The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Sekishi]

I have to agree with Shingen, here. They are still part of you, Sekishi and always will be.

For me, I'd hold on to Growler.

Thank you both from the bottom of my heart. You are absolutely right.

I brought this question to the tea party this afternoon, and also mentioned the possibility of fixing up this old bear to donate to one of our local charity shops.

Fugen said, "it looks like you have your Ango work cut out for you."

How immediately "right" that seemed! So Growler will get his old stuffing taken out, get a good bath, get re-stuffed, and sent out into the world where he can help someone else find joy. He may be an aggregate form, but there is no need to hurry along his dissolution.

This was an important lesson for me. Thank you all.

Deep bows,
Sekishi
#sattoday

[Kyonin]

I've been thinking it is time to let go of Growler and my own mother: to bury him with full ceremony, incense, the inkin, and the heart sutra.

Hi Sekishi,

First of all, thank you for trusting us with this.

I would go for a proper funeral and send off. I would thank him deeply for all the moments and memories. Yes, incense and the Heart Sutra sound appropriate.

When you do it, let us know. I'd like to offer some incense too

Gassho,

Kyonin
#SatToday

[Jundo]

Hi Sekishi,

First of all, thank you for trusting us with this.

I would go for a proper funeral and send off. I would thank him deeply for all the moments and memories. Yes, incense and the Heart Sutra sound appropriate.

When you do it, let us know. I'd like to offer some incense too

Gassho,

Kyonin
#SatToday

Yes. Sounds to me as if Growler is family, and much of your mother's love is in his life. Or, if he can get restuffed and sent to a new life, that is lovely too.

Actually, there is a long history of Buddhist memorial services expressing gratitude for the "things" in our life.

Kimono-makers laid their old needles to rest during the "hari-kuyo" needle festival at Buddhist temples all over Japan on Thursday, sticking them into soft chunks of tofu bean curd to thank them for their hard work.

Japan's throwaway culture can rival that of any Western country, but at the Sensoji temple in central Tokyo, dozens of women in jewel-coloured kimonos honoured their broken tools with the 400-year-old rite.

"I came here to say thank you," said Keiko Kurukata, a 73-year-old kimono-maker surrounded by her four apprentices.

"We prayed to improve our kimono-making skills," one of the apprentices added.

Women crowded around a big slab of tofu spiked with a multitude of colourful pins in front of the temple, purifying themselves with incense, praying and carefully adding their own needles as a group of monks chanted in the background.

http://wkdfestivalsaijiki.blogspot.j...hari-kuyo.html

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Sekishi]

Giving this thread rebirth with a new robot - a cute little monk robot:

cuddly_monk2.jpg

http://shanghaiist.com/2015/10/07/robot_monk_knows_all.php

I like that he looks like one of my favorite comic book characters - Tintin (so much so that it CANNOT be an accident):

Tintin_and_Snowy.jpg

Gassho,
Sekishi (and Tintin and Snowy)
#sattoday

[Byokan]

Haha Sekishi,

he looks like a grown-up Cartman to me:
Eric-Cartman-eric-cartman-303732_207_228.jpg

I'm curious to know what ever became of Growler?

Gassho
Lisa
sat today

[Roland]

Artificial Intelligence, Robots and Buddha Nature

Anthropologist Genevieve Bell analyses the fear about robots and artificial intelligence. Of course, this fear tells more about humans than about robots. She claims that what we fear most, is being irrelevant. Something to meditate about. The article also mentions a book by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori called The Buddha in the Robot, where he suggests that robots would be better Buddhists than humans because they are capable of infinite invocations - but I guess he has more subtle arguments than that.

Gassho,

Roland
SatToday

[Hoko]

Nice find!
Thanks for sharing. Cool read!
Gassho,
K2
#SatToday

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

[Jakuden]

This is fascinating, thank you Roland! A theme very familiar to Trekkies

(BTW, I just noticed there are a lot of Star Wars emojis but none for Star Trek. Even my iPhone has a "Live Long and Prosper" emoji. What's up with that?)

Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday

[Kaishin]

I for one welcome our robot overlords. If they are better for the universe, I see no reason why they shouldn't exterminate the human species.

[Jundo]

I should mention the other thread we had about Robots and Buddhism awhile back, including a Korean movie in which a Robot becomes the next Buddha, Japanese temples that hold memorial services for old robots, and more ...

Of Buddhabots and Dharmadroids ...

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?13248-Of-Buddhabots-and-Dharmadroids&highlight=robot+buddha+korean

I must also mention (I never fail to do so) that Tsukuba Japan, our town, is the robot capital of Japan! More robot factories than you can count with one of our three super-computers in research facilities!

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Jundo]

I will just give a bump to this old thread ... just saw this beautifully shot real life love story ...

http://money.cnn.com/mostly-human/i-love-you-bot/

It was hours outside of Paris, in a small village where the buildings are centuries old, that I attended my first French engagement party.
A young woman named Lilly greeted me when I arrived. She was glowing as she set the table with cheese, crackers and French pastries. We were surrounded by picture frames of her and the token of her affection. She poured champagne, and together we toasted her engagement ... to a robot.

To each there own. So long as it is love between a consenting adult human and a consenting adult robot, nothing wrong with it. I know my wife sometimes wishes that I had an "off" switch, and that she could store me in the shed.

Also, this ongoing project here in Tsukuba Science City, the robot research capital of Japan ... they are going to build this but 5 minutes from Treeleaf Tsukuba ...

Japan could become home to the world’s greatest retirement community if this planned “city of robots” in Japan is built.

Start-up firm Cyberdyne, Inc. has announced it plans to build a “city of robots” that includes hospitals and assisted living facilities.

... The development will be built in Tsukuba, a city of roughly 223,000 in northern Japan where Cyberdyne Inc. keeps its headquarters. No stranger to great leaps forward, the area is also home the Tsukuba Science City, a planned science park with offices of more than 60 national research institutes and two national universities taking up about half of Japan’s public research and development budget. So the robots should fit right in.

...

Besides the hospital and senior citizens homes filled with robotic helpers, the city will include a robot-friendly plaza and park. No word yet on how much a home in this techno-thriller come-to-life might cost, but if you do get to be part of this grand social experiment that will give us our first look at how homosapiens will eventually interact with a cybernetic citizenry, try to be good ambassadors for the human race.

https://www.inverse.com/article/1156...ntsukuba-japan

I may end up there someday. Better than the shed.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Kyousui]

Buddhists in Second Life

Great to see this thread! Buddhists are definitely preparing to hop into the cyber life. I'm interestedly looking at https://my.secondlife.com/groups/7e4...7-542abf880eb2.

[Jundo]

A little more "Tsuku-bragging" if I may ...

They just got this amazing experiment up and running this month at the KEK particle collider 5 minutes from our Zendo at Treeleaf Tsukuba. I think the name says it all ...

A Search for New Physics - The Belle II Experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGCrrgXSEOk

To make a long story short, they are looking for discoveries to supplement or partially replace the "standard model" of particles so to help explain Dark Matter and such.

KEK, the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, is one of the world's leading accelerator science research laboratories and largest particle physics laboratory in Japan, situated in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture, using high-energy particle beams and synchrotron light sources to probe the fundamental properties of matter. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, KEK is advancing our understanding of the universe that surrounds us, its mechanisms and their control.

And you thought the only search in Tsukuba for the origin of the universe was happening in our Zendo?!?

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Jundo]

Another little mention in the news of Tsukuba Robot City ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7xhBRK_a2I

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Tom]

Does a dogbot have Buddha nature?
Tom
Sat Today