Portable Media Player

I bought a Cowon iaudio S9 portable media player about three weeks ago. I bought it to listen to discourses and Dhamma lectures while commuting to and from work and to take with me travelling later.

I previously was able to read translations of discourses such as The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaaya Translated by Bhikkhu Naanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi. Most of the time I was able to concentrate deeply on the text and not notice the noisy chatter. Now instead of reading, I listen to Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi lectures.

I’ve downloaded all 120 odd lectures by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi on the Majjhima Nikaaya from the Bodhi Monastery website. I’m up to lecture 37 already. These lectures are great. Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi has done an excellent job. He has structured the course in such a way that beginners can follow the series and gradually learn the concepts and terms of Theravada Buddhism. I recommend everyone do this. Although I am not a beginner, I am learning a lot from listening to the lectures and thinking about the Dhamma. In my daily life, I don’t have anyone nearby to talk about the Dhamma with, so reading and listening and reflecting on the Dhamma by myself are the main modes of study. I was telling a work colleague about Buddhism the other day and found my speech tone drifted into the same style as Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s lectures.

I downloaded many Dhamma talks by various Sayadaws and other venerable monks from the Dhamma Seed website. I already listened to many of Ven. Bhante Gunaratna’s Dhamma talks from that site.

I also downloaded many videos from Dhammatube on Veoh.com and Youtube.com and converted them with Jetaudio to play on the portable media player. I particularly like Ven. Bhante Gunaratana, Ven. Nagita and Ven. Dhammavuddho. There are many interesting videos there.

This media player can also display ascii text files so I’ve converted many HTML and other files into txt format so I can read them from the media player. I downloaded a lot of Dhamma talks in text and mp3 format from the Bhavana Society website (monstery where Ven. Bhante Gunaratana usually resides). I am hoping that later the firmware for the player (currently it is 2.09) will be updated to allow reading text in landscape mode.