Open Access Resources:
Buddhism
On this page
Audio Recordings
Bibliographies
Canons, Texts and Translations
Databases
Dictionaries/Encyclopedias
Journals
Libraries
Organisations
Tools
Audio Recordings
| Abhayagiri Dhamma Talks | Recordings of dhamma talks delivered by the abbots at Abhayagiri Monastery, a Buddhist monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition. The talks are available to listen, watch or download. |
| Dhamma Seed | A collection of dhamma talks available to stream or download. The talks focus primarily on Insight (Vipassana) Meditation, but do occasionally feature associated practices. |
| Forest Sangha Teachings | Dhamma teachings from monasteries grown out of the first generation of Western disciples of Venerable Ajahn Chah. Talks can be listened to or downloaded. |
| Free Buddhist Audio | The sound and text archives of the Triratna Buddhist Order. A collection of talks, interviews, seminars, and question-and-answer sessions from the early 1960s to present day, available to stream or download. |
| Sutta Readings | English translations of Pali suttas, selected and read by respected Dhamma teachers within the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Recordings can be listened to or downloaded. |
Bibliographies
Note: These collections contain bibliographic data only, and do not provide access to the publications.
| Bibliography of Translations from the Chinese Buddhist Canon into Western Languages | This is a working bibliography of translations of Chinese Buddhist texts from the Taishō edition of the canon. Some translations of extra-canonical Chinese Buddhist texts are included. |
| Digital Catalogue of Chinese Buddhism | A catalogue of Chinese-language Buddhist publications from 1860-1949. |
| Digital Database of Buddhist Tripitaka Catalogues | This website is dedicated to collecting and constructing multi-lingual Tripitaka catalogues, including Nikāya/Āgama, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Manchu and Western languages. |
| Journals with Buddhist Studies material | A thorough list of international journals containing Buddhist Studies content created by Indica et Buddhica. |
Canons, Texts and Translations
| 84000 | An initiative to translate the complete Tibetan Buddhist Canon into modern language and make it freely accessible to all. |
| Access to Insight | Readings in Theravāda Buddhism. |
| Buddhist Digital Archive | Formerly the Buddhist Digital Resource Center, BUDA is a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving, documenting and disseminating Buddhist literature. Although it has since expanded its mission to include all Buddhist traditions, the archive originally focused on preserving Tibetan literature and as such still has a significant collection of texts on Tibetan Buddhism. |
| CBETA Buddhist Texts | The Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association has digitised the Chinese Buddhist canon so that it is interactive, readable and searchable. |
| A Digital Comparative Edition and Partial Translation of the Shorter Chinese Saṃyukta Āgama (T.100) | The Bieyi za ahan jing (別譯雜阿含經, BZA) consists of 364 sutras and belongs to the early Chinese Buddhist texts collectively called Ahan (Āgama) sutras (阿含經). Ahan literature constitutes the earliest stratum of Buddhist literature. |
| Chinese Text Project | An online open access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts more readily available. |
| Digital Preservations Society | The aim of the DPS is to preserve the Tibetan Buddhist Canons and related literature in digital form, and make them widely available. |
| SAT Daizōkyō Text Database | An online repository of the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō edition of the Chinese Buddhist Canon. |
| Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon | An ongoing project by the University of the West to digitise a complete version of the Sanskrit canon for free online access. |
| Sutta Central | Focused specifically on scriptures of early Buddhism, including texts in original languages, translations, and parallels sets that show the relationship between them. |
| Thesaurus Literaturae Buddhicae | A multilingual collection of Buddhist literature presented sentence-by sentence, in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, and English. Texts can be read individually, or sentence-by-sentence, compared in each language. |
Databases
| Academia.edu | A platform for researchers to share their research directly and openly. A free account is required to search. |
| Digital Library of Buddhist Studies | A collection of full-text articles focused on Chinese Buddhism, provided by the National Taiwan University Library. |
| Directory of Open Access Journals | Peer-reviewed open access journals including fields on science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. |
| Google Scholar | A search engine for research papers. Note that not all articles are available through open access, but a link will be provided if Scholar can locate one. |
| International Dunhuang Project | A collaboration amongst international collecting institutions to make information and images of manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available online. Use the navigation bar in the top right of the page to explore the collections. |
| JSTOR Open Content | In addition to the subscription content available to NTI students, JSTOR offers thousands of open access journal articles and ebooks. Artstor also offers over a million freely accessible images, videos, documents and audio files from museums, libraries, archives and university collections. |
