By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Founder and Author of Berzin Archives
Another year has passed—2024 gone in the blink of an eye. As we reflect on the months behind us, all of us at the Berzin Archives e.V. hope the Dharma has been a steady guide through whatever the year has brought your way. As per usual at the end of a year, here is a closer look at all we’ve accomplished together this year with our Study Buddhism project.
My Message
A few weeks ago, I turned 80. Someone from my high school class heard of it and contacted me, asking me to share with him and our classmates a brief account of what I had done with my life. In looking back and putting something together, I thought more and more about the rarity and value of having a precious human life.
We don’t need to wait until we are 80 to think about this important topic. Life is short, including a precious human one; it passes by very quickly. While we have such a life, it is so important to appreciate it and not take it for granted. What helps is each morning, when we wake up, to remind ourselves how fortunate we are that we have awakened, still in this lifetime, and have not died in our sleep. How incredible! We need to rejoice and set a strong intention not to waste the day, but to make it meaningful.
But what can we do that will make each day meaningful? Like good Dharma students, we could answer, “Reaffirm our bodhichitta aim.” If we can do that sincerely, wonderful, but it’s easy for that reaffirmation to become a mechanical recitation of some verses and nothing more. We need to actually do something meaningful. The bottom line is to do something, anything, that benefits others, even if this is only feeding our cat. Even more, we can try to follow Atisha’s advice, “When in the midst of many, let me keep a check on my speech; when remaining alone, let me keep a check on my mind.” That means staying mindful throughout the day and night to act and speak kindlier and with more patience and understanding with everyone we meet and, afterwards, to think about them lovingly.
None of us is perfect, including ourselves; we all make mistakes. Nevertheless, we are all equal in wanting to be happy and not to suffer. Any moment can be our last or someone else’s last. So, why waste this precious time we have left with getting angry and doing something harmful to others or to ourselves. Let’s follow Atisha’s wise advice each day for the rest of our lives. Each day with a precious human rebirth is indeed very precious.
Now, let's take a closer look at our achievements throughout 2024.
In 2024, studybuddhism.com enjoyed a rather remarkable year of growth and global engagement. We welcomed 3.2 million unique visitors from an incredible 228 countries—a 64% increase from 2023. Together, these visitors explored over 7.25 million articles, marking a substantial 78% rise compared to the previous year.
The top ten countries where our readers are based include the United States, Russia, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Singapore, France, and Thailand, and one of the most significant trends we’ve observed is the growing preference for content in languages other than English. This year, only 21.9% of users chose to read our articles in English, representing a 1% decline from last year. In contrast, 78.1% of our audience accessed our content in one of the other 36 languages we offer. This shift is a testament to the global appeal of our platform and the dedication of our team to make knowledge accessible to diverse communities around the world.
The most widely read articles of the year were:
· What Is Prayer in Buddhism? (English, Russian)
· Who Is the Buddha? (Russian)
· What Are the Four Noble Truths? (Bengali, Thai, Russian)
· Spread of Buddhism in Asia (Thai)
· Buddhist Sexual Ethics: Main Issues (Russian)
· What Is Ethics? (Chinese, Bengali, Khmer)
As usual, we have worked away at small but steady advancements aimed at making the Buddhist wisdom on our website even more accessible to our global community. Among the highlights are our new transcriptions - some machine-generated and some human-made, of the English translations of Tibetan seminars by Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II, which make these teachings by our Spiritual Advisor more widely available. Additionally, we now offer machine-generated English translations of the Italian and Hebrew recordings of these seminars, expanding their reach even further.
We also launched a new course on Udemy, Cultivating Compassion: A Complete Buddhist Course, providing a structured way to delve deeply into the practice of compassion and its crucial role in Buddhist teachings. This course already has over 500 students, which means that alongside our other course on Udemy, Introduction to Buddhism, we now have 2,200 students enrolled on our courses.
As for the website, to better connect with our audience, we revamped our About Us section, introducing areas for Newsletters, Progress Reports, and the latest content updates, along with a new Authors and Experts section to highlight the contributors who bring our work to life. The Donation page has also been redesigned for better usability, and new icons were added throughout the site to enhance navigation and improve the overall user experience.
Social Media
Our social media presence has continued to flourish this year, with our Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts showing steady growth, up 13% compared to 2023. As expected, video content has been a key part of this success, with over 50 videos shared across our platforms, amassing an incredible half a million minutes of watch time. Over on our SoundCloud channel, we’ve had over 50,000 listens of our audio content.
Our YouTube channel has once again performed very well, with a fantastic 14% rise in followers. Over 2024, our viewers have spent an impressive 1.5 million minutes (that’s well over two and a half years!) watching our range of Buddhist content, which now consists of 567 videos.
Over the past 12 months, 20% of views were garnered by the following five top-performing videos:
Unlocking the Secrets of Om Mani Padme Hum by Ringu Tulku
The Eightfold Path Explained by Ajahn Amaro
What is Emptiness? by Geshe Lhakdor
Beginning Buddhist Meditation by Mingyur Rinpoche
What is a Dakini? by Khandro Rinpoche
Over the last 12 months, we conducted 8 interviews with Buddhist masters from various traditions and lineages, as well as eminent scholars in the field of Buddhist studies. And so, in 2025, we have an exciting range of video interviews coming up. Make sure you subscribe to our channel to always stay on top of our latest content!
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:
By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Founder and Author of Berzin Archives
By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Founder and Author of Berzin Archives
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