Non-Profit · Founder & Executive Director
Terma Heritage Foundation
A terma (གཏེར་མ) is a treasure deliberately concealed — hidden by a master in a time of danger and entrusted to the future. Hidden not to be lost, but to be found. Tibetan knowledge is living through exactly such a moment, and what can still be recovered should be recovered now.
1.06M+
Children reached through music and media
1.2M+
Dictionary entries from 64 lexicons
1,067+
Tibetan texts digitized
371
Hours of sacred teachings restored
Why it exists
Tibetan knowledge lives in a long moment of danger. Much of it survives only in the memory of elders, in the hands of a few remaining masters, in manuscripts scattered across exile, in a script fewer children can read each year. Some of it has already gone quiet.
The Foundation exists because we refuse to accept that quiet as final. What can still be recovered, we recover. What can be carried, we carry. And what we carry, we hide again — in a better vault than the one history gave us. Open, legible, durable, and placed directly into the hands of the next generation.
This is preservation understood correctly. Not the glass case, but the revealed treasure. Not knowledge embalmed, but knowledge returned to life.
The four pillars
They are not departments. They are four motions of a single act — recovering a treasure and returning it to life.
01
Rescue & digitize
Find what is endangered — the elder's voice, the master's hand, the manuscript no one has opened in decades — and capture it before it is gone. The passing of those who hold knowledge in their bodies is the only work that cannot be postponed.
02
Build infrastructure
Give recovered knowledge a form that lasts: clean, open, portable, free of dependence on any single company or fragile platform. A dictionary, a writing system, a search engine for a scattered library — these are the vaults of our age.
03
Nurture the next generation
Turn what only specialists once held into things a child can learn through play, through story, through their own family's hand. Knowledge that cannot be handed to a child will not survive the century.
04
Sustain living culture
Support the people who still practice — the artists, the calligraphers, the singers, the speakers — so the tradition continues to be made and not only remembered. We pay, and we credit.
Who builds it
I did not build this alone, and it would not be worth much if I had. The charter says the work must outlast the worker — that no single person is the foundation — and the only way to mean that is to build it with people who know things I do not.
A master calligrapher whose hand is in the typefaces. A Columbia lecturer who decides how the language is taught. A historian of woodblock printing. A monk. A singer. An infrastructure architect. They come from monasteries in South India and Nepal and from universities in New York, and each of them is the reason some part of this is correct.
The Foundation's patron is Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche, recognized by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of his own Senior Tutor.
Spiritual & Buddhist Advisor
Khenpo Gyurme Tsultrim
General Director and Vice Abbot, Shenchen Monastery, Nepal.
Master Calligrapher & Font Director
Jamyang Dorjee
Thirty years of practice. His calligraphy hangs in the New Parliament of India.
Pedagogy
Sonam Tsering
Director of the Tibetan Language Program and Senior Lecturer, Columbia University.
Research
Tenzin Yewong Dongchung, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown. PhD, Columbia — Tibetan woodblock printing traditions.
Music & Performing Arts
Techung
Singer-songwriter, NYFA Fellow, co-founder of the Chaksampa Tibetan Dance and Opera Company.
Monastic Education
Gen Soepa (Kalsang Sherap)
President of the Nechung Foundation, the U.S. branch of Nechung Monastery in Dharamsala.
Infrastructure & Digital Preservation
Tashi Gyaltsen
IT Solutions Architect. Keeps the platforms behind the font and language tools running.
Language Education & Outreach
Tenzin Yangchen
Connects the tools to educators and learners across the diaspora.
From the charter
A foundation is defined as much by what it refuses as by what it pursues. These constraints are written to bind us even when breaking them would be convenient.
We will Keep the core knowledge open and freely usable.
We will not Paywall, hoard, or enclose the knowledge that belongs to the Tibetan people.
We will Return value to the communities and elders we learn from.
We will not Extract from living tradition-holders and give nothing back.
We will Prioritize what is most endangered.
We will not Let convenience, trend, or applause set our priorities in place of need.
We will Hold ourselves to the truth of the source, and say plainly when we are uncertain.
We will not Sacrifice accuracy for reach, or present as settled what we have not verified.
We will Build so the knowledge, tools, relationships, and funding are distributed and survivable.
We will not Let the foundation depend on a single person, platform, or patron — including its founder.
Work under the Foundation
Much of what I build now sits inside this structure rather than beside it.
TermaType
A free, offline word processor for Tibetan script.
Terma Foundry
Typefaces and a web toolkit for working in Tibetan, no install.
Tibetan Library
A free home for Tibetan literature, scripture, and memory.
Terma Studio
Songs in their mother tongue that Tibetan children actually want to sing.
Conserve Tibet
Rescuing irreplaceable moments of Tibetan history before they are lost.
Chitta
A study companion for classical Buddhist texts.
Dranyen
Writing down the music of the Tibetan lute.
Sacred Audio Restoration
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's complete audio archive.
Standing
The Terma Heritage Foundation is a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 41-5173191, built on more than a decade of work.
termafoundation.org →