Below are a series of frequently asked questions. Please read through these before contacting us.
Most of the teachings in the main archive are only viewable by members except for the Public Talks.
However, most of the short teachings in the Shorts section are viewable without membership.
The teachings on the website are given freely.
However, storing and delivering such a huge amount of media like this requires a professional cloud based system. Each time a video or audio file is played, we have to pay for that delivery. Therefore the membership payments go towards that. A donation based system might also work, but we decided that it is too unpredictable given the costs we have to meet each month.
Therefore paid membership is crucial for the survival of the website.
If you feel that you are unable to pay for membership, please contact us and we will review the possibilities.
All three membership types are the same. The only difference is how much you are able to offer in support of the website.
Each membership is an annual subscription which renews automatically each year for a period of 3 years. Then you have the choice to renew it again.
But your subscription can be stopped at any time via your membership account page.
If when trying to view a teaching you see a red slide with the message “Please login to view this teaching” it means one of three things:
Yes. All memberships include a free 14 day trial.
Simply go to the Membership page and choose the membership you would like.
As membership is an annual subscription you will need to add in your payment details when signing up. But you won’t be charged until the end of the trial period. You can cancel your subscription at any time during the 14 days at no charge.
You can now gift all our membership subscriptions (for one year only) by checking the “Is this a gift?” checkbox in the sign up form.
If you are already a member of the archive login first and then complete the form for your chosen membership subscription.
If you are not a member, simply go to the subscription you want to gift and fill in your details so you can manage the gift membership. After completing that you will be able to add the details of the person you are gifting it too.
After payment has gone through a popup box will appear so you can enter in the recipient’s details and email them the gift. If you don’t see a pop-up you can go to the ‘Gifts’ section of your account and resend the email using the ‘Send Gift Email’ link.
Most of the teachings in the main archive are only viewable by members except for the Public Talks.
However, most of the short teachings in the Shorts section are viewable without membership.
All three membership types are the same. The only difference is how much you are able to offer in support of the website.
Each membership is an annual subscription which renews automatically each year for a period of 3 years. Then you have the choice to renew it again.
But your subscription can be stopped at any time via your membership account page.
Many teachings in this archive are broadly classified as belonging to the Vajrayana, the highest level of Buddhist practice and understanding.
These teachings are available for students who have received Vajrayana (or Mahamudra, Dzogchen, or similar) teachings either from Ringu Tulku or another qualified teacher.
All members can freely activate the ‘Vajrayana Membership’ by checking the box at the bottom of the ‘Vajrayana Membership‘ section of their account and clicking the ‘Save Change’ button.
Each membership is an annual subscription which renews automatically each year, but your subscription can be changed or stopped at any time via your membership account page.
If you wish to change your subscription type (Patron, Supporter, Friend etc) simply follow the steps below:
This will stop your active annual subscription from automatically renewing, but you can continue to use the website until it expires.
After the old subscription expires, simply log back into the website (using your original login details) and go to the Membership page to choose a new annually recurring subscription.
You can now gift all our membership subscriptions (for one year only) by checking the “Is this a gift?” checkbox in the sign up form.
If you are already a member of the archive login first and then complete the form for your chosen membership subscription.
If you are not a member, simply go to the subscription you want to gift and fill in your details so you can manage the gift membership. After completing that you will be able to add the details of the person you are gifting it too.
After payment has gone through a popup box will appear so you can enter in the recipient’s details and email them the gift. If you don’t see a pop-up you can go to the ‘Gifts’ section of your account and resend the email using the ‘Send Gift Email’ link.
Each membership is an annual subscription which renews automatically each year, but your subscription can be stopped at any time via your membership account page.
You can cancel your existing annual membership subscription as follows:
This will stop your active annual subscription from automatically renewing. You can continue to use the website until it expires. Note that we currently do not offer refunds for any subscription packages.
If you wish to restart a subscription at any time in the future, simply log back into the website (using your original login details) and go to the Membership page to choose a new annually recurring subscription.
In the main Archive section of the website you will see the Archive Navigation section at the top of the page.
You can either type your search terms into the field that says “Enter keywords here…” or click the ‘Filter Teachings’ button to directly search by name, date, location etc. The best way is to use both these methods to get more accurate results.
If you find you have entered in too many options you can always just hit the ‘Clear All’ text at the bottom of the Archive Navigation to reset it.
You can also change how your results appear by selecting different viewing options from the drop down selector called “Sort by:”. You will find this at the top of the results page.
By default, the teachings are shown in the order they are added to the website. Not by the date they were actually recorded. So if we suddenly get a batch of recordings from 1999, they will appear at the top above anything recorded last month.
To change it to the most recent recordings, go to the main Archive section. At the top of all the teachings you will see the text “Organise Results by:”. Click on the selector beside that and chose “Date Newset-Oldest”.
Besides using the main Archive Navigation in the sidebar, much of the teaching text is hyperlinked (highlighted in red).
For example, if you are looking at a particular teaching from France and want to see more teachings that were recorded in France, you can just click the red text that says “France” in the teaching description area. That will then display all recordings from France.
