Frequently Asked Questions

The entire-year and entire-month .zip files are large and may take a long time to download depending on your connection speed and the traffic on this site. Entire-month .zip files are typically 150 MBs, and entire-year .zip files can range from 500 MBs to 2 GBs. Out of courtesy to others, please only download one or two of these files simultaneously. If your operating system doesnʼt have an archive manager installed by default to unzip the .zip archives, you can get 7-zip or PeaZip from Download.com.

The .ogg download page has been deprecated. The website analytics show the ogg downloads are at best 2 percent of the mp3 download statistics, and in many cases much, much smaller. While we strongly support the principles of generosity and the free sharing of skills in the free software community, the overriding goal of this site is to make the Dhamma available to all in the most straightforward, least confusing way. The ogg-vorbis archive of Dhamma talks prior to June 2011 will continue to remain available here: deprecated ogg-vorbis download page.

On the newest talks, the day-date is provided. Until the day-dates are applied to the older talks, after finding the correct year and month, just hover the mouse-pointer over the names of the talks in that month. The file-name will appear at the bottom of your browser. For example, "110131 Effort in Time.mp3" indicates 2011, January, 31. Note: Make sure the "status" toolbar in your browser has not been de-activated. For the oldest talks (pre July 2003) there is no day-date as the file-naming convention relates back to an esoteric cassette-tape numbering system that did not preserve the day the talk was given.

If you are having problems with the Dhamma Talk audio files appearing in the proper order on your iPod or other audio device, the site administrator has recently updated all the audio files with corrected tag information that should resolve the problem. If you do not know how to re-tag the audio files yourself with iTunes, Windows Media Player or another tagging program, you may wish to download the Dhamma Talks again.

Please note that mp3 files with an "NR" or "(oly)" notation indicate recordings of somewhat lower audio quality -- "NR" for applied "Noise-Reduction" and "(oly)" for "Olympus", an inferior recording device at the monastery. "(Sony)" is similar to "(oly)", but the audio quality is much more acceptable. The "SF" audio quality is fine; it only indicates that the talk was given away from the Monastery at Abhayagiri Monastery in the SF Bay Area.

The pdf format is the old standard and should be supported by all devices. The primary disadvantage of pdfs relative to epubs and mobis is you cannot enlarge the font and without pushing the text off the screen. The epub format works for all* e-readers, such as Android, iPhone, iPad, Nook, Sony, Adobe Digital Editions, et. al. *But not Kindles! Kindles use the mobi format.

I want to read the e-books on my desktop or laptop computer. So which format should I get?

Epub. First of all, the epubs look better and are closer to the author's original formatting because because of strengths in the epub format itself and because these e-books are created originally as epubs. The mobis are, frankly, one-button-push conversions using Calibre, and it's a credit to Calibre that they come out looking as well as they do. Secondly, the Kinde-for-PC app for computers is crippled somehow and won't render Pali diacriticals even though the actual Kindle device will. Thirdly, the epub is a free, open-source format, i.e. in the public domain, whereas mobi is a proprietary format owned by Amazon.

The epub versions of these e-books look nicer and are closer to the author's original formatting. If that's important to you, don't get a Kindle.

There are a number free reader apps. Purely for reading epubs AdobeDigitalEditions has a slick interface. Calibre is a more comprehensive option which allows for converting to other formats. There are also a Sony Reader app and a Nook-for-PC app. These might be of interest if you also have one of those devices for purposes of syncing. Kindle-for-PC reads mobis but is not recommended. Accesstoinsight.org has a nice help page regarding this subject as well as recommended apps for Android, iPhone, etc. If your computer doesnʼt read pdfs you can download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Or you may wish to download a less bloaty pdf reader like Sumatra from Download.com.

To obtain paperback versions of these Dhamma Books free of charge, postage included, send a request to: Book Request, Metta Forest Monastery, P.O. Box 1409, Valley Center, CA, 92082. There are no strings attached, no hook, no suggested donation; the Monastery is able to print and distribute the books from donations to its book fund from supporters who are participating in spreading the Dhamma. Please note that we may not be able to fully honor large requests outside of North America. Since the U.S. Postal service discontinued its international surface mail service, the price of postage has become prohibitive.