Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia one year old and growing fast
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
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Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
An ambitious project to digitise Chinese Buddhist resources celebrates its first year. By Marju Broder
The end of 2012 marked an important milestone in academic Buddhism. During the Pacific Neighbourhood Consortium Annual Conference, held at Berkeley University on 7–9 December, Vello Vaartnou, a Buddhist monk from Australia, launched his voluminous new project, an online Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia.
It has taken Vaartnou many years to accumulate the knowledge and merit to start such a massive undertaking—one that is expected to continue long after most of our lifetimes. Vaartnou has been a dedicated Buddhist for over 40 years and has educated people in Buddhism in many countries. He established the practical Buddhist tradition in Estonia during Soviet times, when religious activity was punishable, and introduced the first Buddhist objects into the Estonian intellectual and religious landscape. He has translated Buddhist books and texts, built stupas, prayer wheels and temples. In 1988 he established the first opposition party against communists in the 70-year history of the Soviet Union before being expelled from the country.
Vaartnou is the author of two online Buddhist encyclopedias, the founder of two annual international Buddhist conferences, in Europe and Australia, and is an internationally recognised thangka (a painting on cotton, or silk appliqué, usually depicting a Buddhist deity, scene, or mandala of some sort) master.
Since 2010 he has been developing international educational projects in Australasia, initiating the international Buddhism & Australia conferences, an online History of Buddhist Australia, exhibitions and an online Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia. The first entries for the Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia were posted in December 2012. Since then the encyclopedia has grown to 20 000 articles in English and 4000 in Chinese. Vaartnou continues his work on the project, already considered one of the biggest online resources on Buddhism.
Speaking on the first anniversary of the Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia, Vaartnou outlined his plans to develop the encyclopedia in different languages.
‘I see it evolving into a world Buddhist encyclopedia, with subencyclopedias containing information about Buddhism by country and language,’ he said. The encyclopedia has many stages of development—collecting and posting all existing digitised materials; digitising additional historical texts, documents and materials; and creating and promoting new forms of Buddhist education. The encyclopedia currently has 36 categories with over 1400 subcategories as well as Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Japanese, Chinese and Zen dictionaries.
Chinese Buddhism has a rich and colourful history and presence. China has a large amount of varying Buddhist materials, including texts, chronicles, commentaries from practitioners, sutras, tantras, paintings, sculptures, temples, shrines, monasteries. Numerous different Buddhist traditions are still practised in China, which results in even more variety in available Buddhist materials from there. ‘China has one of the biggest populations of Buddhists in the world,’ Vaartnou said. ‘Along with its significant and increasing global influence, it has great potential to preserve and develop the Buddhist tradition, and to influence the development of Buddhism globally.
- if Buddhism doesn’t adapt to this changing scenario it risks becoming irrelevant.
‘To maximise the impact on more Buddhist readers around the globe, I’ve started the online Buddhist encyclopedia of China, in both Chinese and English. The encyclopedia introduces different aspects and approaches, and will not exclude any Buddhist materials that are not directly related to China,’ he said. Vaartnou said the encyclopedia created an advanced online source of Buddhist knowledge by bringing together Buddhists, academics, students and organisations. ‘There’s a great gap between Chinese and English-speaking Buddhists, and the encyclopedia provides an opportunity to learn and study Buddhism in English and Chinese and in many more languages in the future,’ he said. The huge amount of work on compiling the encyclopedia has been done by Vaartnou and one volunteer working 16 to 18 hour days.
The project has been entirely funded to date by Vaartnou himself. Vaartnou emphasises that the encyclopedia’s key aim is preservation. ‘The online world poses a potential threat to traditional forms of Buddhist materials,’ he said. ‘In addition, if Buddhism doesn’t adapt to this changing scenario it risks becoming irrelevant. ‘The influence of the internet has been dramatic over the past 20 years, but it also has a potentially negative dimension, including repetitive and flawed information and incorrect terminology. But these changing times also provide new opportunities; the Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia is just one example of how these changes can be skilfully used to the advantage of Buddhism.’
Vaartnou plans to visit Taiwan, Mongolia and Bhutan soon to discuss the further development of the project.
Marju Broder is the Secretary for the International Conference Buddhism & Australia and of the Chinese Buddhism encyclopedia project.