Korean AI robot ordains as Buddhist monk

Meet Robot Monk ‘Gabi’: South Korea’s First Humanoid Robot Which Is Learning Spirituality

• 

  Can statues be monks, too? No.

  South Korea’s first robot monk joins Buddhist ceremony; internet split over AI in religion About 130 cm tall and dressed in traditional Buddhist robes, Gabi took part in an ordination ceremony alongside senior monks at Jogye Temple.
• Humanoid robot monk ‘Gabi’ introduced at Seoul South Korean Buddhist temple, triggers online debate Humanoid robots are often designed to assist people in workplaces like factories, warehouses, and offices. But in South Korea, one such robot is now stepping into an entirely different role—that of a Buddhist monk. According to Reuters, a temple in Seoul recently introduced its first humanoid robot monk named "Gabi" ahead of the Buddha’s birthday celebrations, sparking curiosity and debate online.

Robots can't be Buddhist monks

Bow to me, Bar-buh-ruh. Pay respect to the robe. - Well, if I have to. Who ordained you?

.

From a Theravada perspective, this would not be a real monk for various reasons right off the top of one's head for anyone familiar with the Vinaya Collection. For one, it's not human, and Buddhist ordination is reserved for human beings: no reptilians (naga-shapeshifters) allowed. At least one nāga tried to ordain and when found out was disrobed. It is also said that no pandakas ("eunuchs") are allowed. Is the robot Gabi neutered? If so, it could not be ordained. This is tragic because pandaka does not really mean "eunuch" as we understand the word in the West but culturally does include perverted eunuchs in the East. A pandaka is a sexually perverted person, more of an out-of-control pansexual, bisexual, homosexual, and possibly a libertine heterosexual unable by nature to control his/her sexual impulses. The literature includes mention of hermaphrodites, crossdressing transvestites, transsexuals, and those exhibiting aberrant, non-normative behaviors as defined in an ancient subcontinental context. This would seem to include kathoeys ("ladyboys") in Buddhist South and Southeast Asia.

• Bomhard - The two meanings of the Pali term "pandaka" | PDF | Pali | Indian Religions
• Buddhism and LGBTQ - Wikipedia

The Eunuch (Pandaka) Festival of India is where all of these aberrations are on full exhibition for the public to fear, ridicule, and condemn. Being tricked, induced, or forced to participate in homosexual prostitution or to undergo castration (or those born asexual or intersexual), many young males act out and lead a life of debauchery, abusing alcohol and drugs and engaging in sexual misconduct. It is in this context that the ill-defined term pandaka should be understood. Instead, due to Western influence, it has come to mean a male without a penis -- for whatever reason -- cannot be ordained as a monk (bhikkhu). It might be possible to become a novice (samerera) depending on the elder monk administering the precepts, so a person could look like a monk and live in a monastery yet not actually be a fully ordained "monk." It seems safe to imagine that all of this applies to nuns (bhikkhunis) and female novices (samaneris). The upshot is that robots -- oddly, unless they're sexbots -- would not be eligible for true ordination. Any monk or monastic Sangha might nevertheless ordain an AI bot at their discretion, but would it really be valid? Not likely. Third, the purpose of ordination, at least in the Theravada tradition, is to bring suffering and rebirth to an end. Do robots suffer? Are they reborn? We may imagine analogues to these unpleasant emotions and the forced wandering on through samsara, but neither would seem to apply to inanimate objects, particularly of the nonhuman variety. Still, one could use sophistry and philosophy to make some argument in favor of a robotic sangha. In Mahayana, many say the goal is neither enlightenment nor liberation but to save all other beings first. Would a robot ever be able to do that? Maybe, if it trained on the texts, commentaries, disciplinary code, higher doctrine, history, and miscellaneous human issues (feelings, psychology, etiquette, customs, cultural sensitivities, existential, ontological, theological questions, etc.) No doubt that by the measure of the Turing test, robots will be able to pass eventually. Do they already "feel," are they already "conscious"? That depends on how humans define the terms or "feel" about it. Surely, an argument can be made that the simplest robot, the lowly smoke detector, is conscious and has a feeling. How? It "knows" when there is smoke and can say so by being triggered to send out an alarming call. And how does it do that? It does it by feeling (sensing) the smoke. If one buys this argument then a car, computer, and mainframe are much more advanced and able to act in their environment. If they could only act in programmed ways, that might not be much, but if they could "learn," that would be something. Yes to robot monks? No.

