We are delighted to share the news that Khyentse Vision Project’s new reading room is now officially live. A nonprofit translation initiative under the umbrella of Khyentse Foundation, Khyentse Vision Project’s primary objective is to make the writings of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (1820–92) widely accessible by publishing translations of his works freely online.
Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo was the previous incarnation of many Khyentse masters, including Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche, Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö. As one of the founders of the nonsectarian Rimé tradition, Khyentse Wangpo produced meditation instructions, philosophical treatises, songs, sadhanas, histories, treasure cycles, and pith instructions from all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. His two major collections are his Collected Works (Kabum) and Seven Transmissions (Kabab Dun), totaling over 30,000 Tibetan pages. Khyentse Vision Project is currently translating the volumes into English, but plans to eventually include other languages as well. The new interactive reading room presently features 108 translations, comprising 102 texts from the Kabum and 6 from the Kabab Dun.
The reading room is the fruit of years of work by the project’s tech, translation, and editorial teams. It comprises translated works on a wide range of topics that can be browsed by genre, by volume, or through a detailed catalog of the collections. The genre page features such topics as sadhanas, prayers and praises, songs, instructions, philosophy, history and biography, arts and sciences, and rituals, while the volume page lists the texts according to how they are arranged in the Kabum and Kabab Dun. The catalog offers detailed information about each work in the collections, including English title, Tibetan title, author, and text location, and a link to the Tibetan pecha page.
The website further offers a new World of Khyentse menu, which includes a Khyentse incarnation lineage tree and information on the life and legacy of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. More about the project, such as its mission, core values and principles, training and internship program for promising translators, and team, as well as news and events, can be found in the About menu. There is also a blog, where team members give further insight into their work or other topics relevant to the project.
To celebrate the reading room launch, Khyentse Vision Project recently hosted a masquerade party in Sydney, during which Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche spoke about how the project is close to his heart. While in Sydney, Rinpoche also gave empowerments of treasure cycles that Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo discovered, including the Trisong Ladrub, Tsasum Drildrub, Khandro Sangdu, and Netik Purba. The Khyentse Vision team are in the process of publishing works from all these cycles in the reading room. The Trisong Ladrub (a guru yoga based on King Trisong Deutsen) is already translated and published and can be accessed by those with empowerment.