Wisdom Academics
Explore Wisdom’s Academic Series
Explore Wisdom’s Academics Series
Wisdom has the joy and honor of publishing several series—some for 20+ years—that feature leading academic works and foundational translations. These academic series play an important role in Wisdom’s mission to promote and preserve Buddhist ideas, teachings, and practices from a diversity of countries and traditions.
Books in our Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and Classics of Indian Buddhism series are peer reviewed, and the series are overseen by editorial boards featuring leading scholars and translators.
Several books across our series are award-winners, including:
• Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way, Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura: 2014 Khyentse Foundation Translation Prize (Classics of Indian Buddhism series)
• Divine Stories: Divyāvadāna Part 2, Andy Rotman: 2018 Khyentse Foundation Prize for Outstanding Translation (Classics of Indian Buddhism series)
• A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages, Gavin Kilty: First Place, 2017 Tsadra Foundation Shantarakshita Award for Excellence in Translation (The Library of Tibetan Classics series)
• Mind Seeing Mind, Roger Jackson: 2020 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism (Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism series)
Explore the series:
• The Library of Tibetan Classics
• The Library of Wisdom and Compassion
• Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism
• Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics
Recent News
PUBLISHED AUGUST 2021
Questioning the Buddha: A Collection of Twenty-Five Sutras (Peter Skilling)
Questioning the Buddha, from the Classics of Indian Buddhism series, brings the reader directly into the literary treasure of the Tibetan canon with thoroughly annotated translations of twenty-five different sutras. Often these texts, many translated here in full for the first time, begin with an encounter in which someone poses a question to the Buddha.
PUBLISHED APRIL 2021
Illuminating the Intent: An Exposition of Candrakīrti’s Entering the Middle Way (By Tsongkhapa, translated by Thupten Jinpa)
Perhaps the most influential explanation of Candrakirti’s seventh-century classic Entering the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara), now available in this much-anticipated translation by Geshe Thupten Jinpa Langri in the Library of Tibetan Classics.
PUBLISHED APRIL 2021
Four Tibetan Lineages: Core Teachings of Pacification, Severance, Shangpa Kagyü, and Bodong (Sarah Harding)
Drawing primarily from the Pacification, Severance, Shangpa Kagyü, and Bodongpa traditions, Four Tibetan Lineages presents some of Tibet’s most transformative yet lesser-known teachings on meditative practice in this new volume in the Library of Tibetan Classics.
About the Series
Teachings of the Buddha
Discover the best-selling series the Teachings of the Buddha. To ensure that the Buddha’s legacy would survive the ravages of time, his direct disciples compiled records of his teachings soon after his passing. In the Theravāda Buddhist tradition, which prevails in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, these records are regarded as the definitive “word of the Buddha.” Preserved in Pāli, an ancient Indian language closely related to the language that the Buddha spoke, this full compilation of texts is known as the Pāli Canon.
At the heart of the Buddha’s teaching were the suttas (Sanskrit sūtras), his discourses and dialogues. The suttas were compiled into collections called “Nikāyas,” of which there are four, each organized according to a different principle. The Dīgha Nikāya consists of longer discourses; the Majjhima Nikāya of middle-length discourses; the Saṃyutta Nikāya of thematically connected discourses; and the Aṅguttara Nikāya of numerically patterned discourses.
Many books in this series can be read in the Wisdom Reading Room. Click here to learn more.
The Library of Tibetan Classics
The Library of Tibetan Classics is a major, exciting effort to support Tibetan culture. Edited by Thupten Jinpa— renowned scholar, author, translator, and interpreter for His Holiness the Dalai Lama—t The thirty-two-volume series, when complete, will span nearly a millennium and a half and will cover the entire expanse of Tibet’s classical literary heritage, from religion and folklore to art and poetry, from philosophy and psychology to medicine, and much more.
Many books in this series can be read in the Wisdom Reading Room. Click here to learn more.
The Library of Wisdom and Compassion
The Library of Wisdom and Compassion is a special multivolume series in which His Holiness the Dalai Lama shares the Buddha’s teachings on the complete path to full awakening that he himself has practiced his entire life. The topics are arranged especially for people seeking practical spiritual advice and are peppered with the Dalai Lama’s own unique outlook. Assisted by his long-term disciple, the American nun Thubten Chodron, the Dalai Lama sets the context for practicing the Buddha’s teachings in modern times and then unveils the path of wisdom and compassion that leads to a meaningful life and sense of personal fulfillment. This series is an important bridge from introductory to profound topics for those seeking an in-depth explanation from a contemporary perspective.
Click here to learn more.
Classics of Indian Buddhism
The flourishing of Buddhism in South Asia during the first millennium of the Common Era produced many texts that deserve a place among the classics of world literature. Exploring the full extent of the human condition and the limits of language and reason, these texts have the power to edify and entertain a wide variety of readers. The Classics of Indian Buddhism series aims to publish widely accessible translations of important texts from the Buddhist traditions of South Asia, with special consideration given to works foundational for the Mahāyāna.
Several books in this series can be read in the Wisdom Reading Room. Click here to learn more.
Click here to visit the Classics of Indian Buddhism series page.
Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism
This peer-reviewed series was conceived to provide a forum for publishing outstanding new contributions to scholarship on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and also to make accessible seminal research not widely known outside a narrow specialist audience, including translations of appropriate monographs and collections of articles from other languages. The series strives to shed light on the Indic Buddhist traditions by exposing them to historical-critical inquiry, illuminating through contextualization and analysis these traditions’ unique heritage and the significance of their contribution to the world’s religious and philosophical achievements.
Many books in this series can be read in the Wisdom Reading Room. Click here to learn more.
Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics
Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics compiles classical Buddhist explorations of the nature of our material world, the human mind, logic, and phenomenology and puts them into context for the modern reader.
This ambitious four-volume series—a major resource for the history of ideas and especially the history of science and philosophy—has been conceived by and compiled under the visionary supervision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself. It is his view that the exploratory thinking of great Indian masters in the first millennium CE still has much that is of interest to us today, whether we are Buddhist or not. These volumes make those insights accessible.
Sounds of Innate Freedom
Sounds of Innate Freedom: The Indian Texts of Mahāmudrā are historic volumes containing many of the first English translations of classic mahamudra literature. The texts and songs in these volumes constitute the large compendium called The Indian Texts of the Mahāmudrā of Definitive Meaning, compiled by the Seventh Karmapa, Chötra Gyatso (1456–1539). The collection offers a brilliant window into the richness of the vast ocean of Indian mahamudra texts cherished in all Tibetan lineages, particularly in the Kagyü tradition, giving us a clear view of the sources of one of the world’s great contemplative traditions.