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Explore Tibetan Buddhism on the Web
After Buddhism flourished in India, missionaries moved northeast into Tibet to spread the teachings of Buddha and the way to happiness. Although some basic religious practices existed among the Tibetan people, for the most part they were open to the teachings of the Buddhist masters. An account of the birth of Tibetan Buddhism, "Buddhism in Tibet" (1863) by Emil Schlagintweit, can be found at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bit/bit10.htm.
For an introduction to Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, access the University Libraries' subscription to "Britannica" at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/eb.html. Simply enter "Buddhism" and you'll retrieve Britannica's entries for both forms. For a more in-depth look at Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism in particular, visit the Internet Sacred Text Archive at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/index.htm. This site is overflowing with full-text books, poems and manuscripts gathered from Internet digital initiatives. An official definition of Tibetan Buddhism and its many traditions can be seen on the Government of Tibet in Exile's "Tibetan Buddhism" Web site at http://www.tibet.com/Buddhism/index.html. Here you'll learn about five principal spiritual traditions of Tibet, their religious ceremonies and customs, and Tibet's most famous monasteries.
To explore rare Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts, visit the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center at http://www.tbrc.org/, where you'll find a searchable database of Himalayan literature going back to the 12th century. You also may want to visit the Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project at http://www.tibet.dk/dkhp/page2.htm. The goal of the project is to preserve the texts of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Another educational Web site that also provides software and fonts for those writing in Tibetan is Nitartha International (http://www.nitartha.org/home.html). Educational software, an online library, Tibetan literary and religious texts, and English translations of classical Buddhist texts can be found on the site.
More information on Tibetan Buddhism, as well as other religions practiced in Tibet, both past and present, is available at the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library at http://www.thdl.org/index.html. For a list of Tibetan Buddhist Centers with a Web site, visit the Virtual Library's Tibetan Studies Web site at http://home.it.net.au/~murrayk/tib-centers.html.
Those wishing to study Tibet beyond its religious practices can go to the Contemporary Tibetan Culture Library at http://www.latse.org/. Under "Databases" are links to the project's catalog, as well as a free online database to journal articles written about Tibet. Two other projects may also be of interest: the "Image Library" and the "Gyalrong Texts Project."
—Cynthia Tysick, University Libraries