About 1sutra

What this is

1sutra (一人一经) is a reading of the Diamond Sutra written from your own account of one hard thing: the scripture unchanged, seven chapters written for you, classical commentary you can check. Generated by AI; not a teacher, not therapy.

You tell us about yourself, write about at least two hard things you are facing, answer a few follow-up questions, and can first read the sample chapters on the home page. After paying US$9.99 you receive, within about half an hour, a PDF of up to 81 pages, 1sutra: My Diamond Sutra, and can ask three questions about the whole book.

The text

The Chinese scripture is Kumārajīva's translation of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (402 CE) in the received edition, divided into thirty-two chapters after Crown Prince Zhaoming, punctuated by us. Differences from the Taishō edition are marked in the book. The scripture is read directly from our corpus and never passes through the model.

The English scripture is F. Max Müller's 1894 translation from the Sanskrit (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 49), public domain, divided into the same thirty-two sections. The simplified and traditional Chinese editions are entered and proofread separately, never machine-converted.

Commentary sources

The book quotes two commentators only: Huineng's Diamond Sutra Oral Instructions (Tang; with the Explanations, and the afterword Luo Shi wrote for it in the Song) and Yefu Daochuan's Diamond Sutra Verses and remarks (Song). Both are public-domain Chinese texts that we entered and proofread ourselves. In the English edition they are quoted in the original Chinese with an English rendering marked as such.

Every commentary quotation in the book is checked character by character against our corpus by a program; any quote that fails is deleted whole, never rewritten.

Review

The plain explanation, glossary, commentary selections and key points for all thirty-two chapters are fixed content: generated by the same process, read chapter by chapter by people, then frozen. This part is still a draft: it has not yet been signed off by a named reviewer. When it is, we will say so here. Errors are handled through the public corrections record.

Who we are

1sutra is made by a very small editorial team and signed “the 1sutra editors”; no individual's name appears anywhere. We are not monastics, not teachers, we represent no temple and work for none. We make this for one reason: so that the scripture lands on the reader's own situation, in a book they can keep.

The role of AI

The parts written for you (the preface, the outline, the seven readings, a reading and a question for every chapter, the closing, and the answers to your questions) are generated by AI from your own account. Its role is that of an editor and fellow reader, not an authority. The fixed content is written by the same process and then reviewed by people. See the AI statement for details.

Public corrections

Misreadings reported from My Book are listed here once confirmed. There are no entries yet.

Contact

hello@1sutra.com. If you cannot afford the book, write to us too.