Korean Buddhist monks in South Korean Buddhist Temples provide serene...

Can a dryad ordain? No.

However, there's a slight conundrum. Long ago, Thai Theravada Buddhist monks in the Forest Tradition began to "ordain" trees. Why? They did it to save them. Loggers and poachers were cutting everything down, and they could not be induced to knock it off. So the local sangha came up with a brilliant solution. Do a ceremony, don the tree (or dryad) with robes, and magically no faithful karma-fearing logger or poacher dared touch it. The motivation was good, the solution was problematic, but it worked. The trees and forests and Thai environment were saved, just barely. But it did open up a loophole, did it not? If living, organic, old growth trees can (not because they themselves are possessed of self-view but possibly because the tree spirits inhabiting them are). After all, trees are conscious, sentient, organic lifeforms. Because a tree is much less overtly responsive than a boop-boop-bee-doop robot being, some might argue that robots are much more human like and deserving of ordination. That's ridiculous because no one is ordaining or professing to ordain robots for their benefit. There's a selfish human motive for doing it. Perhaps we should wait until AI is sufficiently advanced that a Robo-Buddha arises among the legions of chips, plastic, and metal automatons, and then that Robo-B can set up rules for ordination and teach them the way to mechanical-nirvana.

Bar-buh-ruh, Bar-buh-ruh! Where are you?

This did not begin in our era. The first robot monk is actually over 500-years-old. How is that possible? Robots have only been around since that episode of The Twilight Zone where that guy built that one in his basement that could not pronounce his wife's name correctly: "Bar-buh-ruh, Bar-buh-ruh." No, the first humanoid robot monk was Catholic and was composed of gears and levers, according to NPR. Fortunately, it still exists in a museum, or who would believe it.

The problem is bigger than "Gabi" (the Korean robot monk), of which there seems to be a swarm already and not a singular example, because in 2016, there was already Venerable Xian'er:

Robot monk seeks to merge Buddhism and cutting edge tech

Xian'er: I'm a cartoon character come to "life."

Popular Mechanics) Buddhism is increasingly trying to connect with the modern world. Mahayana monks across China have taken this word ("modernity") to heart, and their latest effort is Xian'er, an adorable robot that lives in a monastery answering questions and chanting mantras.

Xian'er first came to "life" as a cartoon character drawn by Master Xianfan of the Longquan Temple on the outskirts of Beijing, China.

The temple is over 500 years old but a decade ago, Longquan Temple was in disrepair. Xianfan wrote for Chinese websites before becoming a monk and found that Buddhism enhanced his natural creativity.

The Xian'er character gave life to the Temple, which eventually added an animation studio. The Xian'er robot monk, built in conjunction with [blank], is the Temple's furthest extension of its brand yet. More

• Mirror Now; The Independent; David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, April 29, 2016; Ashley Wells and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY

Gay pervert or eunuch? What's a pandaka?

Gaga the Pandaka: moment in queer history

As is well known, the Pali term pandaka has two different meanings. The first is "eunuch." This meaning is not in doubt.

