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What Are We Doing?
Dharma Media (formerly Kagyu Media Lab) is a grassroots organization whose mission is to
preserve the Buddhadharma in the spirit of the Rime movement of
Jamgon Kangtrul. Dharma Media has partnered with Vajra
Publications to provide an online database which has both
private and public sections. All the services are provided free
and all the work done is by volunteers.
Dharma Media's primary work, but not limited to,
is digitizing audio based dharma talks by various masters from
various Buddhist traditions. Once we have various teachings in a
digital format we can work with volunteers to get the teachings,
translated and transcribed.
We also work with various centers to archive their
teachings in private archives. The media from these archives can
then be used in the future by the center for various fundraising
and education efforts.
History
Dharma Media started as one man's personal archive, which he
published on the internet using free ISP services. His collection
became quite large and popular and the ISP eventually deleted his
archive. A plea went out to the sangha via e-lists for a home to
publish his collection.
An individual in the US with a modest server setup
in his home and a ISDN (128k) line offered to publish the content
on his webserver. In 2001, the two individuals, one in Malaysia
and the other in the US came up with a vision to archive the
collected media, register it in a database, then allow people to
search the public collection. Dharma Media was decided upon
inspired by the famous MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology) Media Lab.
In 2002 KML created the domain Dharma-media.org
which is now hosted by Vajra Publications. Vajra Publications
provides the primary download server and bandwidth to the Dharma Media
archives. This partnership also allowed us to create a
geographically separate backup location for the archive. It cannot
be underestimated how important this relationship is and the
service it provides. The bandwidth of www.kagyu-medialab.org
was quickly used by literally hundreds of people every day
searching the database and downloading audio recordings. Many
ISP's wont allow MP3's on their servers!
Everything Dharma Media does is motivated to
benefit sentient beings through the preservation of the Buddha's
teachings and to create a resource for Buddhist practitioners
regardless of their lineage or location. There are really a
relatively small group of people in the world that have the
good fortune of meeting authentic Buddhist teachers who are
selfless and very experienced. It is the hope of Dharma Media too extend
that good fortune to the countless practitioners throughout the
world.
Future Vision
Its our aspiration to continue to research and utilize
technology to preserve and distribute the Buddhadharma. DM is
collecting in its database a volunteers throughout the world with
various talents to help with the collected media. To date we have
digitally restored 3 thangka's, collected over 150 dharma
teachings, 50 thangka's, translated several prayers and sadhana's
into Spanish and made several transcriptions of recorded audio.
If you appreciate the services provided by Dharma Media,
please consider donating to the cause. All donations are used for
the sole purpose of maintaining and upgrading the publishing
infrastructure and insuring this service is here for the next
generation.
Donate
now.
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