I’ve been taking digital notes on my dharma practice for over fifteen years. Through multiple devices, various apps, and countless software migrations, I’ve maintained a digital record of retreat reflections, dharma talks, study sessions, and reading notes. I learned early on that searching for a concept across years of material was vastly more useful than flipping through physical notebooks.
But having digital notes and having usable digital notes are two different things.
For most of those fifteen years, my notes existed in isolation from each other. I could search for ‘metta’ and find every mention, but I couldn’t see how my understanding of metta related to my study of the brahma viharas, or connected to specific retreat experiences, or illuminated particular suttas. The notes were digital, they were searchable, but they weren’t linked. They didn’t form a network of understanding.
When I discovered Obsidian and Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking approach a few years ago, I realised what I’d been missing. Connections.
The evolution of digital Dharma notes
I’ve watched digital note-taking tools evolve significantly over the past fifteen years. Early on, I used whatever came with my device - basic text files, simple note apps, word processors. As smartphones and tablets became more capable, I moved to dedicated (proprietary) note-taking applications. Each migration brought improvements: better search, cloud sync, the ability to add images or audio.
What none of them offered was a way to create meaningful connections between notes. I could tag notes, which helped somewhat. I could organise them into notebooks or folders. But these are organisational schemes, not thinking tools. They impose a hierarchy that often doesn’t match how understanding actually develops.
When I’m studying the precepts, for instance, my understanding doesn’t fit neatly into a folder structure. A single dharma talk might touch on three different precepts. A retreat reflection might connect to both precept study and my ongoing exploration of the refuges. A passage from Sangharakshita might illuminate something about both practice and community. Folders force me to choose one location. Tags help, but they don’t show relationships.
What I needed was a way for my notes to link to each other, to form a web of understanding that could grow organically as my practice deepened.
Why most digital notes still don’t work
I’ve talked to many practitioners who have tried digital note-taking and given up. Usually it’s not because they prefer paper inherently. It’s because their digital notes became as unusable as scattered notebooks, just in a different way.
You take notes during a dharma talk on your tablet. You save it with a date and maybe a topic tag. Months later, you remember something useful was in that talk, but you can’t remember when it was or what you titled it. You search, but you don’t quite remember the specific word used. The note exists somewhere in your device, technically accessible, practically lost.
Or you accumulate hundreds of notes over years. They’re all searchable, which is better than paper, but search only works if you know what you’re searching for. It doesn’t help you discover connections you haven’t thought to look for. It doesn’t show you patterns in your understanding. It doesn’t let you see how different areas of study relate to each other.
This is where the shift from note-taking to note-making becomes crucial, and where tools like Obsidian offer something genuinely different.
From isolated notes to linked understanding
Obsidian’s fundamental insight is simple: notes should be able to link to each other as easily as you can link to a webpage. You’re writing a note about a dharma talk on generosity and you mention the first precept. Type [[First Precept]] and you’ve created a link. If that note doesn’t exist yet, creating it is one click.
This sounds minor. It’s transformative.
When I revisited my fifteen years of digital notes and began linking them in Obsidian, patterns emerged that I hadn’t consciously recognised. I could see which concepts I’d returned to repeatedly across different contexts. I could trace how my understanding of specific practices had evolved through multiple retreat experiences. I could find that a question I’d been holding for years had actually been partially addressed in a talk I’d forgotten about.
The links help me find information, but more importantly perhaps, they show me the structure of my own understanding.
Maps of content as practice tools
Nick Milo’s concept of Maps of Content has become central to how I work with Dharma material. An MOC is a note that serves as a hub for a particular area of study or practice. It’s not an encyclopedia entry trying to explain everything about a topic. It’s a personal map showing the different threads you’re exploring and how they relate.
My Buddhism MOC includes sections on the precepts, the refuges, key suttas, figures in the Triratna lineage, and ongoing questions I’m exploring. Each section contains links to relevant notes. When I create a new note about a dharma talk or add a reflection from a retreat, I return to the relevant MOC and add a link to it. I also use some automated dataviews to give me useful lists, like a list of all the retreats I’ve attended.