You can create your own collection of your favourite teachings, or a collection of teachings you want to watch later, by clicking on the heart symbol found at the top left corner of any teaching thumbnail image. This will add it to your My Favourites list which can be found in your account area.
To remove teachings from your favorites list, just click the heart icon again.
If when trying to view a teaching you see a red slide with the message “Please login to view this teaching” it means one of three things:
We currently allow members to download audio files only. To do that you just need to click on the download icon 
to the right of each audio file.
However, in some cases, there are existing third party copyright terms which apply to a recording. In these cases the audio recordings will not be available for download and you will not see the download icon.
Sometimes Rinpoche specifically requests that we only make a particular teaching available to people that were actually in attendance at that teaching. You will know when you come across one of these and there will be instructions on the screen about how you can apply for access if you were there.
When you are watching video teachings, it would help us if you watch them with the English captions switched on to see if you can spot any errors. We are just looking for any misspelt words or Dharma terms to be corrected. Corrections you submit will go into the vocabulary database to teach the system to correct both the captions in that teaching and also any future teachings that have the same mistake. You won’t see a change in the captions on that particular video for a while, but over time they will update. It’s an ongoing learning process.
We are mainly only looking to correct nonsense words rather than correct any common words that are spelt correctly but used incorrectly in the captions as this will also change them in cases where they are correct. Eg: if it uses “drama” when Rinpoche says “Dharma”, don’t correct that word directly because it will always correct “drama” to “Dharma” even if Rinpoche meant to say “drama” on another occasion!
The kind of thing that needs correcting is something like a caption that says “To-some-chapa” when Rinpoche said ‘Dusum Khyenpa‘.
However, it is possible to correct common words if you use the whole phrase. For example:
Rinpoche may have said “When I come to Dzogchen Beara” but the caption says “When I come to auction better“. In this case you can correct it by using the form in the following way (note: the hyphens are intentional as they need to be used instead of spaces in the incorrect word field):
Incorrect word/s: come-to-auction-better
Correct word/s: come to Dzogchen Beara
Sometimes the captions display nonsense when a translator speaks another language or Rinpoche speaks Tibetan. These have to be corrected (or removed) in the root captions file of that particular teaching which will come at a later stage. These cannot be removed using this form.
When you are watching video teachings, it would help us if you watch them with the English captions switched on to see if you can spot any errors. We are just looking for any misspelt Dharma terms to be corrected using the new ‘Edit video captions’ box at the bottom of each teaching.
Corrections you submit there will go into the vocabulary database to teach the system to correct both the captions in that teaching and also any future teachings that have the same mistake. You won’t see a change in the captions on that particular video for a while, but over time they will update. It’s an ongoing learning process.
We are mainly only looking to correct nonsense words rather than correct any common words that are spelt correctly but used incorrectly in the captions as this will also change them in cases where they are correct. Eg: if it uses “drama” when Rinpoche says “Dharma”, don’t correct that word directly because it will always correct “drama” to “Dharma” even if Rinpoche meant to say “drama” on another occasion!
The kind of thing that needs correcting is something like a caption that says “To-some-chapa” when Rinpoche said ‘Dusum Khyenpa‘.
However, it is possible to correct common words if you use the whole phrase. For example:
Rinpoche may have said “When I come to Dzogchen Beara” but the caption says “When I come to auction better“. In this case you can correct it by using the form in the following way (note: the hyphens are intentional as they need to be used instead of spaces in the incorrect word field):
Incorrect word/s: come-to-auction-better
Correct word/s: come to Dzogchen Beara
Sometimes the captions display nonsense when a translator speaks another language or Rinpoche speaks Tibetan. These have to be corrected (or removed) in the root captions file of that particular teaching which will come at a later stage.
One thing that would really help the website is to have more short synopses on each teaching.
It not only helps the next viewer understand what the teaching is about, but it is the only way to improve the search capabilities of the website. The more data we have on a teaching the better.
So if you have watched or listened to a teaching and made some notes, please type them up as a comment at the bottom of the teaching page. If you need more space, just use the contact form instead.
Please include the title of the teaching you are referring to and also a link to it.
The website is run by only a few volunteers and we need ‘audience participation’! There are more recordings than any one person could possibly listen to and watch! Therefore we depend on members to help us quality control the recordings and highlight where there are missing parts, incorrect information, poor recording quality and other errors.
So please feel free to add these to the comment section at the bottom of every teaching post.
If you have spotted some incorrect info on a teaching page you can leave a comment at the bottom of that page to help us with the correction. If you need more space, just use the contact form instead.
Members can now upload video, audio and image files for an existing teaching and also for any new teachings that we don’t currently have in the archive in the Archivist’s Area.
Members can now upload video, audio and image files for an existing teaching and also for any new teachings that we don’t currently have in the archive in the Archivist’s Area.
At the bottom of every teaching in the ‘Feedback’ box there is a ‘Upload Images’ button you can click to upload your images from a teaching.
Rinpoche will make his own audio recordings of any teachings he gives and these will automatically upload us. This means he will require access to wifi after the teaching session. But we also encourage centres to make their own audio recordings should there be technical problems with Rinpoche’s recordings.
However, we also ask that organisers hosting these teaching events make video recordings of the teachings to share with the archive.