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The Open Buddhist University
- geomark 3y agoDoes anyone here know what temple Khemarato Bhikkhu is located at?
- cko 3y agoaccesstoinsight.org has been online for many years now. Very similar content, with less stuff from Bhikkhu Bodhi and more from a guy named Thanissaro.
- KingMob 3y agoAccess To Insight contains English-language translations of the Pali canon. Bhikkhu Bodhi and Thanissaro Bhikkhu are two of the preeminent Pali translators around, so most stuff with their name on it just means they translated it, not that they're the authors.
- esbeeb 3y agoActual Buddhist monk here (Ajahn Subharo), in the Theravada Thai forest lineage. Khemarato Bhikkhu - who is much more junior a monk than me, and is not formally any sort of Ajahn (teacher) yet - and myself both have Computer Science degrees, which are rare things for Buddhist monks to have. So take his authority to run a "university" with a huge grain of salt. He would get roundly mocked in subtle ways by senior Buddhist monks if he thinks he has the seniority to be the "dean" of a "university". It's only once you have 10 years seniority that one, as a Theravada monk, earns the title of "Elder" ("Thera", an ancient Pali word in the Pali Canon), or an "Ajahn" (a Thai word simply meaning teacher, roughly corresponding to that same 10 years seniority). I've never met him in person, but have cordially chatted with him a few times in the internet. We're both on Mastodon: Him: https://digipres.club/@obu https://digipres.club/@obu Myself: https://mstdn.ca/@sbb https://mstdn.ca/@sbb
- temptemptemp111 3y ago[dead]
- jeremyt 3y agoI’m confused. Are you saying that the content on the site is not accurate?
- EddieEngineers 3y agoI googled and found they created the site with one years experience, or around three years at the moment. Take from that what you will.
- magicpin 3y agoThat’s not really an answer.
- esbeeb 3y agoI've taken a look at only a small portion of all the things which he's posted on his site. So I can't vouch for everything there, giving all the content of the site a wholehearted endorsement or not. From what I saw, yes, it seemed quite solid, and doesn't misrepresent Theravada views.
- fblp 3y agoThanks for your comment. Can you speak to the quality of the content on the site? I would hope that's more important than the "authority" of the author.
- logicchains 3y agoThat doesn't sound like a very Buddhist thing to say? I thought Buddhists were supposed to be about "no ego", not "don't listen to this guy because I'm more senior/got more titles than him".
- wraptile 3y ago
- r_singh 3y agoI’ve learnt that every religion is a framework (school of philosophy) and even as an atheist I have benefitted from learning some mental models a few religions offer. I would never brand myself or be a part of the cult though (claiming that one is better than the other or that everything said is holy). Even though one of things religions are good at is to also be to give people a sense of belonging to a community with similar virtues. One of the mental models that has been particularly beneficial for me is the EightFold Path (also called Dharma Chakra or Dharma Wheel) that comes from Buddhism. It basically says have the right view, thoughts, words, concentration, effort and action. Practising this keeps me in a virtuous cycle and makes feeling good feel like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- newusertoday 3y agoBuddhism is atheist religion that is it rejects god and if you follow 8-fold path than you have become Buddhist though you don't want to admit it :-)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- becquerel 3y agoMost forms of Buddhism recognise the existence of multiple gods. They're just in the same situation as the rest of us, e.g. in samsara.
- jerednel 3y agoExistence is a funny term in Buddhism. The end goal of development stage practice is the recognition that the deity is inseparable from one’s self because the nature of any given deity is equal to our own in an absolute sense. After all, everything is empty of inherent existence and are all self arisen manifestations from a primordial ground of being, hence no you and no I as separate. So some people do see them as external things to ask things of but others see them as mind created and used as supports for meditation to realize our own true nature. Depends on lineage and teacher.
- tontomath 3y agoSurprising, from (1): Theravada Buddhists have traditionally believed that women had to be reborn as men to achieve nirvana or become Bodhisattvas. https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55/sub398/entry-5668.html https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55/sub398/entry-5668.ht...
- wirrbel 3y agoThere is also an issue with women’s ordination. Orthodox theravāda believes women’s orders died out and cannot be revived. There is also progressiv theravāda that doesn’t hold certain views that seem anachronistic today.