This has several effects. First, it ensures new material doesn’t disappear into my vault unconnected. Second, it lets me see at a glance what areas I’ve explored deeply and what remains underdeveloped. Third, over time the MOC itself becomes a record of how my focus and interests have shifted.
I’ve found MOCs particularly valuable for Mitra Study. Rather than just reading through the programme materials linearly, create MOCs for key concepts that span multiple years of study. As you encounter the same idea in different contexts, add to the MOC. This reveals both repetitions and developments that the linear structure of the programme doesn’t make explicit.
Building the Triratna starter vault
What I’m offering to the Triratna community is to share the structure I’ve developed over the past two years of intensive work with this approach. The starter vault includes:
- A Buddhism MOC that maps major areas of study and practice
- A Buddhist Women MOC gathering resources relevant to women practitioners
- A refuge tree page with links to key figures
- The mitra study materials for each year, structured to encourage linking
- Examples of how notes connect to each other
These aren’t comprehensive resources - instead I’m trying to give you a starting point from which to develop your own system. The expectation is that people will add their own notes from dharma talks, retreats, reading, and study, building up a personal knowledge management (PKM) system that grows with their practice.
What I’m trying to provide is what I wish I’d had fifteen years ago - a structure that encourages linking from the start, rather than having to retroactively connect years of isolated notes.
The technical foundation matters
One reason I’ve settled on Obsidian after years of experimenting with different tools is that your notes are simply text files stored on your device. This matters more than it might seem.
I’ve lost notes to discontinued apps, to companies that shut down their services, to software that became incompatible with newer operating systems. When your notes are locked into proprietary formats, you’re dependent on a company’s continued existence and interest in maintaining their product.
With Obsidian, if the company disappeared tomorrow, I’d still have all my notes as readable text files. I could open them in any text editor. The links are just text too - they’d still be there, even if the tool for following them wasn’t.
For dharma practice notes that I want to maintain across decades, this kind of durability matters.
The hybrid reality
I should acknowledge that there have been retreats where electronic devices weren’t permitted. In those cases, I took notes on paper and later transcribed the key points into my vault, adding links as I went. This processing step often revealed that what I’d written on paper was less developed than I thought. The act of linking forced me to articulate connections more clearly.
But these have been exceptions. For the vast majority of my practice over fifteen years, digital notes have been my primary method. What’s changed isn’t the medium. It’s the structure.
What I’ve learned over fifteen years
Digital notes don’t automatically solve anything. I spent years accumulating digital material that was only marginally more useful than paper notebooks would have been. What makes digital notes valuable isn’t the digitisation itself. It’s the ability to link, to search, to see patterns, to let understanding accumulate and connect across time.
The tool matters less than the approach. Obsidian works well for me, but the principles of linking your thinking apply regardless of the specific software. What matters is creating connections between ideas, building maps of your understanding, and treating your notes as a growing network rather than an archive.
This takes time to develop. My vault has become more useful as it’s grown larger. The connections are richer now because there’s more to connect to. Someone starting today shouldn’t expect immediate transformation. The value compounds over months and years of consistent practice.
An invitation from experience
I’m sharing the Triratna starter vault not as a perfect system, but as a useful starting point built from fifteen years of trial, error, and gradual refinement. If you’re currently taking notes on paper, this offers a path into digital practice. If you’re already digital but your notes feel disconnected and hard to use, this offers a different approach.
The structure I’m providing took me years to develop. You can start with it today, adapt it to your needs, and build from there. That’s what I hope will be valuable.
Start small. Create a note for one dharma talk. Link it to a concept. Add it to a MOC. See how it feels after a month, after three months, after a year. Let the practice develop.
What would it mean for your practice to have fifteen years of study and reflection not just saved, but genuinely accessible and interconnected? What patterns might emerge in your understanding if you could see all your accumulated wisdom as a network rather than a timeline?
The early beta version of my Triratna Obsidian starter vault is available by dropping me an email at ruth@ruthcheesley.co.uk. I’ve built this from extensive experience with digital dharma notes and I’m interested in how others adapt and extend it for their own practice. I’d love to hear your feedback and see how I can improve it over time.
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