Treasury of Knowledge

Jamgön Kongtrul the Great

The All-encompassing Treasury of Knowledge (Tib. ཤེས་བྱ་ཀུན་ཁྱབ་མཛོད་, Sheja Kun La Khyabpé Dzö, Wyl. shes bya kun khyab mdzod or simply Sheja Dzö) — an encyclopedia of Buddhist wisdom and knowledge. One of The Five Great Treasures of Jamgön Kongtrul the Great.

Tibetan text

• ཤེས་བྱ་ཀུན་ཁྱབ་མཛོད་, shes bya kun khyab mdzod

Outline

The text has ten sections:

•Book One: Myriad Worlds (Snow Lion, 2003. ISBN 1-55939-188-X)

•Book Two: The Advent of the Buddha (Snow Lion, 2010)

Part One: The Teacher’s Path to Awakening

Part Two: The Buddha’s Enlightenment

Part Three: The Buddha’s Twelve Deeds

Part Four: Enlightenment’s Bodies and Realms

•Book Three: The Buddha’s Doctrine—The Sacred Teachings (Snow Lion, 2010)

Part One: What Are the Sacred Teachings?

Part Two: Cycles of Scriptural Transmission

Part Three: Compilations of the Buddha’s Word

Part Four: Origins of the Original Translations’ Ancient Tradition (Nyingma)

•Book Four: Buddhism’s Spread Throughout the World (Snow Lion, 2010)

Part One: Buddhism’s Spread in India

Part Two: How Buddhist Monastic Discipline and Philosophy Came to Tibet

Part Three: Tibet’s Eight Vehicles of Tantric Meditation Practice

Part Four: The Origins of Buddhist Culture

•Book Five: Buddhist Ethics (Snow Lion, 2003. ISBN 1-55939-191-X)

•Book Six: The Topics for Study

Part One: A Presentation of the Common Fields of Knowledge and Worldly Paths

Part Two: The General Topics of Knowledge in the Hinayana and Mahayana

Part Three: Frameworks of Buddhist Philosophy (Snow Lion, 2007. ISBN 1-55939-277-0)

Part Four: Systems of Buddhist Tantra (Snow Lion, 2005. ISBN 1-55939-210-X)

•Book Seven: The Training in Higher Wisdom

Part One: Gaining Certainty about the Keys to Understanding

Part Two: Gaining Certainty about the Provisional and Definitive Meanings in the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma, the Two Truths and Dependent Arising

Part Three: Gaining Certainty about the View

Part Four: Gaining Certainty about the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind

•Book Eight: The Training in Higher Meditative Absorption (Samadhi)

Part One, Two: Shamatha and Vipashyana; The Stages of Meditation in the Cause-Based Approaches

Part Three: The Elements of Tantric Practice (Snow Lion, 2008)

Part Four: Esoteric Instructions, A Detailed Presentation of the Process of Meditation in Vajrayana (Snow Lion, 2008. ISBN 1-55939-284-3)

•Book Nine: An Analysis of the Paths and levels to Be Traversed (Journey and Goal, forthcoming Oct. 2010)

Part One: The Paths and Levels in the Cause-Based Dialectical Approach

Part Two: The Levels and Paths in the Vajrayana

Part Three: The Process of Enlightenment

Part Four: The Levels in the Three Yogas

•Book Ten: An Analysis of the Consummate Fruition State (Journey and Goal, forthcoming Oct. 2010)

Part One: The Fruition in the Dialectical Approach

Part Two: The More Common Attainment in the Vajrayana

Part Three: The Fruition in the Vajrayana

Part Four: The Fruition State in the Nyingma School

Translations

• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book One: Myriad Worlds, translated by the Kalu Rinpoche translation Group (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003)
• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Books Two, Three, and Four: Buddhism’s Journey to Tibet, translated and introduced by Ngawang Zangpo (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2010)
• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Five: Buddhist Ethics, translated by the Kalu Rinpoche translation Group (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003)
• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Six, Part Three: Frameworks of Buddhist Philosophy, translated by Elizabeth Callahan (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2007)
• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Six, Part Four: Systems of Buddhist Tantra, translated by Elio Guarisco and Ingrid McLeod (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2005)
• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight, Part Three: The Elements of Tantric Practice, translated by Elio Guarisco and Ingrid McLeod (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2008)
• Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight, Part Four: Esoteric Instructions, A Detailed Presentation of the Process of Meditation in Vajrayana, translated by Sarah Harding (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2007)

Further Reading

• E. Gene Smith, '‘Jam mgon Kong sprul and the Nonsectarian Movement' in Among Tibetan Texts, Wisdom, 2001