01 · Sources
An approved, documented catalog.
The collector checks public feeds from Buddhist press, Zen publications, official Sōtō and Rinzai organizations, practice centers, Japanese religious newspapers, research institutes, and head temples selected by the Koan Commons owner.
Official RSS, Atom, XML sitemaps, and iCalendar feeds are preferred. A publisher-scoped news index is used only when an approved source exposes no dependable feed. Sources without a lawful, stable public endpoint remain visible in the source ledger but do not silently fail the entire edition.
02 · Zen eligibility
A direct connection is required.
An item must materially concern Zen Buddhism, Chan, Thiền, a Zen lineage or teacher in that capacity, a Zen temple or institution, Zen history or scholarship, Zen art or literature, or a clearly Zen-focused public issue.
Generic mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism, wellness, spirituality, yoga, and lifestyle material are left out unless the supplied source metadata establishes that direct Zen connection. False negatives are preferable to filling the edition with broadly adjacent material.
03 · Teachings, News, and Events
Three categories, serving different needs.
Teachings covers dharma talks, teisho, podcasts, lectures, essays, translations, poems, and practice commentary. News covers reporting, announcements, obituaries, reviews, institutional developments, publications, scholarship, and public controversies. Events covers scheduled retreats, sesshins, talks, workshops, ceremonies, conferences, exhibitions, courses, and livestreams.
An event announcement stays in Events when its date and attendance details are the primary reader value. One link never appears in both categories.
04 · Excerpts and translation
Short, English, and tied to the source.
Zen Today publishes a source-provided excerpt of no more than 45 words and links to the original site; it does not republish full teachings or generate replacement commentary. The collector uses public titles, feed excerpts, supplied dates, explicit event fields, and item-level image metadata.
Where a publisher supplies an item image in its feed, a small, uncropped thumbnail links to the original page. Images load directly from the source; supplied image credits are retained. When an article image is unavailable, a verified organization logo or website icon may appear instead. Text links remain available if neither image loads.
Japanese titles and supported facts are translated into English before publication. Japanese items are held back when the translation service is unavailable rather than displayed untranslated. Known subscriptions and paywalls are labeled, and no access control is bypassed.
05 · Publication safety
A weekly edition with a memory.
The scheduled collection runs Mondays at 7:00 a.m. in America/Chicago. Two UTC triggers cover daylight and standard time; only the trigger resolving to the intended local hour proceeds. Teachings and News use a 14-day lookback. Events may be announced up to 120 days earlier and can remain until their scheduled date, up to a 270-day horizon.
URL normalization, title/source/event-date checks, bounded downloads, timeouts, limited retries, concurrency limits, and an atomic run lock protect the collection. A partial or empty run never erases the last known good edition.
Limits and corrections
Useful, never comprehensive.
- A source can be missed when it has no usable public feed, blocks automated access, or omits the detail needed to establish Zen relevance.
- Publication dates and event times are shown only when the source supplies them reliably. Missing dates are not silently made current.
- Translation and classification can be wrong. The relevance score helps select incoming links; listings appear newest first by publication date (or first collection date when undated). The score is not a truth score, spiritual judgment, endorsement, or publisher quality grade.
- Broken links, duplicates, translation errors, and unsupported claims can be corrected by the Koan Commons owner without changing the publisher’s original work.