The Dharma Treasury contains a variety of Tibetan Buddhist texts translated from Tibetan into English. The collection includes texts by masters in the Nyingma Lineage such as Jigme Lingpa, Dudjom Lingpa, and Jamgon Mipham.

These translations are mainly done by Anam Thubten with the help of many volunteers. Since translations are always a work-in-progress and capable of being improved, Anam Thubten continuously upgrades his translations. Historically, early Tibetan translators would translate the texts from Sanskrit; then, much later, other translators would re-translate and upgrade the same text. This is how translations have improved over the course of time. Such a tradition could be adopted in our contemporary time.

Sometimes, English translations of a Tibetan text may have mistakes or misinterpretations of the meaning. Such mistakes can have a widespread impact unless they are corrected. At the same time, it is important that the translations also be poetic, clear, and approachable. This balance between accuracy and readability needs to be kept in mind for those who are involved in translating Buddhist texts.

On the Dharma Treasury website, the texts are available freely to everyone. Our intention is that sincere practitioners of the Buddha Dharma have easy access to the texts for study or practice, with the caveat that they have received the appropriate transmissions needed for the relevant texts.

Anam Thubten began learning English soon after his arrival in the USA. Shortly after, he began translating sacred liturgies and texts from Tibetan into English, often working with groups of Westerners, as pictured here in the early 2000s.

In addition to the Tibetan and English, for liturgies that are chanted, the translations on this website also include phonetics in the Golok dialect, which is Anam Thubten’s native language. This dialect differs from the widely used Lhasa dialect in many ways. To create the phonetics, a tool has been developed by Dharmata Foundation volunteers, which can be accessed using this link.