Letter to dhammatalks.org (Metta Forest Monastery)

Before sending

• https://www.dhammatalks.org/ gives feedback@dhammatalks.org for site feedback and administration, and asks that it not be used to reach Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu personally, request books or sell anything. This letter is addressed to the site team about use of the site, which fits that purpose.
• For Dhamma inquiries the site gives Metta Forest Monastery, PO Box 1409, Valley Center, CA 92082 (and a phone number). Do not use these for this letter unless the site team suggests it.
• The site states its content is released under CC BY-NC 4.0 and that the author considers any sale, even by non-profits, to be commercial.
• Fill in the maintainer’s name and reply-to address. Only the maintainer sends this letter; agents never send it.
• After sending, update the status in README.md. Record the reply in docs/sources.md.

Letter

Subject: Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s translations in a free scripture-study tool: a courtesy note and request

Dear dhammatalks.org team,

I maintain Pali Canon for Claude (https://github.com/DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude), a free, open-source tool that helps AI assistants such as Claude look up and quote the Pāli Canon accurately instead of paraphrasing it from memory. When someone asks about a sutta, the assistant retrieves the actual passage from a named source and gives its citation (for example “MN 10” or “M i 55”), the translator or editor, the licence and a link to the original page. The tool is a library, not a teacher: it gives no rulings on practice and does not rank teachers or traditions.

How we use your work. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s translations are the tool’s default English: the tool holds about 1,240 links to his pages on dhammatalks.org. When a reader asks for a translation, the tool fetches that one page and returns it with his name, the CC BY-NC 4.0 licence and a link to the page. If dhammatalks.org cannot be reached (but not when a page is missing), it uses his earlier version on Access to Insight and says plainly that it is the earlier version. We have read the site’s note that any sale counts as commercial: nothing in this project is sold, and it carries no advertising.

What we would like to add. Links only, no copied text:

• for each rule of the Pāṭimokkha, a link to the matching chapter of The Buddhist Monastic Code;
• a way to find relevant Dhamma talks by sutta or topic, as links to the talk pages, if the site’s terms allow it.

These safeguards apply to everything the tool returns, and we would keep them for your work:

• Attribution on every result. Each passage comes back with the source’s name, the translator or editor, the licence or terms, and a link to the original page.
• Non-commercial. The tool is free. There are no fees, paid tiers or advertising, and we do not sell or license anyone’s content. The software itself is MIT-licensed; texts keep their own terms.
• Word for word. We never edit, rewrite or generate scripture or translations. Abbreviated passages are flagged as such, and we never silently swap one translation for another.
• Not a training dataset. We do not build or supply datasets for training AI models. A passage is handed to the assistant only in the conversation where a reader asked for it, so that it can be quoted and cited correctly.
• Light, read-only access. The tool reads only from a short list of approved sites, one page at a time when a reader asks; it does not crawl.
• Your wishes come first. SuttaCentral has asked not to be used in AI tools, so we only link to it. If you would prefer the same, we will switch to links only and record your wishes publicly in our source library (https://github.com/DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude/blob/main/docs/sources.md).

What we are asking.

1. Please confirm that the live retrieval described above is acceptable under the site’s licence and its understanding of “non-commercial”, including in a free public online version of the tool (planned; it would not log what people ask or read).
2. Are the link-only features above welcome? If you would prefer we did not index the talks, we will not.
3. Is there a credit line you would like us to show?

If it would help, I am happy to send more detail, show you the tool working, or change how your work is presented. A short reply is plenty, and “no” is a perfectly good answer: we will follow it.

With thanks and respect for your work,

[Maintainer’s name] Maintainer, Pali Canon for Claude — https://github.com/DaniilKi/pali-canon-claude Reply to: [maintainer’s email address]