A film on the preservation of Sanskrit and Tibetan texts
With this feature film, I want viewers to quickly move from asking why to wanting to learn how: how the mission will be accomplished, how it will all turn out, and perhaps even how they—the viewers—might become agents for accomplishing such a purpose in their own lives.
—Dafna Yachin, director of Digital Dharma
Dafna Yachin’s 2012 film Digital Dharma documents the efforts of Tibetologist E. Gene Smith and Buddhist Lama Khyentse Norbu to preserve sacred texts amidst the political conflicts of the 1950s and 1960s. During that time, the Chinese military attacked several Buddhist temples. Working with Norbu and the Library of Congress, Smith led a fifty-year-long effort to digitize dharmic texts.
In February 2013, New York University’s Center for Religion and Media hosted a film screening and a panel discussion including the film’s executive producer Bill Harris and religious scholars Laura Harrington (Boston University) and Robbie Barnett (Columbia University).