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The Open Buddhist University

buddhistuniversity.net

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Re: The Open Buddhist University

#31

Post by lagniappe »

movedx wrote: post #29
autoexec wrote: post #4

I 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.

That'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.

Is 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

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#32

Post by readyplayeremma »

low_tech_punk wrote: post #17

This site beats 99% of the crappy eye candies out there. A few things I really appretiate: Content QA: https://buddhistuniversity.net/tests/content Easy cookie opt-out: https://buddhistuniversity.net/settings/ Zero latency search: https://buddhistuniversity.net/search/ Granular RSS feeds: https://buddhistuniversity.net/feed

This 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.

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#33

Post by nextaccountic »

supertofu wrote: post #27
nextaccountic wrote: post #18

The 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)

The 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 Cano…

Then this fact should be showcased in the page. One shouldn't be left wondering.

In any case, when I check out the library https://buddhistuniversity.net/tags/ it clearly makes a distinction between Early Buddhist texts, Therevada texts, Mahayana texts, Vajrayana texts, etc. From this I had the (apparently mistaken?) impression that they represented on equal footing.

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#34

Post by giraffe_lady »

kagakuninja wrote: post #28
supertofu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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 Cano…

The 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).

I'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.

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#35

Post by swayvil »

jmfldn wrote: post #7

Thank 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.

Buddhist meditation is good. It's like tripping except you have control over it. And there's no ceiling.

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#36

Post by Shared404 »

lionsdan wrote: post #13
paxys wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most US universities have all course material available online in similar fashion.

I think this is less true than it used to be. At my university, most material is locked up behind a Learning Management System (LMS) like Canvas.

When I was last in school (~ a year ago) it was the same for me.

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#37

Post by spondylosaurus »

readyplayeremma wrote: post #32
low_tech_punk wrote: post #17

This site beats 99% of the crappy eye candies out there. A few things I really appretiate: Content QA: https://buddhistuniversity.net/tests/content Easy cookie opt-out: https://buddhistuniversity.net/settings/ Zero latency search: https://buddhistuniversity.net/search/ Granular RSS feeds: https://buddhistuniversity.net/feed

This 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 to…

Looks 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.

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#38

Post by esbeeb »

Actual 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

Myself: https://mstdn.ca/@sbb

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#39

Post by temptemptemp111 »

esbeeb wrote: post #38

Actual 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 Budd…

[dead]

Re: The Open Buddhist University

#40

Post by rafram »

kagakuninja wrote: post #28
supertofu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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 Cano…

The 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).

Virtually all mainstream secular scholars of early Christianity agree that Jesus existed. He was mentioned by Josephus and Tacitus, and the Talmud - a religious commentary, albeit not a Christian one, with genuine historical narrative interspersed - mentions him repeatedly. Essentially, based on the sources we have access to today, it’s far more likely that Jesus was a real wandering preacher in the first-century Land of Israel (there were many of those!) than that every mention of him in the sources was fabricated.

My understanding is that scholars also believe that Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, was indeed historical, but the contemporary sources are weaker.

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