free buddhist audio

We’ve now posted an initial version of Sangharakshita’s very latest talk: ‘Looking Back - and Forward’. With many thanks to our good friends at Clear Vision for all their help preparing this recording. If you’ve never heard him before - and just to put this in context - the first talk we have in our archive by Sangharakshita was given in 1965! And here we are, 40+ years on and still going strong… Amazing!

Today we are officially launching the site in German - Audio Buddhismus Kostenlos. It’s been a bit of a wait, but we are now ready and delighted to welcome all our German-speaking friends on board. As it happens, we have relatively few talks in German itself, so any ideas for contributions to the archive would be gratefully received! Meanwhile, our heartfelt thanks go out to Harald Eckhoff, who has worked at this with us in a most heroic and generous-spirited way for many months.

Watch this space for imminent announcements regarding the site in Chinese, French and Spanish!

Web statistics are fabulous. We now have a respectable 14,000 people a month visiting free buddhist audio, and about 7,500 subscribers to our podcast. Thank you everyone for making the launch of our service such a success!

To celebrate, we thought we’d share with you our top 10 chart of most popular downloads from the first four months… Try them - they’re all good!

1. Simplicity by Kamalashila

2. Buddhism and Quantum Physics by Jnanavaca

3. Cutting Away the Old by Abhaya

4. Breaking the Mould by Dhammarati

5. Entering the Mandala by Garava

6. Mindfulness for Just About Everything by Paramabandhu

7. What is Enlightenment? by Jinapriya

8. Tibetan Book of the Dead (Talk 1): The Six Bardo by Padmavajra

9. The Transitoriness of Life and the Certainty of Death by Vajradarshini

10. Tibetan Book of the Dead (Talk 2): On Hell and Hungry Ghosts by Padmavajra

To help us keep this free, please think about making a donation.

A note to say we have just added to the transcription archive, Vishvavpani’s collection of thoughtful essays and articles on Buddhism in the West in general, and the FWBO in particular. These are worth some time - dealing, as they do, with many of the thorny issues that have arisen in these early phases of the development of the FWBO as an attempt to articulate the Buddha’s teachings for our very different age. Vishvapani’s is a sympathetic and honest voice, and he addresses his subject matter with an exemplary forthrightness and an appropriate lack of certainty.

This is a quick note to let you know we’ve posted a newly indexed version of Vidyamala’s talk, ‘Dying to Live’. Previously only available as one long file, this is now accessible as 12 separate, detailed tracks thanks to the sterling efforts of Hilary Saltburn, the first volunteer to complete a talk on our behalf. Many thanks to her – and please do think about helping out in this way. It’s invaluable as a way to support the site!