- ks2048 3y agoBrowsing "/courses", I'm confused to why it has "The Making of Modern Ukraine" (YouTube playlist link) as one of their "External Courses".
- kunley 3y agoAs a person practicing Buddhism of a particular school since 18 years, I feel the need to add 2 cents here: As reading books on Buddhism is for sure beneficial, there is no way to really enter the methods just by using books; one becomes a buddhist by meeting a teacher and following his instructions. At that step books are immensely helpful. Especially if they are the books specialized on particular lineage of methods and teachings. On the other hand, by reading books alone, like: for years, one can rather become a buddhologist, not a buddhist. That's the statistics, although everything is an illusion, so everything is possible ;)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- given 3y ago[flagged]
- wsaryoo 3y agoI'd like to add more resources about buddhist and dhamma https://www.watnyanaves.net/en/book-shelf/other-language https://www.watnyanaves.net/en/book-shelf/other-language
- qntty 3y ago> The Open Buddhist University is an unaccredited, digital resource run by Khemarato Bhikkhu since 2020. > It is based on his personal library on Google Drive which he shared with his friends after his ordination in Thailand in 2019. Also: > Khemarato Bhikkhu [...] is a former software engineer from Silicon Valley.
- gtop3 3y agoUniversity might be a strong word to describe this website, but the lack of an edu tld should have lowered your expectations going in.
- blinkingled 3y ago> former software engineer from Silicon Valley I don't think I have encountered a website with tests before - https://buddhistuniversity.net/tests/ https://buddhistuniversity.net/tests/
- kunalgupta 3y ago[flagged]
- WrtCdEvrydy 3y agoBut it has broken tests in the similarity tests.
- autoexec 3y agoI love that this doesn't require any account to sign up for, and that lectures are available as direct downloads. I wish more online courses worked this way.
- movedx 3y agoThat's how Upload Academy plan on doing it - small Go app you download and it pulls down all our content in a non-DRM protected format for you to consume however you like. Even the (forthcoming) cybersec labs, programming labs, etc., are just binaries you can run locally.
- lagniappe 3y agoIs this currently in development on a repo somewhere? That sounds really cool, I'd like to pitch in if I see something I can work on
- movedx 3y agoI appreciate that. It's not an open-source solution, I'm afraid. It's going to be a training platform we're selling access to. Maybe one day, though.
- paxys 3y agoMost US universities have all course material available online in similar fashion.
- supertofu 3y agoWhat a great resource for practicing Buddhists! As a front-endy person and Early Buddhist, it's amazing to me that there exist ordained Bhikkus (and Bhikkunis too!) who were previously software people.
- jmfldn 3y agoThank you for this resource. I am a software engineer and Buddhism-curious, but I've never taken the plunge into full on practice. I think I would like to though. Over many years of reading about Buddhism, contemplating the teachings and listening to various teachers, my conviction is growing.
- supertofu 3y agoHighly recommend the Dhamma Talks given Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings on youtube and zoom by Clear Mountain Monastery https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazJbUOGWBpBVXU8Rv2gwsws https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazJbUOGWBpBVXU8Rv2gwsws). The two monks have both been ordained for over 10 years, youngish (30s), intellectual, progressive, and deeply compassionate. They are in the process of creating the monastery, and it's amazing and inspiring to watch the community grow. Best wishes on the path! It's a beautiful and healing training for the mind.
- fredski42 3y agoThe URL is broken. Can you correct please?
- eclectic29 3y agoHere you go: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazJbUOGWBpBVXU8Rv2gwsw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazJbUOGWBpBVXU8Rv2gwsw
- swayvil 3y agoBuddhist meditation is good. It's like tripping except you have control over it. And there's no ceiling.
- jes 3y agoI wish you success on your journey, wherever it takes you. Six years of practice for me, first in Mahayana Buddhism, then into Advaita Vedanta. Can recommend teachers like Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille, and the late Alan Watts.
