Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All

Over the spring, the entire team at the Berzin Archives has been working away on new content and bringing it to our international audience, and we’ve made impressive progress on our Study Buddhism project.

From March to May, our website received 935,000 unique visitors, reading our over 15,300 articles. Remarkable for this period is the extraordinary, rapid growth in daily visitors each month. In March it was 8,700 per day, in April 10,000 and in May 11,800. The largest numbers came from the United States, Russia, Germany, India and Italy, and the most popular articles were “What Is Prayer?” in English, “The Spread of Buddhism in Asia” in Thai, “What Is Prayer?” in Russian, “What Is Karma?” in Chinese, and “Who Is the Buddha?” in Russian. Our multimedia course over on Udemy, “Introduction to Buddhism,” has now surpassed 1,400 participants, having become one of the most popular courses on Buddhism on this educational platform.

In these recent months, our skilled translators, editors, and assistants from around the globe have successfully completed 338 article translations and over 50 subtitle files. This meticulous work, including the preparation of subtitles for our YouTube videos which are also embedded on our website, has proven increasingly invaluable to our audience. Notably, 55% of our videos were viewed with subtitles in the last three months, a substantial increase from 29% during the same period three years earlier, demonstrating the positive impact of our efforts.

Our videos themselves continue to reach new heights. From March to May, we surpassed 100,000 unique viewers on YouTube for the first time ever. Our content is being enjoyed worldwide, with the top five cities tuning in being Siliguri in West Bengal, India, Sofia in Bulgaria, Prague in Czechia, Stamford in Connecticut, USA, and St. Johns in Antigua and Barbuda. Engagement on our social media platforms—Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram—has also been steadily increasing. Over the last three months, our content on these platforms plus YouTube has been seen more than 1.8 million times.

Additionally, we have continued to release written versions of some of our video interviews in the Interviews section of our website. Recently, we shared our interview with Venerable Thupten Ngodup, the Nechung Oracle, which has become one of our fan-favorites over on YouTube. We have also featured interviews with two distinguished non-Buddhist scholars: the renowned animal scientist Professor Donald Broom and Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf, an expert on Buddhist-Muslim relations. Stay tuned for more insightful written interviews coming soon! 

For everything else we’ve been up to, you’ll find more details in the bulleted list below. Here are some of our accomplishments over these last three months:

• Preparation and publication of 338 translations of articles into our various languages
• Copyediting of 34 articles
• Addition of a written interview with the Nechung Oracle in the Interviews section
• Addition of a written interview with Professor Donald Broom from Cambridge University in the Interviews section
• Addition of a written interview with Dr. Imtiyaz Yusuf from the International Islamic University Malaysia in the Interviews section
• AI transcription of the English spoken in 26 audio files, plus AI generation of written English translations of the Hebrew and Italian translations of Tibetan spoken in them, plus AI generated separation of speakers. 
• Revision and expansion continued of “Details of Karma: The Vaibhashika Presentation” based on translation and analysis of Sanskrit and Tibetan primary sources
• Conducting and video recording of two Zoom lectures on karma and the nature of vows for students of Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London, England
• Updating of User Interface elements on the website
• Preparation begun of new designs for the About Us and Donation pages and development begun for their technical requirements
• Development begun of an upgrade app to the new Rails 7.1 version from the present 5.1 version, together with all its dependencies
• Setup begun of a new web server
• Maintenance and fixing of errors from the Google Search console
• Setup of a shared password vault
• Updating of Sitemap.xml
• Set text+audio icons for multiparts in the Audio Course section of the website
• Addition of breadcrumbs navigation and related markup for the various Search Engines on the website
• Addition in our Content Management System, for the purpose of analysis, of the count of unique users signing into the website  
• Conducting of a video interview with Khandro Kunga Bhuma Rinpoche, popularly known as Khandro-la, a Buddhist teacher and the Tibetan State Medium of the Tenma Oracle
• Conducting of a video interview with Lama Shenpen Hookham, a Buddhist teacher, author, and founder of the Awakened Heart Sangha, who has trained for over 50 years in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism
• Completion of the editing of 15 videos of our interview with Geshe Tenzin Namdak, Resident Teacher at Jamyang Buddhist Centre London, and the first westerner to complete the full geshe degree at one of the “Three Great Seats” (the greatest learning centers in Tibet – that is, Sera, Drepung, and Ganden monasteries)
• Addition of the above 15 videos from our interview with Geshe Tenzin Namdak to our YouTube channel, along with the preparation of a dedicated playlist, video descriptions, and video teasers, along with the addition of 60 subtitle files
• The preparation of 15 Instagram-ready videos and 15 X (formerly Twitter)-ready videos from Geshe Tenzin Namdak’s interview
• Commencing the editing of our interview with Phra Anil Sakya, Rector of the World Buddhist University and assistant secretary to the previous Supreme Patriarch of Thailand
• Preparation of 12 quotes taken from our video interviews and other sources, accompanied with graphics, and the uploading of these to social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and X)
• Preparation of 12 different video clips and the uploading of them to social media channels. Each video was prepared for posting on Facebook with 32 language subtitles, on X with embedded English subtitles, and on Instagram at 9:16 format with embedded English subtitles
• Preparation of 12 article posts for our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and X) along with introductions to these articles.
• Design, preparation and despatch of 5 newsletters to our over 9,100 Mailchimp subscribers

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