Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All

As we approach the end of 2019, we’re not only heading into a new year, but we’re saying goodbye to a whole decade. As I sit here writing in the room that has been my office for over 20 years, I can’t help but feel amazed by what our website, studybuddhism.com, has become, by how many people are involved, and by what we’ve all achieved in bringing the ageless wisdom of Tibet to the world.

 In some ways, our website has followed the lifespan of a human. Growing slowly over its first years, this decade saw its teenage years – rapid development and a new identity, from the Berzin Archives to StudyBuddhism. Now, at 18 years old, Study Buddhism has become one of the world’s leading websites offering the authentic wisdom of Tibet, entirely for free, in 21 languages.

 We also have some exciting developments, especially in our language sections. Firstly, we’ve started preparing a Korean section, joining Chinese and Japanese to complete the languages of East Asia. We’re also excited to announce a Nepali section in progress. Nepal is consistently one of our biggest fans, especially on social media, and its addition will complete the traditional languages of Tibetan Buddhism, along with Tibetan and Mongolian. We are also delighted to begin working on adding another Indian language section. Marathi, spoken by over 80 million people in India, is also the main language of the Ambedkar Buddhists, who number over 10 million. Bringing our material to these people will help create closer connections between the different Buddhist traditions currently practiced in India. Extending that connection further, we’ve also started work on a Thai section, commencing our entry into the traditionally Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asian region. Finally, we’ve started work on a Bengali section, the main language of Bangladesh and India’s second language. With this addition, we’re fulfilling the Dalai Lama’s request to make the wisdom of Tibet available to all the major languages of the Islamic world.

 Let me share with you what we’ve accomplished during this amazing year. In 2019, we have had more than 835,000 users of the website (up 21.1% from last year), who've read over 2 million articles (up 18.7%) in our 21 languages. Altogether, we produced more than 2733 translations of articles and subtitles, which is more than 7 every single day! Almost 60% of our users visited the site on a mobile device, while 35% visited on a computer and 5% on a tablet.

 We now have 8,524 articles on the website, 17% of which are in English. Around 1/3 of our users read this English content, while two out of three people read articles in one of our 20 other languages. The most popular are Spanish, German, Russian, Portuguese and Hindi. One out of six readers come from the US, while the rest come from 226 other countries. The most popular of these are India, Germany, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, while Italy, Turkey, Mongolia, Mexico and Vietnam come close behind. We truly are reaching the entire world.

 The community on our Facebook channel grows on a daily basis, with around 25 newcomers interested in learning about the wisdom of Tibet joining on a daily basis. We now have over 35,000 followers, an increase of 25% from last year. Our posts have been viewed 3.5 million times and our videos have been watched for an equivalent of 423 days.

 Our YouTube channel is also enjoying great success, with over 12,500 subscribers, up 72% from last year. Having added 77 videos this year, we now have a total of 264 videos, consisting of interviews with 19 of the world's leading experts on Buddhism today. In total, our translators have produced an astounding 5007 subtitle files for these videos, bringing their content to all corners of the globe.

 Over on SoundCloud, an increasing number of people are finding and enjoying our wide range of audio material. We now have 1,698 followers, up 20%. This year, we added 895 new tracks, making a total of 1,463 tracks. They’ve had 188,000 plays and 15,400 downloads. Our top listeners come from the USA, Australia, the UK, Germany, and Canada.

 All of our work, from maintaining the website and creating new material, to producing video content and translating thousands of subtitles and articles, relies upon you, the public, and your donations. So, I wish to thank you all for your continuing support. Please share with your loved ones and friends our project, or anyone who might be interested in the wisdom of Tibet but does not know of our website and might like to help support our work. Together we shall “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”

Links:

• Study Buddhism website of the Berzin Acrhives
• Study Buddhism on Facebook
• Study Buddhism on YouTube

Another busy and productive three months have passed as we approach the year’s end. Our online material and number of visitors, both to our Studybuddhism website and our various social media channels, continue to grow.

It is exciting to see our new Thai and Korean sections starting to take shape, with the Universal Values articles for both now complete. We still need many more articles translated before we can launch these sections online but, like at the construction site of a tall building, the foundation is now there.

We are delighted to announce that we have started work on a Bengali section as well. Bengali is not only the main language of Bangladesh, but also the second most widely spoken native language in India, and with its addition we will have completed fulfilling the Dalai Lama’s request to make the wisdom of Tibet available in all the major languages of the Islamic world. Interest in such topics as “how to deal with anger,” “methods for dealing with life,” and so on is rapidly growing in these regions. Compared to last year, the number of visitors to our website from Iran has increased 313%, from Afghanistan 295%, from Pakistan 154% and from Iraq 103%. People in these regions are increasingly finding our material helpful for coping with the difficulties they face.

We have also added a new, professional, full-time English editor to our growing staff. She will focus on the many unedited transcripts presently online on our website, as well the backlog of those not yet there. In the short time she has been working, she has already edited 18 articles, making them much more reader-friendly.

Meanwhile, our technical team has been busy with the extremely challenging, complex task of building a new, customized internal search engine for the material on our website. Beautifully redesigned and language specific, search results include all word variations for single terms and phrases in the searched language. Each search result offers a teaser passage from the article in which the term or phrase is found, as well as the title, description and location of the article. If a searched term or phrase appears in the glossary of the language searched for, the search result also includes in a header the definition and a link to the glossary page for further information.

Here is a more detailed summary of what we have accomplished this quarter:

• Translation of 262 articles into our various 21 languages and addition of them to the Study Buddhism website
• Translation of 203 subtitle files into our various languages for our videos
• Transcription of 7 English audio files
• Creation in our content management system of a Thai section, with Interface and slug transliteration
• Ongoing development of the internal search engine
• Automation of the weekly republishing of the website with the newly uploaded material of the week (over 20 articles on average), so as to avoid slowdowns if each new article is published individually
• Addition to the Study Buddhism SoundCloud channel of 38 audio files
• Subtitling and addition to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of 16 videos of an interview with Tsultrim Allione, Buddhist teacher and author, founder of Tara Mandala, and embedding them in various appropriate articles on the website
• Editing of 10 videos of an interview with Charok Lama, a young tulku and Buddhist teacher, currently studying at Sera Monastery in South India 
• Editing of 10 videos of an interview with Venerable Robina Courtin, one of the most well-known female Buddhist teachers of today, and founder of Liberation Prison Project, bringing Buddhism into prisons across the world
• Video recording of an interview with Professor Imtiyaz Yusuf, Coordinator of the Islam and Buddhism Programme at The International Institute of Islamic Civilisation and Malay World (ISTAC-IIUM), Malaysia

All of this hard work is made possible by your continuing generous support. Together, we shall “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”

Links:

• Study Buddhism website of the Berzin Archives
• Study Buddhism on Facebook
• Study Buddhism on YouTube