Checkpoint 1 · Tibetan Study — Rinchen Terdzö

Your Könchok Chidü text just got a major upgrade — here's the story, and three things to decide

A side research pass turned up a far better source text for your Könchok Chidü (Könchok Chidü / dkon mchog spyi 'dus — "The Embodiment of the Three Jewels," Jatsön Nyingpo's terma cycle; terma = a teaching hidden by Guru Rinpoche for later revelation) study, made by a team worth knowing about and possibly supporting.

Personal study use only No manuscript images published Open-access sources only

Where this stands

The short version

The etext you've been using for Könchok Chidü is a computer's best-guess reading of one handwritten manuscript, right about 3 out of 4 characters of the time. A monastery-and-nonprofit team spent years hand-typing and proofreading the entire tradition this text belongs to — including your cycle — and it's sitting there, free, one command away.

This board explains what that bigger collection is, why the hand-typed version matters, who made it, what else they've made, and asks you three quick questions.

1 · The big picture

What the Rinchen Terdzö actually is

Context before the decision — skip ahead to section 4 if you just want the questions.

Rinchen Terdzö (rin chen gter mdzod, "Precious Treasury of Termas") is Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thaye's 19th-century compilation of the core practice texts of the terma tradition — empowerments, practice manuals, and instructions — gathered from termas revealed across every lineage of Tibetan Buddhism that has this kind of hidden-teaching tradition. It's one of the "Five Great Treasuries" Kongtrül is famous for compiling, and it's treated as a foundational reference collection for that entire practice tradition, not just one teacher's writings.

Scope, in numbers: the modern Shechen edition (see section 3 for who made it) runs to 71 volumes plus 1 volume of illustrations (72 physical volumes) — a critical edition that collated older prints and rare manuscripts. It was finished and formally celebrated in 2018.

Your Könchok Chidü cycle is one cluster of texts inside this larger collection — it sits in volume 8 ("NYA") and part of volume 13 ("PA") of the digital edition.

2 · Why hand-typed beats OCR

Your current text vs. the Shechen digital edition

What you have now

OCR'd manuscript reading

A 1977 reprint of a single handwritten manuscript, run through Google-Vision OCR (optical character recognition — software guessing letters from a scanned image) in 2020.

Mean accuracy: 72% — meaning roughly 1 in 4 characters is a guess
Represents ONE manuscript's specific wording, not a checked edition
Useful for comparing readings, risky as your main study text

What's now available

Shechen hand-typed edition

Every character was typed by a person and proofread by a person — not scanned and guessed. BDRC's own record tags it "ContentMethod: Computer Input," their label for hand-entry as opposed to OCR.

54 of the 71 volumes already available as clean, searchable text
Your exact Könchok Chidü cycle is mapped to precise files (see box below)
Free, open access — no login needed to read or download the text

3 · What unlocks for your study

Your Könchok Chidü cycle, one command away

✓

📖Exact texts, already located

No more guessing which volume or hunting through scans — every text in your cycle is now a named, addressable file.

Plain English Volume 8 ("NYA") holds the heart of the cycle: two invocation prayers, the activity manual, the empowerment text, a long-life practice, retreat instructions, the fire-offering text, preliminary practices, and the pith-instruction manual with its supplements — about 12 texts, ~338,000 characters total.

Plain English Volume 13 ("PA") holds one more piece of the cycle — a wrathful Guru Rinpoche practice text that belongs to the same terma revelation.

How to actually get it: Each text downloads with one line, e.g. curl -L "https://purl.bdrc.io/resource/UT1KG14_008_0019.txt" -o las-byang.txt — the full command list is in the research doc (see footer). For browsing rather than downloading, rtz.tsadra.org (the same edition, laid out as a readable wiki with a scanned-PDF view) is the friendlier way in — though it only works in a normal browser, not from a script.

4 · The makers — and the fuller list you asked for

Who built this, and what else they've done to the same standard

You asked for "the more complete list" — here it is, organized by team.

Shechen Monastery (Nepal) + Tsadra Foundation (New York)

Shechen — the monastery associated with the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's lineage — produced the new 71-volume critical edition (editor Sean Price, researcher Dakpo Tulku), collating older prints and rare manuscripts. Tsadra Foundation, a Buddhist-studies nonprofit, fully sponsored the typing, proofreading, and printing, and built the rtz.tsadra.org catalog on top of it (an archivist cataloged roughly 3,000 individual works starting in 2015). Completed 2018.

Tsadra's other hand-typed projects

Same model applied to the Damngak Dzö (gdams ngag mdzod, "Treasury of Precious Instructions" — another of Kongtrül's Five Treasuries): a 2024 critical edition, 18 volumes + 1 catalog volume, cataloged at dnz.tsadra.org, with an English translation program underway (target 2030). Tsadra also runs a broader translator-fellowship and publication program (100+ books since 2000).

Allied text-input efforts (not Tsadra, same open-access spirit)

Esukhia (a Tibetan text-processing nonprofit) hand-checked the Degé Kangyur (~103 volumes — the core Buddha-word canon) and Tengyur (commentarial canon) against multiple older inputs and scans. Adarsha (commissioned by the 17th Karmapa's office) digitized the Jiang/Degé Kangyur-Tengyur, with the actual typing done by Nitartha International's dedicated input center in Kathmandu — monks and refugees typing on standard keyboards with custom Tibetan software, then checked over 3 years by monastic scholars.

What we could NOT confirm

No evidence found yet of a parallel hand-typed project for the Chöying Dzö (Longchenpa's Seven Treasuries) — may not exist, or may need a direct look at Tsadra's project list. Also unconfirmed: whether Monlam AI (the Tibetan OCR/AI nonprofit relevant to your own-scan OCR tooling) accepts public donations at all — flagging so it isn't mistaken for a verified "yes."

5 · Decision — support these organizations?

Concrete ways to give, if you want to

Purely optional — these groups run on donations, with no paid tier or subscription to buy instead.

💛

Tsadra Foundation — funded the hand-typing/proofreading of the exact text you'll be studying, plus their translator program and the Damngak Dzö project. Donate: tsadra.org (their "Support" page; also reachable via info@tsadra.org). Tax-deductible; no published tiers.

📚

BDRC (Buddhist Digital Resource Center) — hosts and serves every text and scan referenced in this whole project, entirely donation-funded, no paid tier at any level. Donate: bdrc.io/donation — PayPal, check, wire, crypto, or their recurring "Dharma Protectors' Circle." Funds core hosting/preservation costs and historically has funded physical hard-drive archives sent to monasteries.

🖋️

Monlam AI — the group behind the Tibetan OCR tooling relevant if you ever OCR your own scans. No confirmed public donation page found — flagging as a "maybe" until verified, not a solid ask right now.

Reference

Full write-up

The complete findings — every fetch command, the full BDRC ID map, and the OCR-tool verdict for your own scans — is saved as a standalone doc: TIBETAN-RESEARCH-FINDINGS-2026-07-03.md, in your Google Drive under KONCHOK-CHIDU-RESEARCH/ (synced) and copied to the mac-mini home folder.