Big thanks to @karl_lew for his encouragement and feedback on this one.
I am also happy to report that 5 othercoursespreviouslymentioned on this forum have been added to the University’s course catalogue, so feel free to check out our other offerings there too. Thanks to Bhante @sujato for encouraging me to make the Jekyll GitHub Page for the project. Much more legit now
As always, suggestions and feedback are welcome. Hope you find it helpful!
Thank you, Venerable Khemarato. It’s good to see new ways to explore the Dhamma. Jekyll seems to be a great way to host Markdown content. Perhaps I can think of a way to incorporate EBT search capability directly in-site.
As always, the not-self icon brings a smile to my face. Thank you for offering multiple paths for study.
Basically the only way is to manually create a big json search index and then have client-side js download it to do the rest. I would guess the EBT corpus too large for this to work well but perhaps I’d be surprised. Computers can be pretty fast these days.
I highly recommend The Nibbāna Sermons, lectures which were published as booklets entitled Nibbāna: The Mind Stilled by the late Ven Ñāṇananda. Ven Anālayo offered a series on them through BCBS and the University of Hamburg and his lectures and the pdfs of Ven Ñāṇananda’s talks are available here
I’m exploring containerization of the Voice search engine in the context of another static website that Anagarika Sabbamitta and I are working on. Hopefully this would allow us to support search with a very thin client. I’ll keep Jekyll’s Markdown engine in mind–it might help us with our own efforts, which might lead to opportunities elsewhere. No promises yet, just vague hand waving.
Search on static sites is a hard problem with no clear answer; and I agree, the EBTs would be far too large for a client-side solution. Hoping you come up with something cool!
Yeah! Really good, right?! It’s already in the Google Drive Library and will be added to the website as an “Advanced Course” eventually
Actually, if you or anyone else has design ideas, I’m struggling a bit to imagine how to organize the course list once the catalogue has more than a dozen courses. Especially on mobile it’ll get unwieldy pretty quick… One idea is to make a tree kind of like I made for the library: check out the “subtopic” links here for an example of how that might work. But other ideas or examples in other websites welcome
Thank you Venerable for these courses, much appreciated!
I understand these courses are set up as University courses, though personally I think it would be nice if guided meditations would be incorporated as well. I think it would fit well with some of the courses you offer and it brings the whole a bit more into balance (practice vs study).
I hear where you’re coming from and am happy to hear that meditation “would fit well” with the courses. Obviously meditation is a (the?) critical component for a complete Buddhist education (in addition to good friends, etc), so if meditation wouldn’t fit that would be a serious problem!
But I won't be adding guided meditations any time soon.
Note: I might create an Intro to Meditation course at some point with a curtated list of guided meditations from around the world, but this would be the exception if it ever happens.
My ambition (large enough already!) is to supply an outline for a relatively non-sectarian curriculum in Buddhist Studies. Despite the site’s name (should it be changed?), I’m not trying to replace the University (or Monastery) writ large. I’m not providing dorms, cafeterias, certificates, or guided meditations … because, frankly, I’ve never been a fan of them.
I realize many people like them. If they work for you, great! But there are zillions of other apps and websites providing that service and people can already find what works for them.
I’m not trying to replace your existing practice, just provide a few reading recommendations you might add alongside it
Thank you Venerable for your answer. I would say it is more a library than university. And the courses then seem more like a way of indexing the materials in the library.
Anyway, I like browsing through the library, I often find interesting articles to use alongside my own practice.
Yeah, I think that’s right. Perhaps in the future I’ll return the name to “Library” or somesuch to avoid setting too high of expectations. Thanks for the feedback and I’m glad you’ve found some interesting articles
…and we serious practitioners love what you’re doing! Many of us have absolutely zero interest in going back to Uni, nor do our life circumstances permit us to ordain (as yet!)… and not everyone has a suitable monastery nearby. The Internet is a treasure trove of Dhamma resources but can often be overwhelming! What most of us are actually interested in is a bit of guidance while we carry out our very own long term inquiry into Buddhist philosophy… and your resource ticks all the boxes! Thank you!!
