Ligmincha's Ocean of Wisdom Website Growing Internationally
An Interview with Paris Smithson
Ocean of Wisdom is a Ligmincha International project and is the initiative of Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. The project aims to blend the power of technology with the knowledge and wisdom of Tibetan Bon Buddhism. It is a new way to unite the worldwide sangha and to bring Bon teachings into the modern information era under the guidance and blessings of the tradition, its living masters and historical lineage.
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Paris Smithson
Paris Smithson is currently the lead volunteer, developer and designer for the Ocean of Wisdom website. He lives in Mexico, and we caught up with him recently to get the inside scoop on some of the details of this wonderful new project.
VOCL: Paris, would you please introduce us to Ocean of Wisdom? What is it and how did it originate?
Paris: Sure! Ocean of Wisdom is a website, and as such it is a door – a door to the teachings. It’s a wonderful door because it’s free. It’s always online, always available for you. It’s a door to unlock our own inner potential.
So how do we link the potential of the teachings with a website? The first task seems to be to find a master who has the method and wisdom to unlock his own inner potential, and who has the capacity to teach this method to others, and who actually decides to spend his precious time doing this selfless service. For practitioners of Tibetan Bon Buddhism, we have found such a master in Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.
Rinpoche offers his teachings in many ways, but sometimes there are obstacles for people who cannot travel to retreats or don’t speak English or Tibetan. That is where Ocean of Wisdom comes in, along with its technology and its volunteers. We are removing the language barrier by translating into subtitles all of Rinpoche’s videos, all done with volunteers helping us through an automated system. Anyone with an Internet connection can now access the teachings anytime, all in one place. We have many more barriers we plan on removing and addressing.
So far we have focused only on Rinpoche’s teachings and on the video format. So that is what you will find on the site now. With time we will add more teachers and more teaching formats. You can expect sound recordings very soon, for example, of all the essential mantras and prayers.
Now to your second question, how did it originate? Ocean of Wisdom originated during a Zhang Zhung retreat on the Six Lamps in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, in 2012. I approached Rinpoche and offered a website to help aid in fundraising for the monks and children in Nepal and India. Rinpoche replied that he preferred help in developing a website where the teachings can be distributed and more of their potential unlocked. Some time passed and eventually the conditions were met, some obstacles where liberated and Ocean of Wisdom was launched this year, 2015, near Losar.
VOCL: Can you please describe how the cornerstone of this Ocean of Wisdom project is a wonderful collaboration of volunteers from around the word?
Paris: Volunteers are truly the cornerstone of our project. We could not achieve our vision without them. They are very important and play an essential role. In a way even Rinpoche is a volunteer. In a way even the liberated lineage masters are volunteers! (Laughter).
We currently have 51 volunteers from all over the world, and they all joined us within the past eight months. We have 147 video teachings online, and our volunteers have completed and published exactly 200 video subtitle translations. The team has an additional 57 video translation subtitles in progress. We have published subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Danish, Russian, Hungarian and German. So that’s 10 languages so far.
Incredibly, we have been visited by 107 countries in the world since we started tracking this. Many of them don’t return because the site is not in their language. So definitely we have a lot of room to grow and improve. It’s still a bit erratic but our traffic continues to grow at an averaged steady pace. This is exciting for me because we have not even begun our marketing efforts.
VOCL: I’m really struck by the response so far. How may others contribute?
Paris: People can contribute by sharing the site on their social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter. Another way to help is to sign up in our system and translate videos into your language, or to transcribe English audio into text. Yet another way is to surprise us. What can you do to help? Reach out and share your ideas!
Finally we can all contribute by taking care of our own practice. When we practice and improve our life, we can inspire others to do the same. We can then suggest that they visit Ocean of Wisdom. And they, in turn, can improve their life and inspire others. They might even volunteer, too!
VOCL: The various aspects of presenting authentic masters’ teachings and transmission over the Web is still in its beginning stages, and Rinpoche seems to be at the leading edge of that development. Will Ocean of Wisdom be breaking any further new ground in that regard?
Paris: Our precious human life is quite short. Assuming we have a long life, then yes! We think we can continue to innovate. We have an extremely long list of things to do (laughs), but here’s a little scoop into what’s coming soon: A new lama will join Rinpoche in publishing material. We will add a new format besides video. We will make it easier to filter content by topic and language. We will automate our sign-up process. We will make it easy to report errors on our translations. We will implement a social sharing strategy. And we will continue to make our volunteer system more efficient and easy to use. These are a few of the near-term items!
Anyone can see what our progress is in technical terms by visiting our Development Blog.
VOCL: Thank you so much, Paris. Would you like to add any concluding remarks?
Paris: I just wanted to use this opportunity to publicly thank Rinpoche. No matter what I do, I can never repay your kindness. What you have given me is so much more valuable than anything I could give you in return. I dedicate my contribution to Ocean of Wisdom for the benefit of sentient beings.
