March 14, 2025 is a major Buddhist holiday known as the Display of Miracles (ཆོ་འཕྲུལ་དུས་ཆེན Chotrul Düchen in Tibetan). On this day 2500 years ago Shakyamuni Buddha performed superhuman feats as part of a battle of miraculous powers against yogins who saw Buddha as a rival. Through his awe-inspiring teachings of the Path and ability to bend the laws of nature through skillful displays of magic, he was revered as the "Teacher of Heavenly Gods and Humans." 

At BDRC we are celebrating this holiday with the release of a collection that we can think of as a modern day miracle. Now live on BDRC's digital library are scans of new woodblock prints of the Nyingma Gyubum, the Collected Nyingma Tantras. View the collection on BUDA at MW1ER7.

The Nyingma Gyubum is a canon of tantric scriptures translated during the early translation period that are central to the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. Chakung Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche, founder of the Abhaya Fellowship in California, recently sponsored the recarving of the woodblocks of the Nyingma Gyubum at the renowned Derge Printing House in Kham, Eastern Tibet. This collection contains 26 volumes and spans over 20,000 pages, thus requiring over 10,000 hand-carved, double-sided woodblocks. Thirteen years were needed for this multifaceted and painstaking work. Through his vajra-like resolve, diplomatic skills, and the support of generous donors, Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche has created an exact replica of the Nyingma Gyubum in 26 volumes, originally produced between 1794 and 1798.

Senior lamas requested Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche to recarve the Derge woodblocks because they were over 200 years old and exhibiting signs of overuse such as unclear or even illegible passages. Thanks to Rinpoche's intervention, the 18th century blocks have been retired and contemporary readers can now benefit from crystal clear prints made with the faithful recarvings. It is a miracle that Rinpoche and a dedicated team of craftspeople and scholars in Derge were able to see this project to completion, given all of the possible interferences that might have derailed this noble project.

After the woodblocks had been carved and corrected, Rinpoche then supported the printing of copies for all of the major Nyingma monasteries inside of Tibet. He also had five copies of the collection sent to the Abhaya Fellowship temple in El Cerrito, California; the only copies outside of Tibet presently. As Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche is committed to both traditional and digital methods of preservation, last year he reached out to BDRC to inquire about making this precious collection more widely available through digitization. 

We were thrilled to help Rinpoche fulfill his aims of sharing with the world the authoritative Derge Edition of the Nyingma Gyubum. Between October and January several of  Rinpoche's disciples scanned all 26 volumes. Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche and Anam Thubten prepared each volume before scanning to confirm that no pages were missing and that the pages were in the correct order. 

In a sense Jigme Wangdrak Rinpoche has made two replicas of the original 18th woodblocks. First he meticulously recarved the blocks and had them edited by top scholars. Then he produced "digital woodblocks" through having the first printing of the new blocks scanned to the highest archival standards. BDRC is proud to be the conduit for these digital woodblocks of the principal scriptural collection of Nyingma tantras so that they can be freely accessed by practitioners and scholars worldwide.