In 2016 our ITAS Research Library in Karma Guen obtained a recently published collection: a 108-volume set of the collected writings of the successive Karmapa hierarchs entitled A Compilation of the Collected Writings of the Successive Incarnations of the Karmapas – Glorious Kings of the Victorious Ones (dPal rgyal dbang karma pa sku phreng rim byon gyi gsung ‘bum phyogs bsgrigs). The Collected Works encompass the available works of fourteen out of the first sixteen Karmapas, since the 11th and 12th Karmapas’ works are missing. A great number of works published now were hitherto unknown or thought to have been lost. Its 1,369 titles also include A Collection of Indian Mahāmudrā Works (Phyag chen rgya gzhung) compiled by the 7th Karmapa.
Our ITAS translation team has begun preliminary research into the lives and works of the Karmapas.
On this website, we present the titles of the texts contained within the Collected Writings translated into English, organised with explanatory notes for the reader. We aim to complete this preliminary catalogue to encompass all of the works of the Karmapas, as well as to develop an intelligent database that incorporates other contextual information.
We are currently working on the titles in the 8th Karmapa’s collected writings. The 11th and 12th Karmapas do not have any texts attributed to them in the collections that we have investigated so far.
All translations and works presented so far are a work in progress. We plan to translate selected works of the Karmapas, starting with those of most interest to the Karma Kagyü Buddhist practitioner.
The team currently consists of translators with Western academic education in Philosophy, Tibetan, Indian and Buddhist Studies, who are also practitioners and students within the Karma Kagyü lineage. Some of our team members are graduates of the ITAS education programme based in Karma Guen and some from other European academic institutions.
