Published by: World Tibet Network News, Tuesday, Mar 12, 1996

The San Francisco Chronicle Monday, March 11, 1996

Stephen Schwartz, Chronicle Staff Writer

Gigantic is the only word that describes the ambitions of Dharma Publishing, a Berkeley-based, mostly volunteer effort to deliver Buddhist scriptures to lamas and others in the Himalayas.

Its ``Yeshe De'' project, created by Tibetan holy man Tarthang Tulku and named after a famous Tibetan translator, has accumulated 84,000 rare Buddhist texts. Using Western computer technology, the firm has printed 755 volumes of essential Tibetan religious writings.

``It may be the largest publishing enterprise in human history,'' said Sally Sorensen, project coordinator.

She added that the series is also the first-ever attempt to bring together all the major Tibetan Buddhist works. ``In old Tibet they never had them all in one edition,'' she said.

The books -- at an exhibit in Berkeley, where they are complemented by gorgeous Tibetan thankas, or religious paintings -- make for an impressive display of the canon.

The collection is broken down into two series. The first is the Kanjur and Tanjur, consisting of 120 very large volumes, which preserve 1,115 direct teachings of the Buddha and almost 4,000 texts by some 700 Indian holy thinkers. The second is a 624-book set of 80,000 religious works. In addition, Dharma Publishing has produced a multivolume index to the books.

The Tibetan people embraced Buddhism some 1,200 years ago. In the decades after the Chinese seizure of their country in 1959, thousands of Tibetan temples, libraries and monasteries, known as lamaseries, were shut down, thousands of monks and nuns were killed, and vast numbers of holy scriptures and paintings were destroyed.

The Yeshe De project was conceived to help fill the void left in the lives of the devout Buddhists of Tibet by these acts of cultural vandalism. Preservation of the teachings of the Buddha and the enlightened masters who followed him are central to Tibetan Buddhist practice.

The books printed in Berkeley have mainly been sent to Tibetans in India and in Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and other small states on the southern border of Tibet. However, two truckloads were recently transported to Tibet itself.

The publishing project has also distributed hundreds of thousands of religious art reproductions and traditional prayer wheels to the Buddhist faithful. Outside the Tibetan community, such work has made possible the first steps toward reconstruction of lamaistic traditions in Mongolia, where anti-religious repression under the pro-Soviet Communist regime that ruled the country for some 70 years was also devastating.

Through the past winter, Dharma Publishing has thrown its doors open for a show of ``Sacred Art and Books of Tibet,'' presenting 300 prints of religious paintings and the series of 700 volumes. The company has long maintained the Tibetan Aid Project to provide emergency relief to refugees in India and Nepal.

``We appreciate the dedication to religious freedom of Americans, and their sympathy for the Tibetan people, which make this continuing work possible,'' Sorensen said.

The Sacred Art and Books of Tibet show will be open until March 26 at Dharma Publishing, 2910 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley 94702. Information is available by phoning (510) 548-5407. The Tibetan Aid Project may also be reached at that address.