About This Project

Mission

This project exists to make the Lotus Sutra accessible to readers in every language. The Saddharmapundarika Sutra has been a cornerstone of Buddhist thought for nearly two thousand years, yet comprehensive multilingual editions remain scarce. We aim to provide a freely available, well-structured, and carefully annotated digital edition that serves scholars, practitioners, and curious readers alike.

An AI-First Approach

This project embraces artificial intelligence as a core tool for translation, annotation, and content generation. By leveraging large language models, we can produce initial translations, cross-reference terminology across languages, and generate explanatory content at a scale that would be impractical through purely manual effort. Every piece of AI-generated content is clearly marked so that readers can assess it accordingly.

Technology Stack

The site is built with Hugo, a fast and flexible static site generator. Content is authored in Markdown with structured YAML frontmatter. The multilingual architecture supports side-by-side parallel text comparison, and the entire project is version-controlled with Git for full transparency and collaboration.

Transparency

We believe in complete honesty about how content is produced. Every page on this site includes metadata indicating whether it was generated by AI, translated by AI, or reviewed by human editors. Original historical translations in the public domain are presented faithfully and marked as such. New explanatory content, commentaries, and modern-language renderings created with AI assistance carry the ai_generated: true flag.

Historical translations whose copyright has expired, such as H. Kern’s 1884 translation from the Sacred Books of the East, are in the public domain and are offered without restriction. Original content created for this project is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), meaning you are free to share and adapt it with appropriate credit.

How to Contribute

Contributions are welcome from scholars, translators, Buddhist practitioners, and developers. You can help by:

  • Reviewing and correcting AI-generated translations
  • Contributing translations in new languages
  • Improving annotations and commentary
  • Reporting errors or suggesting improvements through GitHub issues
  • Enhancing the site’s design and functionality

Contact

For questions, corrections, or collaboration inquiries, please open an issue on the project’s GitHub repository or reach out through the channels listed there. We are grateful for every contribution that helps make this ancient wisdom more accessible to the modern world.

AI-Generated Commentary info