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Source Policy

Purpose

This library aims to answer four different questions without confusing them:

  1. What do the early Pāli discourses say?
  2. How does the Theravāda tradition commonly explain them?
  3. What is a modern interpretation?
  4. How might a teaching be practised?

Source hierarchy

Tier 1 — Pāli discourses

The four main Nikāyas and early Khuddaka texts are the primary source layer. Named claims should point to a discourse number.

Tier 2 — Vinaya and Abhidhamma

These are canonical in Theravāda. They address different purposes and genres, so the library does not silently treat an Abhidhamma analysis as though it were wording from a sutta.

Tier 3 — Commentaries and later Theravāda manuals

The commentaries, Visuddhimagga, meditation manuals, and later teachers are important to Theravāda history and practice. Their explanations are labeled Commentarial or Later Theravāda.

Tier 4 — Modern scholarship and explanation

Comparisons with psychology, neuroscience, systems theory, or philosophy are labeled Interpretation. An analogy is never allowed to replace the canonical teaching it is intended to illuminate.

Translation policy

English translations make interpretive choices. Important terms therefore retain their Pāli form where useful:

  • dukkha: suffering, stress, unsatisfactoriness
  • saṅkhāra: choices, volitional formations, fabrications
  • sati: mindfulness, recollection
  • samādhi: collectedness, concentration
  • nibbāna: extinguishment, unbinding

No single English rendering is assumed to exhaust a term's meaning.

Primary reading links generally point to:

Readers should compare translations when a doctrinal conclusion depends on one English word.

Rules for doctrinal claims

  • Do not turn silence in one discourse into a universal denial.
  • Do not merge teachings from different textual layers without labeling it.
  • Do not describe kamma as fatalism or as the sole cause of everything.
  • Do not turn anattā into the unsupported slogan “nothing exists.”
  • Do not describe dependent origination as a first cause or creator.
  • Do not equate meditative experiences with awakening without the canonical criteria of relinquishment, dispassion, and freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion.
  • Treat post-mortem rebirth as a canonical Theravāda teaching and a religious/ philosophical claim, not as a scientifically established result.

Quotation policy

This library primarily paraphrases. Short quotations should name the translation. Complete copyrighted translations are linked, not copied.

Correction policy

Each topic is designed to be revised. A correction should record:

  • the statement being corrected;
  • the primary reference checked;
  • whether the correction changes doctrine, translation, or only wording.