Over the last thousand years, the Tibetan people have studied and practiced the wisdom found in the Kangyur and Tengyur Collections. During this time they have also written more than 200,000 different sacred books exploring these same great ideas. One of ACIP’s principal goals is to find and preserve an entire stream of literature stretching from the time that the great books of India first arrived over the Himalayas, down through the tradition of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet, and to the great Asian writers of the present day.

To date we have input some 60,000 pages of native Tibetan classics, in about a thousand different treatises. Here are a few highlights of the books found on the new release:

• We have input a huge amount of data relating to the great books that talk about the philosophy of how the world around us works: entire libraries on the great ideas of the Middle Way, the Perfection of Wisdom, the Mind-Only School, Logic and Theories of Perception, Higher Knowledge, and the Art of Ethical Living. (In Sanskrit these are known, respectively, as Madhyamika, Prajna Paramita, Chitta Matra, Pramana, Abhidharma, and Vinaya.) Here you will find about 25,000 pages of woodblock prints with the contributions of ten centuries of great Tibetan writers.

• Included also are the great summaries of Tibetan thinkers on all the schools of philosophy ever known to them: these collections are known in Tibetan as Grub-mtha’ and Drang-nges, and account for more than 4,000 pages on the new release.

• Perhaps the greatest contribution made by the great lamas of Tibet to the sacred literature of the world has been an entire body of literature devoted to the spiritual arts of meditation, contemplation, and applying ancient wisdom to the everyday problems of life. These books are divided into a number of groups in the database, including works on the complete steps to follow for a lifetime of spiritual practice (called Lam-rim); texts on meditation and other practical exercises (called Nyams-len and Cho-ga); and finally instructions for developing a good heart during the course of a normal day at home or at work (known as bLo-sbyong). There are over 400 titles in over 9,000 pages devoted to these subjects on the new release.

• The art of words has been a natural point of emphasis for the thousands of great Lama writers of Tibet, and there are about 75 separate works on the new release which treat the various topics of classical Sanskrit and Tibetan grammar, poetics, epistles, eulogies, and lexicography. (Standard dictionaries and other such tools are included in a separate section below called "Reference Materials.")

• A large amount of traditional biographical material is found on this release. This is divided into separate sections that present the full biographies (or rNam-thar) of eminent figures in the history of the Asian classics; accounts (known as bLa-brgyud) of the lineages of teachers and students who have passed the books down from century to century; and spiritual biographies of ancient figures found in the Kangyur and Tengyur Collections (these are called rTogs-brjod). There are over 50 such books here, with more than 3,500 pages of material.

• Other sections of the Sungbum Collection are devoted to what are, compared to philosophy, considered "minor arts" in the Tibetan tradition of knowledge. Included here are treatises on astronomy; fine arts such as painting, sculpture, and architecture; and the art of government.

There is a final section of the native Tibetan works devoted to those teachings mentioned above, the rGyud, which is passed on only by oral tradition privately from teacher to student. The Project is proud to report that we have input more than 1,000 separate titles devoted to this subject alone, covering each of the standard spiritual practices for a great many of the special beings from whom these teachings are said to have come down to us. Because of the commitment that ACIP has made to respect this tradition, these works are not included on the public release. They are made available, upon application, to individuals who have completed the traditional requirements to study them.