Longchen Nyingtik Texts from Dodrupchen Monastery Publications Available on BDRC

Thanks to a collaboration between Dodrupchen Monastery, the BDRC and the Longchen Nyingtik Project, nearly all of their publications related to rituals, and in particular those of the Longchen Nyingtik tradition as upheld at Dodrupchen Monastery, have been made available digitally online at the BDRC.

Dodrupchen Monastery in India has been publishing Tibetan books ever since the 1970’s. They have been instrumental in making sure that texts which are considered to belong to the heart of the Nyingma tradition, such as the works of Longchenpa, have been reprinted in exile and made available. Nowadays they have upgraded their publications to modern standards and the texts are now produced digitally.

Since 1999 the TBRC, now called the BDRC (Buddhist Digital Resource Center), has been scanning Tibetan books and making them available digitally to scholars and practitioners alike. They have been collaborating with many Monasteries such as Shechen Monastery to also make the latest publications available to a wider audience.

Unfortunately, a connection had not yet been made between Dodrupchen Monastery and the BDRC, and so many of their newest publications where only available in their store in Gangtok, Sikkim, unknown to the rest of he world and also quite a travel to reach.

In 2017 a small group of students was able to study the Nyingtik rituals at the monastery for about two months. During that time, and with the monastery’s blessing, we were able to send around 30 texts to the BDRC for digitisation. In 2020 once again texts were send and 10 volumes were processed and put online by the BDRC.

The texts consist of ritual arrangements, commentaries and empowerment collections. As for liturgical texts, there are for example the empowerment texts for Rigdzin Düpa, supplementary texts for Dukngal Rangdrol, the Vajrakilaya Tantra Tradition (Gyüluk Phurba), and a collection of Dharma Protectors. As for commentaries, there is for example a collection of the most important commentaries of the Longchen Nyingtik, and specific commentaries on Rigdzin Düpa and Palchen Düpa. There are also texts that contain biographies of the Dodrupchen Rinpoches and the history and rules of Dodrupchen Monastery.

Several texts have also been personally written, arranged and proofread the current Dodrupchen Rinpoche, Tubten Trinle Pal Zangpo. Others, such as the massive commentaries on Rigdzin Düpa and Palchen Düpa, have only very recently been written by Dodrupchen Rinpoche’s primary disciple Lopön Thekchok Yeshe Dorje. The complete list of publications can be consulted at the Dodrupchen Monastery Publications page.

Many thanks to Karma Gongde, librarian of the BDRC, for all his help and effort to make the texts available.