About and principles

Mission

Free self-study of the spiritual life through the original scriptures of many traditions, presented fairly and honest about the evidence.

Who it is for

Adult self-learners. Each article has a "Kids' corner 6+" section of 5–10 minutes, as a game, always with an adult present.
The Vietnamese version is the original. Every article also has an English version under /en/. The site never switches language automatically; each page has a link to the other language.

What this site does and does not do

We do	We do not
Explain a tradition in its own words: "This tradition teaches…"	Tell you what you should believe
Place traditions side by side on shared practices, and state clearly where they differ	Say "all religions are the same", or rank traditions
State clearly what scientific research has and has not found	Give medical advice, diagnosis or treatment
Link to the original source of every passage	Discuss politics or the history of religious conflict

Crisis support, helplines, safety plans and short self-help skills (naming feelings, 1–3 minute breathing) have their home on daynentang.com. Here we only link to them.

Five questions before an article goes live

Every new article starts in the internal area. It goes live only when the answer to all five questions is "yes":

Descriptive, not judgemental: written as "this tradition teaches…", never "you should believe…".
Not divisive: no ranking, no criticism of any religion, belief or group, no politics.
Clean sources: every passage checked against the original, licence recorded.
Reviewed: an article on one tradition has at least one reviewer from within that tradition; a Convergence article has at least two reviewers from two different traditions.
Safe: includes a "Stop practising if" section, no medical advice, no fasting or dieting in the kids' corner.

The Vietnamese and English versions of an article go live together, and only when both have passed. When in doubt, an article stays internal. Every change of this kind is recorded in the Changelog.

Where the passages come from

On the Vietnamese pages, for each passage we follow this order and stop at the first step that works:

A free-licensed Vietnamese translation exists: use it verbatim, with translator, licence and link.
If not: tamhonkhoe translates from a free-licensed English translation, says so clearly, and links to the English text. A reviewer checks the meaning.
The source is in copyright or may not be modified: quote very briefly or only link, and explain in our own words.

On the English pages, passages from English translations are quoted verbatim from the original, not translated back from Vietnamese.

Each article has at most three passages. The full list is on Sources and licences.

Labels in articles

Label	Meaning
[Traditional teaching]	Taken from the scriptures, not mixed with science
[Verified]	Based on a source we have opened and read
[Inference]	Drawn from a source, but the source does not say it directly
[Expert judgement]	The author's own assessment

Authors and reviewers

The site was started by Peter Tran as a non-profit self-study project. Reviewers are listed by role (for example "Buddhist reviewer 1"), never with personal details.

The role of AI

To be clear: AI (Anthropic's Claude assistant) has contributed a great deal to building this site. AI wrote the website code, drafted the first versions of articles, translated passages from English into Vietnamese, wrote the English versions, and searched for scientific research.

What AI does not decide:

Sources and licences: Peter opens the original page, reads the terms and confirms before any source is used.
The meaning of passages: translations must be checked by someone from that tradition.
Going live: an article goes live only when the reviewers and Peter agree, according to the five questions above.

AI can be wrong. If you see a mistranslated passage, a wrong figure, or a presentation that is not fair, please let us know; every correction is recorded in the Changelog.