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- archon1410 3y agoThe Pali Wordle also happens to be hosted on the same domain: https://labs.buddhistuniversity.net/wordle-pali/ https://labs.buddhistuniversity.net/wordle-pali/ Doesn't seem very useful (fun?) unless you understand Pali, though. Tricycle interviewed the creator about it: https://tricycle.org/article/pali-wordle/ https://tricycle.org/article/pali-wordle/
- Delfino 3y agoNice, I knew this site only because I used it to play their Thai wordle: https://buddhistuniversity.net/wordle-thai/ https://buddhistuniversity.net/wordle-thai/
- low_tech_punk 3y agoThis site beats 99% of the crappy eye candies out there. A few things I really appretiate: Content QA: https://buddhistuniversity.net/tests/content https://buddhistuniversity.net/tests/content Easy cookie opt-out: https://buddhistuniversity.net/settings/ https://buddhistuniversity.net/settings/ Zero latency search: https://buddhistuniversity.net/search/ https://buddhistuniversity.net/search/ Granular RSS feeds: https://buddhistuniversity.net/feed https://buddhistuniversity.net/feed
- readyplayeremma 3y agoThis is all pretty awesome. However, with regard to search, the zero latency is indeed fast, and this is because it is client-side entirely. It appears to be hand written for this site. I think the quality of search recall and ranking could be improved though. It has zero tolerance for misspelling for instance, and cannot match partial words while you are typing the terms. Still, it is pretty cool. And open source too, which is even cooler.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoLooks like a static site built with Jekyll. Not sure which search plugin they're using here (it may be one of the default Jekyll plugins rather than bespoke code), but I've seen Jekyll sites that use Algolia for search results that are smokin' fast and extremely accurate.
- readyplayeremma 3y agoThe search code appears to be hand-written though. You can find the commit history for the core search functions here: https://github.com/buddhist-uni/buddhist-uni.github.io/blame/main/assets/js/search.js https://github.com/buddhist-uni/buddhist-uni.github.io/blame... It's kind of neat that they did hand write it in a way. A fun project I'm sure. And they even made it run in a worker to keep things even more quick and responsive.
- esbeeb 3y agoI agree he did a great job designing his site. :)
- nextaccountic 3y agoThe only issue I see with this is that it doesn't identify, for each course, which Buddhist school it is based on (or whether it draws from multiple traditions)
- supertofu 3y agoThe monk who created the site is a Theravada Buddhist and almost every monk featured on the site is of the Theravada (or presectarian/Early Buddhist) school. The Theravada school is the oldest school of Buddhism. The canonical texts of the Theravada school, in which this website is rooted, are transcriptions the original, actual, oral teachings of the historical Buddha of ~500 BC. These texts are called the Pali Canon. They are the Buddha's actual words, orally trasmitted by monks for 500 years, and then transcribed in the 1st century AD. Much of the Pali Canon has been translated into English and is available at sites like suttacentral.com and accesstoinsight.com. It's true that the the Open Buddhist University's solidly presectarian/Early Buddhist foundation isn't obvious if you are not already familiar with it.
- kagakuninja 3y agoThe Pali Cannon, while orally transmitted by monks for 500 years before being written down, should not be assumed to be "the original, actual, oral teachings of the historical Buddha". They are the closest thing we have to what the Buddha might have taught (assuming he actually existed, and like Jesus, there is no evidence outside of religious texts that Buddha did exist).
- giraffe_lady 3y agoI'm not up to date on the of historicity of the buddha, but virtually no reputable scholars or historians endorse the "christ myth theory." It is widely accepted across all disciplines that at the very least he existed and was baptized & crucified and there is extensive scholarship around this consensus. The rest of your comment feels plausible, but confidently being so wrong about such an easy to check fact of scholarship makes it all untrustworthy.
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- truspitch 3y ago[flagged]
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThanks for posting this resource! Buddhism and minimalism go hand in hand so well.
- maroonblazer 3y agoIf this site is interesting to you, you might enjoy this just-released conversation[0] with Shamil Chandaria, a technologist and academic with multidisciplinary research interests spanning computational neuroscience, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and the philosophy and science of human wellbeing. He's a long time meditator. I've not yet finished it but so far it's fascinating. [0]https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/320-constructing-self-and-world https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/320...