Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia:About

In these rapidly changing times, computers and the internet pose a great threat to traditional forms of Buddhist learning, it is therefore necessary to gather all available materials, translate them and digitize them.

Senior Buddhist monastics and academics will be involved in this project to provide assistance, ideas, advice and “quality- control”. They will also help ensure the Buddhist view and essence of the materials presented will not lose their religious (Buddhist) value, and that published materials will not insult anyone’s religious beliefs or values.

It is important for the CBE team to stay independent from any personal, political, or dogmatic views.

The CBE project can be divided into 3 major activates

1. Collecting and editing all useful and qualified materials, which have already been digitized and are available

There is huge amount of materials available on the internet about various aspects of Buddhism. This is a great opportunity, but there is also a great threat as everyone can add comments and write, so that the true treasures get lost in the pile of opinions and low-quality works.

The first level of development for the CBE project is to collect all available digitized materials, filter through the good materials, copy and edit these in to our Encyclopedia (with references to original sources) and asking permission to copy articles from the authors for all the edited articles; all of this will be done by our team of editors .

This is a lifelong work, as there are more and more small and medium sized Buddhist organizations and individuals who post very useful materials on the internet.

The work of copying and editing will be done by team of hired editors and volunteers and every editor will have a specified topic and source of material.

The editors will be supervised by educated scholars, monks and academics, who will do quality control and strategic planning for content development.

2. Translating texts ( sutras, tantras, commentaries, chronicles, etc.from the ancient form to English and Chinese

There is a great need to translate ancient Buddhist texts and materials into modern languages. And now it has been done, while there are still a few educated Buddhists left who understand the ancient Buddhist language and thought forms, and more importantly able to assist in translating large volumes of sophisticated materials. If translations are done without proper supervision, it can be damaging.

The problem modern young people have with Buddhism is that the language and symbols in linguistics are changing very fast and it is very difficult for young people to penetrate the meaning and idea of the words of the ancients. Therefore, it is vital and necessary to translate such materials into modern language without losing any or much of the original meaning. This truly, is a task that requires skilful means, great Wisdom and a harmonious team working between many different people.

For us to reach the stage of starting translating ourselves might take a few years, but we have already started co-operation with several Buddhist translating organizations to publish their translations.

3. Using and developing IT & software usage for Buddhist studies

The potential of IT, computers and the internet goes far beyond our imagination. We are living in the age of Information Technology and Buddhists must start implementing all available hardware and software solutions to develop Buddhist teachings according to tools and technology available in the 21th century.

Buddhist texts used to be written on leaves it was revolution to start using paper and later print and this change took hundreds of years to happen.

IT was developed only few decades ago and it is developing with explosive speed.

Stage 3 of the project is to use all IT and software solutions available. For example:

• We will collect and post all movie and documentaries about Buddhism on our website
• We will create an online Buddhist Photo Gallery, where people can view thousands of photos about Buddhism in a structured and simple form.

We are open to all new technological solutions, which can be implemented for the use of developing and spreading Buddhism in modern times.