Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All

Another three months have passed of intense work on the Study Buddhism project of Berzin Archives by our dedicated 55-member team. During this second quarter of 2019, we have started to work on our multilingual glossary, containing definitions of thousands of terms in six languages Furthermore, we have produced nearly 800 new translations of articles and subtitle files into our 21 languages, and uploaded hundreds of audio files to our SoundCloud channel. We have also spent considerable time in optimizing the website, to ensure that our textual and visual content loads faster for everyone, everywhere.

Our hard work is paying off, for both the website and its social media channels. Visits to the website have grown steadily, and people are spending longer on the site. Our Facebook engagement is up 9% compared to the same period last year, and on YouTube, we surpassed half a million views, with almost 10,000 subscribers. But it is our SoundCloud figures that are truly impressive: in just the first five months of the year, we have already had 130,000 plays of our audio material, which is 200% of what we had during the whole of 2018. These fantastic figures reflect the hard work and joyous effort of our team, wishing to benefit all beings.

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

• Translation of 262 articles into our various 21 languages and addition of them to the Study Buddhism website
• Translation of 561 subtitle files into our various languages for our videos
• Addition to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of 20 videos of an interview with Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, renowned teacher and author, and embedding them in appropriate articles on the website
• Addition to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of 8 videos of an interview with Drikung Chetsang Rinpoche, spiritual head of the Drikung Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, and embedding them in appropriate articles on the website
• Editing of 14 videos of an interview with Dr. Robert Thurman, President of Tibet House USA and Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University
• Video recording of an interview with Jhado Rinpoche, Abbot Emeritus of H.H. the Dalai Lama’s Namgyal Monastery and present Abbot of Gyuto Tantric Monastic University
• Video recording of new educational videos with Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche II
• Audio recording and addition on the Study Buddhism SoundCloud channel of 3 lectures on the Buddhist Tenet Systems by Dr. Alexander Berzin
• Audio and video recording in Moscow, Russia, of a 7-lecture seminar on “The Uniqueness of Tsongkhapa’s Presentation of the Prasangika View”
• Import of 1645 audio files from the SoundCloud channel and embedding them in the corresponding transcriptions on the website
• Transcription of 28 English audio files
• Creation of individual pages for each term in the multilingual Study Buddhism glossary (3278 English, 1465 Tibetan, 923 German, 237 Arabic, 199 French, and 104 Russian terms) and addition of them to the website
• Addition of initial letter filters in each language glossary
• Algorithm generation of synonyms, related terms and related articles for each glossary term
• Creation of administrative interface for editing the entries for each term in the English glossary
• Editing of the definitions and synonyms and addition of new definitions for 495 terms in the English glossary
• Deletion of 590 redundant terms from the English glossary
• Improvement of site performance with page cache
• Auto-generation of the sitemap each day
• Optimization of memory/space usage on the hosting server
• Upgrading the uploading of images on the website

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

Over the last three months we have continued to make steady progress, expanding the various facets of our online presence. Our translators and editors have prepared over 200 new articles and over 660 new subtitle files. That works out to over 9 new translations completed every day! We’ve embedded all the audio files of Dr. Berzin’s seminars from our Sound Cloud channel into their online transcripts, published more video interviews on our YouTube channel and edited further video interviews, preparing them now for subtitling in our 21 languages. You’ll find all the details in the bulleted list below.

As part of the ongoing process of providing a bridge between modern Western thought and the wisdom of Tibet, Dr. Berzin has co-authored a new article for the website, “The Dependent Arising of the Self in Terms of Relations with Others,” with Dr. Ducommun-Nagy, Clinical Associate Professor with the Department of Couple and Family Therapy, Drexel University, USA. He has recently presented this material at a seminar for the Faculty of Psychology at the State University of St Petersburg, Russia, where it was widely acclaimed by the over 300 participants.

In February, our key staff gathered in Berlin to plan the next stages of our development. These include newly designed, extensive glossary tools, a video section, an archive of our newsletters, the tagging of our articles, the addition of audio and video icons into our menus, and more.

Here are some of our accomplishment over these three months:

• Migration of the entire website, including the web server, database and domain management to a Digital Ocean Virtual Dedicated Server, having more resources for faster performance
• Migration to our new server and further compression of our 400 charts, tables and maps, for speedier loading time on the website
• Migration of 851 audio files of Dr. Berzin’s weekend seminars from the old server to the Study Buddhism Sound Cloud channel and embedding them in their transcripts on our website
• Implementation of further steps for search engine optimization, performance optimization, image optimization, and site hosting optimization of the website
• Translation of 662 subtitle files into our various languages
• Translation of 208 articles into our various languages
• Transcription of 23 lectures of Dr. Berzin
• Addition to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of 8 videos of an interview with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, renowned teacher and meditation master from the Bon-Buddhist tradition of Tibet, and embedding them in appropriate articles on the website
• Editing of 8 videos of an interview with Drikung Chetsang Rinpoche, spiritual head of the Drikung Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism
• Editing of 20 videos of an interview with Ven. Thubten Chodron, renowned teacher and author, and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, Newport, Washington
• Video recording of an interview with Sulak Sivaraksa, founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists
• Addition of the Berzin Archives Newsletter Archive on the website
• Construction of the first phase of the new English glossary
• Completion of examining the 3,780 unpublished, unedited English articles, translations and transcripts of Dr. Berzin, selecting 2,381 for future editing and publication on the website

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