chapter on Lifting Restrictions” (Toh 1-3)
    • “The Chapter on the Rains” (Toh 1-4)
  • ‍The Dharma Council (Toh 238)‍
  • The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light (2) (3)  (Toh 556, Toh 557)
  • Chapter 3 of the Catalog of the Degé Kangyur: “The Third Well-Spoken Branch: An Exact Account of How All the Victorious One’s Teachings Extant Today in the Land of Snow Mountains Were Put into Print” (Toh 4568-3)

Discover all of our latest publications.

In August, our translation team had the good fortune to participate in a five-day Hevajra workshop at Gomde Austria, led by Professor Harunaga Isaacson from the University of Hamburg. The workshop was instrumental in revising translations of the Hevajra tantra as well as three commentaries from the Tengyur for sharing next year during teachings being offered by H.H. the 42nd Sakya Trizin.

Connecting with Our Community

As part of our mission to share the Buddha’s words with the open and curious, we offered a range of online and in-person events this year, and you could find 84000 “around the world” staffing five outreach tables from Chile and California to India and Singapore. We conducted four online Teachings on Sūtra events, two online 84000 in Conversation events, and two Sūtra Resoundings.

Teachings on Sūtra

  • July | Chökhor Düchen: Venerable Thubten Chodron, “Creating Our World.” Venerable Chodron focused on The Rice Seedling (Toh 210), which is considered one of the most important sūtras on the topic of dependent arising.
    Watch: English | Chinese

‍84000 in Conversation

Resoundings

Growing Our Community

The work of 84000 would not be possible without our dedicated supporters, whose every gift makes a difference and contributes to fulfilling our mission. To recognize and show appreciation for our recurring donors, we launched a new community called the Give Each Month (GEM) Mandala. Our GEM Mandala now includes more than 1,000 generous donors, contributing monthly from 54 countries around the world. This initiative has resulted in increasing our recurring donors by more than 30 percent this year from January through the end of November.

The magnitude of support from our GEM Mandala is made possible by our matching funds donors whose generous donations double the monthly gifts we receive. In recognition of their significance, in 2024 we formalized this giving stream as the Anāthapiṇḍada Matching Funds Program—naming the program after the Buddha’s renowned patron Anāthapiṇḍada (“one who gives alms to the unprotected”)—and added the option to contribute at two giving tiers. Combined, these giving streams help ensure the organization will continue to progress and realize our vision. 

Contributions to Buddhist Studies

Many of our 84000 translators and editors made important contributions this year on a range of topics related to Buddhist studies and translation of the Tibetan Buddhist canon through lectures, public talks, and scholarly publications, as well as interviews on podcasts and other media outlets. Below are just a few highlights of their accomplishments specifically related to the work of 84000.

  • Catherine Dalton was interviewed on the Kind Heartfulness podcast, Episode 6: “Translating the Dharma.”
  • Andreas Doctor was interviewed on the Kind Heartfulness podcast, Episode 7: “On Rebirth.”
  • Annie Heckman was interviewed on the Kind Heartfulness podcast, Episode 10: “Buddha’s Nuns Naughty or Nice.”
    Listen to the podcasts
  • John Canti published the article “Eighty-Four Thousand Reasons to Translate the Canon” in the Journal of Tibetan Literature Vol. 3 No. 1 (2024).
  • George FitzHerbert gave a talk entitled “Translating the Kangyur: Verses on Circumambulating Shrines” at The Dragon Awakes: Losar Celebration of Tibetan Literature held by the Shang Shung Institute (London Institute of Tibetan Studies).

Advancements in Technology

84000 has no physical library or headquarters for our translations of tens of thousands of Tibetan pages. Instead, we make all of our publications available online at your fingertips, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, creating a virtual nexus of the Buddha’s wisdom.

With the expertise of our dedicated technology team, we achieved significant milestones this year in digital publication and web infrastructure, improving on how we fulfill our mission and how canonical Buddhist texts are preserved and shared globally. Progress included developing a new website that is more intuitive and user-friendly, implementing a robust enterprise platform, making progress on new data management innovations, and creating advanced translation memory systems with 23,215 searchable data units.

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Thank you for the tremendous support you have provided that fueled our progress in 2024. We are incredibly grateful to be able to continue translating the Buddha’s words to awaken humanity and to ensure they are freely accessible for all.

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