Last December I was introduced to Google’s NotebookLM (now retitled gemini notebook) by a friend of mine in India, who had been using it to make mainly Telegu videos of the Buddha’s teachings on his channel Buddha Vacanam (there are also some in English there too).
I tried doing the same in English, but was not satisfied with the result, but I soon found out that we could make slide decks, with good results. I started publishing these on my Photo Dharma website. The numbers I was producing were mounting up, so I decided to move them to a dedicated website just for this material.
One of the reasons I had started Photo Dharma in the first place was to retell Buddhist stories as recorded in reliefs and paintings throughout the Buddhist world. This new website supersedes that in that I can create my own, and in styles I can define via prompts. At present I have made storybooks in Amaravati, Madhubani, Kandy Painting, Kalamkari, Zen and many other styles chosen to suit the subject.
That website is now published and fully updated, with 34 albums and 608 stories with 8,584 posters, that cover many different subjects including the Bodhisattva and the Buddha story, The Foremost Disciples, various Dhamma Stories and Chronicles; and material from countries such as China, Tibet and India, as well of biographies of Modern Masters and Meditation and Dhamma Teachings. I.e. I think there is something for everyone interested in the Dharma.
I am still working on the site and will expect to expand the coverage soon. If you have any suggestions for improvements or requests for inclusions do let me know and I will do my best to assess and improve the collections. All of the materials on the site are published with Creative Commons licences and are made for personal study, and to enrich classroom and Dharma teaching, and spread timeless wisdom. They are free to read, download, print, and share worldwide.
There is also a special Storybooks app for this work developed by the Australian monk Ven. Kassapa Sallekha whereby the materials can be seen in a beautiful viewer, and images can be bulk downloaded from within the viewer itself. The link is on the front page.
As always I hope this work will go someway to making the Dharma accessible and attractive, and will help students, teachers and Dharma teachers in their work.
