The Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project

OVERVIEW

The Drukpa Kagyu tradition is one of the schools of the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. It has a few sub-schools, though they are very similar and transmit the same core of teaching. The written tradition of the Drukpa Kagyu Lineage is in a very bad state. The invasion of Tibet by the Communist Chinese in 1959 was particularly effective at destroying the libraries of the Tibetan religious traditions in general but the writings of several traditions, including the Drukpa Kagyu, were almost totally destroyed by it. In addition, recent events in Bhutan, which has Drukpa Kagyu as its state religion and which normally would have been an excellent backup for the loss of texts that occurred in Tibet, have resulted in Bhutan also losing much of its precious repository of texts belonging to the Drukpa Kagyu.

The East Tibetan (Kham) branch of the Drukpa Kagyus were headed for generations by the succesive incarnations of the great Khamtrul Rinpoche who established the principal seat of the Eastern Tibetan Drukpa Kagyu tradition at an isolated centre called Khampagar. In the late 1950's, the eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche, Dongyu nyima, seeing that a great problem was imminent, left Tibet with many of his followers just prior to the Communist Chinese invasion. He led his followers to North India where they found land in Himachal Pradesh and started a new Khampagar which they called Tashi Jong. At Tashi Jong, Khamtrul Rinpoche did everything he could to re-establish the various traditions that he and his followers carried with them from Tibet so that they would survive for posterity. Amongst many things, he envisaged a project for the complete restoration of the texts of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition and began the work by having copies of the texts that had been carried out of Tibet freshly transcribed and re-printed in Delhi. He also began work on a new edition of one of the most important written works of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, The Collected Works of All-knowing Padma Karpo which has become hard to obtain. He assembled good editions of the texts, supervised the cutting of new wood blocks, and did the correction and editing himself. The new edition was not completed before he died but the wood blocks that had been cut were taken to the Bhutanese National Library where they became the basis of a completed work that was published in February, 2000. This is the best edition readily available.

In fact, the eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche wished to start a large project which would take care of the overall reparation of the Drukpa Kagyu written tradition at Tashi Jong. However, the serious shortage of funds that faced him and his refugee settlement at Tashi Jong prevented the work from being started and then Khamtrul Rinpoche passed away unexpectedly in 1980.

When Khamtrul Rinpoche passed away, the main guru of the Eastern Tibetan Drukpa Kagyu was gone. The next most important guru of the tradition was one of his peers, the eighth Thrulzhig Rinpoche, commonly known as Adeu Rinpoche. Adeu Rinpoche was one of the very few remaining masters who had the knowledge necessary to oversee the restoration of the texts of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition but he was still in Tibet and did not have access to the means needed for such a large project. One of the young tulkus who grew up in Khamtrul Rinpoche’s care at Tashi Jong and another important guru of the Eastern Tibetan Drukpa Kagyu was the third Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Tsoknyi Rinpoche, remembering the kindness of his guru Khamtrul Rinpoche, and seeing a connection which would enable such a project to be completed, took up his guru’s vision of restoring the texts of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition. In 1992, Tsoknyi Rinpoche met Mr. Tony Duff, Buddhist scholar/lotsawa, in the United States of America. Mr. Duff in his work as a translator had developed the only professional word-processing program for Tibetan that was up to the task of restoring Tibetan texts. Tsoknyi Rinpoche, asked Mr. Duff to be his translator and also to establish and oversee the work of restoring the Drukpa Kagyu written tradition. The work was to be done with Tsoknyi Rinpoche as the chairman, with Mr. Duff as the Executive director, and with Adeu Rinpoche as the Chief Editor. The project was entitled “The Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project”.

To start with, Adeu Rinpoche was asked to compose an index that would list all of the texts needed. The index would serve as the guide for the restoration work of the Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project. Adeu Rinpoche, who at that point was the only holder of the whole Eastern Drukpa Kagyu tradition surviving, was attempting to ensure the survival of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition by transmitting the entire set of empowerments and reading transmissions of the tradition to all of the tulkus and teachers concerned. Since the empowerments and transmissions also need a textual support, Adeu Rinpoche envisaged a collection of texts that would provide that support. Accordingly, he composed a list of the requisite texts and arranged them in the form of an index for the collection that the Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project would eventually produce.

The intent was that Adeu Rinpoche would provide the empowerments and reading transmissions himself and the Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project would provide a thoroughly reliable textual support for it, so that the Drukpa Kagyu tradition could survive for many centuries. Thus it is the aim of the Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project to gather, preserve, and publish a complete collection of texts which will preserve the written heritage of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition in conjunction with the lineage of realization that will be passed on by Adeu Rinpoche and carry it forward into the future, it is hoped, for at least the next one thousand years.

To do the work, Mr. Duff set up an office in Kathmandu, Nepal, in January 1993. Work started immediately and has continued non-stop up to the present. Mr. Duff has been responsible for all phases of the work ever since then and has worked ceaselessly to fulfill his own guru’s wishes.

The work has five stages to it (click on a phase for the full description):

1.	Search for and collect the necessary texts
2.	Type the texts into computers
3.	Correct the input material
4.	Arrange the texts, type-set, and publish them
5.	Disseminate the collection to Drukpa Kagyu hermitages and monasteries worldwide, and to interested parties.

In addition, the project has decided to arrange and disseminate the entire collection in electronic text format. To do this the project has, in conjunction with Padma Karpo Translation Committee and Tibetan Computer Company, been developing new software for the purpose. As a result, the entire collection will be published electronically and the edition will come with a high quality software reader called TibetD.

Since 1993, nearly 2000 titles have been typed the office computers and a significant amount of correction work has been done on them. In order to complete the correction work, Adeu Rinpoche has come from Kham to Kathmandu and resides in the project's large house cum office. The office staff themselves are now engaged full-time in doing the final correction work to the texts that are being prepared for Adeu Rinpoche's attention. Once Adeu Rinpoche has corrected the texts to his satisfaction, the texts will be electronically layed out in Tibetan text format and printing will begin. It is anticipated that the final collection will be between 100 and 150 volumes in size. Initially 300 sets of the collection will be printed and these will be given in formal presentations to Drukpa Kagyu monasteries and hermitages world-wide.