Origin of the Dhagpo Kagyu library

SACRED TEXTS IN PERIL

The disruptions in the Sino-Tibetan history incited a great number of Tibetans to leave their homeland starting in 1959. The Buddhist masters and monks brought only the essentials with them in their escape to India: the most sacred Buddhist texts. Several thousand volumes, printed on loose leaf known in Tibetan as pechas, were therefore saved from destruction.

For Buddhists, the sacred character of the texts rests more in the content than in the medium. These texts convey the words of Buddha and the exegesis of practitioners who throughout the centuries attained the same result as the Buddha. In Tibet, an immense part of the Buddhist corpus was destroyed in the 1960’s. A few rare collections were hidden and periodically come to light today in times of political calm. Between 1976 and 1979, the 16^th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpé Dorjé (1924-1981) organized the photomechanical reprinting of the 316 volumes which make up the Tibetan canon, thus allowing this treasure to be safeguarded.

THE CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE DHAGPO KAGYU LIBRARY

In 1975, the 16^th Gyalwa Karmapa met Bernard Benson, an English scientist and industrialist, who offered a 50 hectare parcel of land with a farm in Dordogne, to build a Buddhist centre. The 16^th Gyalwa Karmapa sent two particularly qualified teachers there, lama Gendün Rinpoché and lama Jigme Rinpoché. The Dhagpo Kagyu Ling association and the Dhagpo Kagyu library began two years later.

Thanks to private sponsors and the Karmé Dharma Chakra congregation, the library has assembled a considerable number of works in thirty years, and today shelters one of the most important collection of documents on Tibetology in Europe. The library has remained confidential due to a lack of appropriate space. Now, in the heart of the new Institute at Dhagpo Kagyu Ling, the library can open to the public with its 300 m² space and continue to acquire yet more new collections.