Dr. Mori explores Buddhism through his perspective as a robot engineer. He even postulates that robots have the buddha-nature. He confronts Buddhist themes such as the notion of ego as if they were engineering problems and comes to surprisingly clear resolutions. Along the way, he poses many interesting questions that perhaps only a robot engineer would think of. Why do we have two nostrils -- not just one? Why don't we have "earlids" similar to eyelids? His inquiries are highly engaging.
Artificial intelligence is the most discussed and arguably the most powerful technology in the world today. The very rapid development of the technology, and its power to change the world, and perhaps even ourselves, calls for a serious and systematic thinking about its ethical and social implications, as well as how its development should be directed. The present book offers a new perspective on how such a direction should take place, based on insights obtained from the age-old tradition of Buddhist teaching. The book argues that any kind of ethical guidelines for AI and robotics must combine two kinds of excellence together, namely the technical and the ethical. The machine needs to aspire toward the status of ethical perfection, whose idea was laid out in detail by the Buddha more than two millennia ago. It is this standard of ethical perfection, called “machine enlightenment,” that gives us a view toward how an effective ethical guideline should be made. This ideal is characterized by the realization that all things are interdependent, and by the commitment to alleviate all beings from suffering, in other words by two of the quintessential Buddhist values. The book thus contributes to a concern for a norm for ethical guidelines for AI that is both practical and cross-cultural.
The last decade has seen dramatic advances in artificial intelligence and robotics technology, raising tough questions that need to be addressed. The Robot Will See You Now considers how Christians can respond to these issues - and flourish - in the years ahead. Contributions from a number of international experts, including editors John Wyatt and Stephen Williams, explore a range of social and ethical issues raised by recent advances in AI and robotics. Considering the role of artificial intelligence in areas such as medicine, employment and security, the book looks at how AI is perceived as well as its actual impact on human interactions and relationships. Alongside are theological responses from an orthodox Christian perspective. Looking at how artificial intelligence and robotics may be considered in the light of Christian doctrine, The Robot Will See You Now offers a measured, thoughtful view on how Christians can understand and prepare for the challenges posted by the development of AI. This is a book for anyone who is interested in learning more about how AI and robots have advanced in recent years, and anyone who has wondered how Christian teaching relates to artificial intelligence. Whatever your level of technical knowledge, The Robot Will See You Now will give you a thorough understanding of AI and equip you to respond to the challenges it poses with confidence and faith.
Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.
From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy “A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The Economist • Outside • Foreign Affairs Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/FAULKER AWARD WINNER • The acclaimed author of The Swimmers and When the Emperor Was Divine tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” a century ago in this "understated masterpiece ... that unfolds with great emotional power" (San Francisco Chronicle). In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.
A fresh translation of the classical Buddhist poetry of Saigyō, whose aesthetics of nature, love, and sorrow came to epitomize the Japanese poetic tradition. Saigyō, the Buddhist name of Fujiwara no Norikiyo (1118–1190), is one of Japan’s most famous and beloved poets. He was a recluse monk who spent much of his life wandering and seeking after the Buddhist way. Combining his love of poetry with his spiritual evolution, he produced beautiful, lyrical lines infused with a Buddhist perception of the world. Gazing at the Moon presents over one hundred of Saigyō’s tanka—traditional 31-syllable poems—newly rendered into English by renowned translator Meredith McKinney. This selection of poems conveys Saigyō’s story of Buddhist awakening, reclusion, seeking, enlightenment, and death, embodying the Japanese aesthetic ideal of mono no aware—to be moved by sorrow in witnessing the ephemeral world.
An End to Suffering is a deeply original and provocative book about the Buddha's life and his influence throughout history, told in the form of the author's search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant shadow. Mishra describes his restless journeys into India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, among Islamists and the emerging Hindu middle class, looking for this most enigmatic of religious figures, exploring the myths and places of the Buddha's life, and discussing Western explorers' "discovery" of Buddhism in the nineteenth century. He also considers the impact of Buddhist ideas on such modern politicians as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. As he reflects on his travels and on his own past, Mishra shows how the Buddha wrestled with problems of personal identity, alienation, and suffering in his own, no less bewildering, times. In the process Mishra discovers the living meaning of the Buddha's teaching, in the world and for himself. The result is the most three-dimensional, convincing book on the Buddha that we have.
The Heart Sutra is the most widely read, chanted, and copied text in East Asian Buddhism. Here Frederik L. Schodt explores his lifelong fascination with the sutra: its mesmerizing mantra, its ancient history, the “emptiness theory, and the way it is used around the world as a metaphysical tool to overcome chaos and confusion and reach a new understanding of reality--a perfection of wisdom. Schodt's journey takes him to caves in China, American beats declaiming poetry, speculations into the sutra's true origins, and even a robot Avalokiteśvara at a Kyoto temple.
