Cataloguing Buddhist literature in English

ethical issues in an assay

Abstract

Having been ordained for twenty-five years as a Buddhist monk, I have a vested interest in being able to present to Westerners a knowledge and understanding of the full extent of the ‘Three Baskets’ of the Buddha's teaching, which is to say; the Tripitaka. For Western Buddhist monastics, or serious lay people generally, such an understanding used to require extensive study in foreign languages, such as Pali, Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan. I believe it no longer does due to the volume of traditional Buddhist texts that have been translated into English over the course of the last two hundred years.

This belief however, presupposes a comprehensive inventory in which the individual works, in their English language versions can be presented in relation to each other, a resource which hasn’t previously existed. This article describes the creation of a new catalogue to hopefully meet that need, illustrating a particular ethical issue that was encountered.