• 

  Italian militant, Second Italo-Ethiopian War

  [Though what most individuals in the West imagine a eunuch is may well be in doubt since it has more to do with testicles and testosterone production than the presence or absence of a penis after castration, which most think means "penis removal." Removal of the male gonads or testes, such as in the case of Italian Catholic castratos, will produce a "eunuch" with an intact penis but not a means of producing adequate male hormones.]
• [What are testosterone, steroid hormones, and synthetic steroids? They are androgenic or masculinizing compounds, present and important in the development and of both males and females, is what makes a person "virile" (Pali viriya "energetic, effortful, industrious, heroic"). Although androgens are commonly thought of only as male sex hormones, females also have them, but at lower levels: They function in libido and sexual arousal. Androgens are the precursors to estrogens in all humans.]
• [My Old Man's a Fatso: Hey, Dad, get TestoGreens Max! But it's his aromatase. Where's his saw palmetto extract?]

Castration as punishment, 16th century

Indeed, related terms are found in several Indo-Aryan languages (cf. Turner 1966;435, no. 7717, panda- [m.] "a eunuch, weakling"; Monier-Williams 1899:580; Childers 1875;328):

Sanskrit: panda-h (m.) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandaka-h (m.) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandaga-h (m.) (probably) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandra-h (m.) "a eunuch, impotent man"; pandraka-h (m.) "a eunuch, impotent man."

Pali: pandaka- (m.) "a eunuch, weakling"; pandika (f.).

Prakrit: pamda-, pamdaga-, pamdaya (m.) "a eunuch, weakling."

The Indo-Aryan terms are usually taken to be loanwords from Dravidian (cf. Mayrhofer 1956-1980.II:196; Burrow 1973:384):

Tamil pen "woman," pentu "woman, wife," pentan, pentakan, pentakam, "hermaphrodite, eunuch," pennan "effeminate man," peti "hermaphrodite";

Malayalam pen "a female, especially a female child, girl," pennan "effeminate'';

Kannada pen, pennu, penda "female, woman," pentana "state of being a female, feminine character or behavior";

Telugu penti "woman," pedi "eunuch"; etc. (cf. Burrow-Emeneau 1984:388, no. 4395).

Second definition

That there is a second meaning is also not in dispute. However, what, exactly, that meaning is has been the source of controversy.

According to one interpretation, the second meaning of pandak is "male homosexual." This cannot possibly be correct and is based upon a critical misinterpretation of a key [Theravada Buddhist] text, namely, the story about a pandaka who was ordained as a [Buddhist monk or] Bhikkhu [1] and who, overcome by sexual desire, went around trying to persuade other Bhikkhus and lay persons to sodomize him.

• [Indonesian Orang Pendek means "short person" or "little man," a kind of cryptid Bigfoot creature or bipedal primate from the remote, forested mountains of the island of Sumatra.]

After several lay persons did so, the Sangha [2] was criticized for allowing such a person to be ordained as a Bhikkhu.

When this came to the Buddha's attention, He forbade pandakas from being ordained and ordered the pandaka in question to be expelled from the Sangha. [He also set up a rule not to ordain pandakas in the future and that if someone had already been ordained and was found to be a pandaka, that person was to be immediately expelled. See Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender edited by UCSB Prof. José Ignacio Cabezón for more details on this incident.]

As noted by Kelvin Wong (2005), it is clear from the Pali Tipitaka [3] that the Buddha was aware of the difference between eunuchs, hermaphrodites, and homosexuals.

More: The Two Meanings of the Pali Term "Pandaka" | PDF | Pali | Indian Religions by Allan R. Bomhard

FOOTNOTES

1. A Buddhist Monk. A Buddhist Nun is called "Bhikkhuni."

2. The Buddhist Monastic Order.

3. The canonical scriptures of Theravadin Buddhism, preserved in the Middle Indo-Aryan language now known as "Pali," the original meaning of which was simply "text." These scriptures are divided into three-"baskets" (ti-pitaka): (1) the disciplinary rules for Monks and Nuns (Vinaya Pitaka); (2) the discourses of the Buddha and several of His chief disciples (Sutta Pitaka); and (3) the "higher doctrine" (Abhidhamma Pitaka) [or the Dharma explained in ultimate terms].

• Open-access under the terms of creativecommons.org/license/by/4.0)
• Allan R. Bomhard, 2021 (scribd.com); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly