Buddha supported crowd intelligence!(Evidence we could find within Pali Nikaya)
Well, of course I’m sure he didn’t say it exactly, but I think the fact that we could find various anecdotes of Buddha praising his lay followers and bikkus within Pali Nikaya supports my claim. We could all agree that most of his followers, if not all, did not reached the depth of the insights he had. But there were quite many incidents the Buddha had approved of the understanding of his followers, and many of them were not arhats at the moment. Here, we could carefully conclude that the part of their consciousness were pointing at close enough direction towards nirvana. And here is an excerpt from mahaparanibbana sutta for you to consider –
…
A third time, the Blessed One said, “If even a single monk has any doubt or perplexity concerning the Buddha, Dhamma, or Sangha, the path or the practice, ask. Don’t later regret that ‘The Teacher was face-to-face with us, but we didn’t bring ourselves to cross-question him in his presence.'”
A third time, the monks were silent.
Then the Blessed One addressed the monks, “Now, if it’s out of respect for the Teacher that you don’t ask, let a friend inform a friend.”
When this was said, the monks were silent.
Then Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “It’s amazing. It’s marvelous. I’m confident that, in this community of monks, there is not even a single monk who has any doubt or perplexity concerning the Buddha, Dhamma, or Sangha, the path or the practice.”
“You, Ananda, speak out of confidence, while there is knowledge in the Tathagata that, in this community of monks, there is not even a single monk who has any doubt or perplexity concerning the Buddha, Dhamma, or Sangha, the path or the practice. Of these 500 monks, the most backward is a stream-winner, not destined for the planes of deprivation, headed to self-awakening for sure.”
Then the Blessed One addressed the monks, “Now, then, monks, I exhort you: All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.” Those were the Tathagata’s last words.
…
(sutta translation provided by Access to Insight)
Hmm
I happened to breeze through http://aliceimwachtraumland.com/ today, and something just hit me! This lucid dream stuff has been around some time, so I’m sure there might be quite a lot of information available on it. Anyway, my thought was – maybe we can monitor brain activities on people who are in the process of gaining more control while dreaming and see if that has any similarity to the gradual liberation from avija we experience by practicing vipasana.
Feel free!
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
It doesn’t even need to be related to buddhism; as long as the topic is related to the well-being of the public, it is welcome.
Idea behind this project
Before I begin, I must make it clear that the goal of Mahayana Buddhism is to share the ultimate degree of liberation and happiness with everyone, by any means necessary. The final goal is the elimination of the difference between buddhas and those who are bound to samsara, which would result in a complete disappearance of Buddhism itself. If every sentient beings are totally liberated from all possibilities of suffering, that would be the end of Buddhism. The ultimate purpose of Buddhists are not to have Buddhism spread all over the world, but to create a world which Buddhism would never again have any place for its existence.
All living beings depend on other living beings in order to exist. We always get some kind of help from each other, may it be direct or indirect. We are a one body, separated only by the artificial lines drawn by our surface consciousness. Mahayana Buddhism starts from this understanding, and conclude that we must share happiness with all living beings. Strangely, as much as they speak of this interconnected-ness, not many recent practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism seriously rely on each other in developing the methods of sharing happiness and liberation.
We live in an era of ever-increasing network bandwidth. It seems to be only natural that many phenomenons in our society perform better when taking advantage of distributed model. I have been pondering on how to make the spiritual liberation of Buddhism easily available for everyone since 1998. Fifteen years later, while a was reading about open-source polywell machine project, the answer finally came to me. It is time for Buddhism to turn open-source. When one consider the historical facts of Mahayana Buddhism, the tradition had always been in line with the open-source philosophy. It is due to the religious authoritarianism within the Buddhist community that grew like a cancer during recent years that made the “open-source Buddhism” difficult to happen. We must overcome this disease. With your help, only with your help, we may have hope.
We must take advantage of the crowd intelligence on coming up with the easier methods of theoretical understanding of Buddhism, more practical practice methods to get awakening, and the most effective way of sharing the awakening. The first teaching of the Lotus sutra conclude with the following statement: in the end, all are equal and selfless. I will leave you to determine the true meaning behind the above statement, because you, not any other person in the world, know best.
왜 새로운 형태의 포교가 필요한가
지금은 2013년.
인류는 전례 없는 상호 연결을 경험하고 있습니다.
이미 선진국들은 대다수의 인구가 인터넷에 매일 상당시간 접속하며 살아가고 있으며,
뇌와 컴퓨터의 연결(Brain Computer Interface)의 발달에 힘입어,
한두세대 안에 전 인류가 의식의 상당부분이 실시간으로 연결된 상태에서 살아갈 것입니다.
불교가 2500년이 넘게 전파되어 왔음에도 불구하고
최상의 깨달음을 성취한 자들의 숫자가 극히 적은것은
내용의 빈약함 보다는
전달 방법의 문제가 크다고 볼 수도 있습니다.
불교의 핵심을 좀더 쉽게, 여러 사람들에게 오랫동안 전달해주기 위해
처음에 구전되어 오던 가르침이
입사귀에 쓰여졌고
활자의 형태로 기록되었으며
현재는 2진 정보로 변환되어 있습니다.
불법이 전달 방식이 여러 이유 때문에
음성에서 문자로 발달하였고,
이제 BCI가 충분히 발달하는 시기가 도래하였으니
뇌에서 축출된 디지털 데이터의 형태로의 진전이 필요하다고 생각합니다.
수처작주라 하지 않았습니까
주어진 환경을 조화롭게 잘 사용하여 불법을 전하는것이
불은에 조금이라도 보답하는 길이라 믿습니다.
빠른 속도로 변화하는 세상에 살고 있으니
그 변화에 실시간으로 적응할 수 있는 포교방법이 필요하다고 생각합니다.
현재 존재하는 다층 인공신경망, BCI, 데이터 마이닝 기술수준 정도 만으로도
상당한 수준의 포교 시스템 구현이 가능하다고 생각합니다.
인터넷이 대체로 단방향에서 양방향 소통으로 변화해 가고 있으니
네트워크를 이용한 불교의 포교도 쌍방향으로 변화가 가능한 시스템이어야 효율적이지 않을까요?
깨달은자, 인공지능, 이웃들이 시시각각으로 상호작용하며 발달해 가는 오부대중을 조심스레 그려 봅니다.
남자 수행자, 여자 수행자, 남자 재가자, 여자 재가자, 그리고 디지털 인격.
앞으로 다가올 모든 부정적인 사건들에 조금이나마 도움이 되었으면 합니다.
가슴속 밑바닥 부터,
불법이 영원하길 바랍니다.
행복하세요
The starting point – new definition of enlightenment
There are so many ways to define the ‘enlightenment’ or bodhi, and most of them appear way too abstract to those who are not deeply engaged in Buddhism. I seek a totally new approach, a new approach custom-made for engineering. The definition I try to introduce here will not going to be ‘stable’. It may not be possible to have even a concrete definition. Languages are bound to be impermanent, as well as the population who use them. I believe a plasticity needs to be given to the definition to function well over time.
The new definition of bodhi would be maintained by few steps. First, a group of volunteers would upload their daily brain activities to servers via BCI links, may it be invasive or non-invasive. Second, a data mining algorithm to capture the ‘tendency’ of bodhi would be developed. Third, the above algorithm would scan the gathered data to come up with the digital definition of bodhi, in real time.
please share your thoughts
this blog is dedicated to make enlightenment(that of buddhism) as easily available as possible for general public.
open nirvana 