Knowledge can disappear. Or quietly change.
Fire, war and quiet rewriting have erased wisdom for centuries.
Eight centuries of learning. Gone.
Nalanda was one of the greatest centres of learning the world has known. Several times greater than Alexandria. The Nalanda library was destroyed in the 12th century.
Texts lost. Within living memory.
Between 1966 and 1976, monastery libraries across Tibet were destroyed. Many teachings survive today only because people carried them across the mountains into exile.
What survived is still held by hand.
MetaProvide and Swarm went to Dharamsala to meet the people who look after these texts. They work with great care. What worries them is the next fifty years.
Not every loss is a fire.
In 1611, the translators of the King James Bible were given a directive: to deliberately encode pro-royal, pro-church politics into scripture itself.
congregation
church
When words can be changed without the public noticing, how do you know which copy is true?
A permanent archive.
Knowledge kept in many places at once, sealed so that no change goes unnoticed.
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Held in many places
The chunks, anonymised building blocks used to generate copies, live on independent computers around the world. No single fire, flood or human can undo this.
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Sealed with a fingerprint
Every file has a unique fingerprint. Change a single word and the fingerprint changes too.
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Always retrievable
The original can be found, accessed and checked by the community, beyond any one platform, over generations.
How a teaching is preserved
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1
Recorded
A teaching is saved with its audio, transcript and details.
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2
Sealed
Its exact contents produce a unique fingerprint.
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3
Spread
The building blocks needed to generate copies are kept across many independent computers worldwide.
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4
Found & checked
Anyone with the fingerprint can retrieve the data, which confirms that nothing changed.
Original
“…the congregation was built…”
Fingerprint 7f3a 91c2 d84e
Matches
Altered copy
“…the church was built…”
Fingerprint e04b 5d18 a2f7
Doesn’t match: the change is visible
See it in action: Joyma.
Joyma is the platform Dharma centres run on, bringing everything a centre does into one place. MetaProvide builds it for Joyful Effort.
Inside Joyma, the Permanent Archive keeps FPMT teachings safe: each recording is stored with its transcript and details, so it can outlive any one website or server.
Visit Joyma-
Events and registrations
Retreats, courses and talks, booked in one place.
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Memberships and payments
Members join and pay the centre directly.
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Online learning
Courses in Moodle, with one login for everything.
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Permanent Archive
Teachings preserved with the approach on this page.
“Permanent” is a responsibility.
We are building this carefully, offering it to the communities who hold these teachings.
Talk to us