Ask the Faith

Name what is troubling you — in your own words, as you would say it aloud — and eight scriptures answer in turn. The Bhagavad Gita. The Dhammapada and Sutta Nipata. Guru Granth Sahib. The Holy Bible. The Holy Qur'an. The Jain Sutras. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The Tao Te Ching. Each one replies in its own words, on that very thing. Not a summary of what a tradition teaches, not a paraphrase, and nothing written by a machine — a real passage, quoted exactly, with the chapter and verse given so you can find it and read the whole of it for yourself. 1,700 passages, every one checked word for word against its source. WHAT IT DOES • Ask — say what is on your mind and read eight answers side by side. When a tradition has nothing close to say on that subject, it is named as silent rather than given something that only half fits. • Today — a theme for the day, and eight passages on it. • Topics — eighty-three of them, from grief and money to patience and doubt. • Open a book — the old practice of sortilege: open a scripture at random and read what is in front of you. • Holy days — a shared calendar of sixty-eight observances across all eight traditions, so you can see what each is keeping, and when. • Keep — set a passage aside and it is still there when you come back. WHAT IT IS NOT It does not interpret, advise, counsel or explain. It selects; it does not speak. No tradition is placed above another — they are listed alphabetically by the name of the book, so that no one of them is always first. HOW IT IS BUILT Everything works with no connection. The whole library is on your device: nothing you type is sent anywhere, and there is no account to make and no advertising. Visits are counted with Google Analytics, which never sees what you type or which passages you read; the privacy notice explains exactly what it does see. Seven of the eight traditions are quoted from public-domain translations: K. T. Telang's Gita (1882), the King James Bible, Pickthall's Qur'an (1930), Max Muller and Fausboll on the Pali texts (1881), Jacobi and Jaini on the Jain Sutras, James Legge's Tao Te Ching (1891), and Sant Singh Khalsa's Guru Granth Sahib. Passages from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are quoted from their Complete Works, © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry.