Skip to reading
← The reading roomSTUDY GUIDE

Kangyur & Tengyur

Collection guide

Original study guide

Original explanatory guide.

The Kangyur collects translated works accepted as Buddha-word: sūtras, monastic discipline and tantric scriptures. The Tengyur gathers Indian treatises and commentaries.

These categories distinguish scripture from the literature that interprets and systematizes it. Editions vary. Tibetan authors’ own works constitute additional bodies of teaching literature.

Tibetan schools share this broad inheritance while emphasizing different instructions, commentaries and practice transmissions.

Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug do not each possess an entirely unrelated “Bible.” Their shared texts coexist with distinctive lineage writings.

This page is an orientation to the work or collection, not its full text.

Stay with a passage. Return when you wish.

Choose another text →Upcoming retreats