Great Dharma Books v1.1 (November 2012)ABOUT PIRACY CONCERNS AND DHARMACopies are just copies; no one is stealing when copying. The most you do is to frustrate absurd profit speculations from people who put their trust on ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY to become wealthy. Especially if we are dharma practitioners this makes no sense. Otherwise all the royalties we owe to the Buddha could never be karmically repaid -- no one would ever extinguish karma. Please make constant offerings to the sangha, this is somewhat good for the sangha, although the real practitioners don't need it -- and dharma activities arise from their own merits -- but it is really good FOR YOU.Since you are downloading and respecting this material, you should offer all your time, possessions and bodies from this life and all the others, all your attention, focus, strength and stamina for the preservation and propagation of Dharma, and the temporary benefit of all beings, particularly those engaged in spiritual paths, and particularly those engaged in this greatest of all spiritual paths.Make all kinds of offerings with the natural wealth of the inseparable mind,Padma DorjeACKNOWLEDGEMENTSFirst for those who have trust their lives to the spreading of the teachings, translators, scholars, publishers, editors, proofreaders, sponsors and, of course, the realized practitioners and their wisdom teachings.May all your activities be accomplished without hindrances and obstacles. May your lives be long, may your students be diligent, and may your lineages get stronger. May the wealth of dharma activity never cease and always increase.For those who are brave compassionate protectors of dharma, who xeroxed, scanned, photographed, ocr-ed, stripped DRM, copied, distributed these teachings on torrent websites like The Pirate Bay and Demonoid, and other cloud websites, who selected and shared links, and who called our attention to those teachings.May you all have wealth, health and long lives, may you come to practice under many wisdom beings, may you reach the fruition in order to help countless suffering mothers.How wonderful is not to depend on woodblocks and handwriting to preserve the teachings! How wonderful to make the presence of the dharma pervasive as the sky and indestructible as the vajra!ABOUT APPROPRIATENESS OF SUBJECT AND SECRET TEACHINGSYou should ask your teacher for what is appropriate for you to read. Some books here are quite advanced, and misunderstandings can be dangerous for your spiritual health. On the other hand, it is safer for dharma if many copies of certain teachings are made. May this package survive wars, calamities, disasters, etc. and be always increased and shared by all who come in contact with it.ABOUT FORMATSazw3 books are good for the Amazon Kindle. epub and mobi are good for other e-readers. On a desktop computer you should use CALIBRE, a free software that can show you the contents and convert to other formats if you find them more appropriate. DJVU files you should google some free reader to work with them.ABOUT THE NAMING SCHEMEI have made the naming scheme with the translator's name first because translators usually work under a few lamas and favor some subjects/authors. Also some classical works have more than one translation. You should use the SEARCH on your system.Also, as you can see, it is a "work in progress", newer versions should have corrections.ABOUT THE "ZEN, THERAVADA AND OTHER BUDDHIST TRADITIONS FOLDER"The most organized and cleaned-up folder is the root. That is not to say the work is totally done. I am always improving everything a little bit. I know a little bit more about the Tibetan Tradition than the others, so for me it is much more difficult to recognize spurious material about Zen or Theravada than it is about the Tibetan Tradition. That is not to say the main folder is "all Tibetan", but it certainly has more of a Tibetan "color". Also, reputations change, and although I have tried to make the dharma as pure as possible on the root folder (that is: trustworthy teachers, trustworthy teachings), some things must have escaped me. Also, of course Tibetans have the Surangama Sutra or the Lankavatara Scripture on their canones, but those texts are much more studied on Chinese, Japanese (also maybe Korean and Vietnamese) Zen... I hope in the future to clean the naming and keep making the folders more meaningful. I decided to distribute it anyway because... impermanence... I might never finish it.ABOUT THE "WESTERN SCHOLARLY MATERIAL" FOLDERA book is considered "Western Scholarly Material" when it doesn't bear 1) Clear specification of orientation from a qualified lineage holder of any great Buddhist tradition or not published by an established Dharma publishing house, such as Shambhala, Wisdom, LTWA or Snow Lion.or2) Doesn't contain a full translation of a classic Buddhist text (only comments). Also I keep in the main folder old (and sometimes flawed) translations by westerners who didn't meet or practiced under lineage holders, but who were pioneers, and whose texts influenced Buddhism as it is seen in the West (Dwight Goddard, Edward Conze, etc).or3) Not written by a lineage holder or a widely known dharma practitioner connected to such teachers.This does not intends to create prejudice towards western scholars, but to separate the contents through their apparent goals: a dharma practitioner should feel safer with the texts on the main folder, and a scholar not necessarily applying the dharma in his life or practicing regularly with a sangha, etc. should find the materials on the "Western Scholarly Material" folder "safer" (maybe unbiased towards Buddhism).AGAIN: This is not perfect, it is a work-in-progress.- As far as Donald S. Lopez Jr. is concerned, I have reservations towards his "crypto-Buddhist"/"unbiased scholar" attitude. But some of his material is indeed fresh, and I have decided to include him on the general folder, even though, as far as I know, he is not connected with a lineage holder.- Surya Das is controversial and I would not include any of his books here anywhere, but "Snow Lion's Turquoise Mane" is a really great book, therefore it is here.- I am still adding books and correcting things, expect new versions, and always share full versions and create your own.