| RefSeek | RefSeek is a web search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than five billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers. RefSeek’s algorithm increases the visibility of academic information as opposed to a generic search engine like Google. |
Dictionaries/Encylopedias
| Digital Dictionary of Buddhism | A compilation of Chinese ideograph-based terms, texts, temples, schools, persons, etc. found in Buddhist canonical sources. |
| MDBG Chinese Dictionary | An online Chinese-English dictionary that allows searches in English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, or Pinyin. |
| Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary | An online database version of Rhys Davids’ and Stede’s dictionary published by PTS. Search Pali words to find definitions and word entries (note: this website uses diacritics). |
| Sanskrit Dictionary | An online dictionary based on the work of Monier-Williams (note: this website uses diacritics). |
| Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy | An up-to-date reference on scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines. |
Journals
| Buddhist Studies Review | A peer-reviewed quarterly journal that published articles focused in a variety of areas including cultural areas, historical and contemporary aspects, theoretical, practical and methodological issues, and textual, linguistic, archaeological and art-historical studies. Articles are released for open access viewing 36 months from the publication date of the final issue of a volume. |
| Journal of Buddhist Ethics | Published research regarding Vinaya and Jurisprudence, medical ethics, philosophical ethics, human rights, ethics and psychology, ecology and the environment, social and political philosophy, cross-cultural ethics, ethics and anthropology, and interfaith dialogue on ethics. |
| Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies | An open-access scholarly journal dedicated to the historical study of Chinese Buddhism in the premodern and modern periods. All articles are peer-reviewed. |
| Journal of Global Buddhism | Publishes research regarding Buddhism on a global scale, with a particular focus on industrialised, non-Asian countries. |
| Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies | A journal of peer-reviewed research based on primary sources in all areas of Buddhism. |
| Journal of Pali and Buddhist Studies | A peer-reviewed, open access journal published by the Society for the Study of Pali and Buddhist Culture by Mosashino University of Japan. |
| Studies in Humanistic Buddhism | A journal translated from Chinese to provide access to articles on Humanistic Buddhism in English. A joint venture of Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism and Nan Tien Institute. |
| Journal of the Pali Text Society | This journal paused publication between 1927 and 1981, and is not published according to a schedule, but all volumes are available for free from the Pali Text Society website. |
Libraries
| State Library of NSW | Online databases available for members. Membership is free, fill out the membership form and a library card will be mailed to you. NSW residents only. Residents of any state are eligible for membership at their own state library. |
| The National Library of Australia | Online databases available for members. Membership is free, fill out the membership form and a library card will be mailed to you. Australian residents only. International students may be eligible for membership at their own national library. |
| NTU Digital Library of Buddhist Studies | The National Taiwan University Library collection of Buddhist bibliographies and journal articles, in Chinese, English and many other languages. The database allows full-text searchability and include an Authoritative Buddhist Author Database, which allows search by author. |
Organisations
| BuddhaNet | Includes studies, a world directory, ebooks and other resources on Buddhist schools and practices. |
| H-Buddhism | A message board for the exchange of academic resources, events, projects, publications and job listings amongst the worldwide Buddhist community. Membership is restricted to those who hold an advanced degree in Buddhist studies, but the messages can be viewed by anyone or followed via RSS feeds. |
| The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology | A research institute at Soka University, Japan. The institute is building an online repository of publications including books, lectures, annual reports and research by IRIAB members devoted to Buddhology and related fields. |
| Oxford Mindfulness Centre | An international centre focused on research and development regarding the clinical and therapeutics use of mindfulness. |
| University of Buffalo: Buddhism | A complete overview of the most authoritative scholarly resources in the life of the Buddha and the origins, history, ideas, beliefs and practices of Buddhism, as well as a selection of links to further digital resources. |
Tools
| NTI Reader | A Chinese Buddhist text tool developed by NTI to assist students working with Chinese texts. |
| NTI Visualiser | A tool developed by the Humanistic Buddhism Centre that allows the academic community to build, collaborate on and publish their personal research bibliographies, controlled vocabulary and visualisations. |
| Tools for Buddhist Studies | A collection of resources created, digitised and edited by scholar Marcus Bingenheimer. |
| Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary extension | A pop-up dictionary extension to assist non-native readers of Chinese. Simply hover over a text for the definition and pronunciation. Available on Chrome and Firefox. |