You Made It!

After all those years of pointing and clicking, you found it, the American Buddha Online Library, the world’s best media website.   Sure, it's been tough finding us, but there are no accidents in life, and the important thing is you're here now.  You have questions, and we have the answer -- YES!

ABOL Says YES to Free Speech and Scholarship!

• YES, you can view magnificent vistas of the world’s finest cinema, including frame-by-frame screencaps and full screenplays.

• YES, you can have free access to full-length literary works in fiction, non-fiction, science, philosophy, and political theory.

• YES, you can listen to music selected to inspire, entertain, and educate you.

• YES, you can search by keywords, including author names, titles, and topics, using the Nutch open-source search engine to research.

ABOL Says NO to Censorship, Piracy, Ads and Spam!

• NO, we don't censor content or deny fair use rights to scholars, students, and researchers.

• NO, we don't encourage piracy, copyright infringement, and abuse of the creator’s rights to fair remuneration for their work.

• NO, we don't invade your study and research time with crass appeals to buy ringtones, take surveys, and waste your time.

• NO, we won't capture your data, monitor your usage, or invade your privacy with screen or email spam.

ABOL Bridges The Digital Divide

As humanity's thirst for knowledge grew, communication technology developed.  We progressed from cave paintings, smoke signals and oral traditions to clay tablets, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and papyrus script, and then to the printing press, radio and movies, and now, to the instantaneous transmission of digital signals worldwide.  Yet the average person simply consumes pablum dished out by the corporate media monopolists.  Most citizens possess information resources so paltry that the conversion to high-definition TV is actually a matter of some concern.  How pitiful!  Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of radio and television stations, and your average Netizen feels lucky to have a page on MySpace!  ABOL breaks the chains to free the content that is hidden in paper libraries where few have the time or gasoline to go.

ABOL’s Carefully Curated Collection Is Unique

ABOL's collection is carefully curated, with a focus on unique media works.  ABOL gives members access to works of art, science, cinema, politics, and philosophy that help them develop a critical, positive worldview.  For example, you will not find frame-by-frame screen captures of the films of Federico Fellini anywhere else on the Net or in any brick-and-mortar location.  ABOL webmistress Tara has screen-capped City of Women, Juliet of the Spirits, The Temptations of Dr. Antonio, and Satyricon in painstaking detail, capturing the nuances of Fellini’s cinematography with loving sensitivity.  The screenplays are also posted, so you can savor the exquisite dialogue as you study the imagery.  Even rarer and equally exquisite is the feast of images drawn from Donkey-Skin, an amazing film starring Catherine Deneuve at the peak of her youthful beauty, playing the reverse-Cinderella role of a princess who must fend off the advances of her love-struck father with the help of her fairy-godmother.

ABOL’s Virtual Library Is Green

Paper books are not only heavy things that take up space and have to be lugged around and stored, but they are made of paper, trucked about in vehicles fueled with gasoline and are fundamentally a luxury product.  This actually makes publishing a dirty business with a huge carbon footprint that needs greening as much as coal mining.  To further the education of human beings, digital reading material and other media have got to be delivered at reduced cost to the environment, and not just to corporations and governments.  ABOL is at the forefront of the green library movement, and as an ABOL member, you can proudly say you are doing your part to improve your mind and life on earth, simultaneously.

ABOL’s Physical Library Is In Tucson, Arizona

ABOL opens its doors to members on movie nights at the Nader Library, 2165 S. Avenida Planeta, Tucson, Arizona.