Sources and labels

Who we are

BuddhistTok is run by Christians who believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. We examine Buddhism's teachings directly, and we hold ourselves to one rule: every fact and every quotation must be real, sourced and checkable. We critique doctrines and claims, never people.

The Bible

All Bible quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain), reproduced word for word.

The Buddhist discourses

Quotations from the early Buddhist discourses (the Pali Nikayas, the Dhammapada and related texts) are from Bhikkhu Sujato's English translation, which he dedicated to the public domain (CC0), taken from SuttaCentral and reproduced word for word with SuttaCentral's segment numbers. Every quoted text can be read in full on this site at /texts.

Other Buddhist texts

Mahayana sutras (such as the Heart Sutra, the Lotus Sutra and the Pure Land sutras), later commentaries and modern teachers are never put in quotation marks. We give the work and place and a one-line summary we wrote, labelled Summary, not a quotation, and name a scholarly translation where you can read the wording.

Traditions differ

Buddhism is not one thing. Theravada, Mahayana, Pure Land, Zen, Tibetan and Nichiren Buddhism, and modern Western Buddhism, teach differently. We say which tradition we mean, and we note where Buddhists and scholars disagree in a marked box on each page.

History and scholarship

Historical claims name their source. Where dates are uncertain (for example the Buddha's dates), we say so.

AI

The AI guide is an AI (Claude Haiku 5.5) and is labelled AI everywhere. It holds Christian values, never pretends to be a person, and never writes prayers for you.

Testimonies

We never invent testimonies. Public accounts are by named people, summarised and cited to their own published words. Member stories are checked by AI moderation, approved by a person, and labelled Shared by a member, not verified.

Images

Illustrations drawn for this site are labelled Illustration. Anything made with AI is labelled Illustration, AI-generated. We use no photos of real people.