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Robotic Buddhist priest delivers sermons in Japan

Could you have faith in a robot priest? Check out this enlightenment, with a futuristic twist. Coming soon to a temple near you.
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A temple in Kyoto is combining ancient teaching and futuristic robotic technology with the hopes of preserving and stimulating interest in Buddhism.

Meet “Mindar.

Created by a team led by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist and professor of intelligent robotics at Osaka University, Mindar is a robotic priest. The androgynous monk is over six feet tall, weighs close to 70 pounds, and is now delivering Buddhist sermons in Japan.

Reached via email by The Washington Post, Kohei Ogawa, an associate professor at Osaka University who helped design Mindar, said researchers’ goal was to redesign a Buddhist statue using modern robotics technology. The Washington Post reports the result was a $1 million collaboration between the temple and Osaka University in which researchers decided that Mindar should channel Kannon Bodhisattva, the Buddhist deity of mercy.

“This robot will never die; it will just keep updating itself and evolving,” Japanese Priest Tensho Goto says in a quote published in The Japan Times. “That’s the beauty of a robot. It can store knowledge forever and limitlessly.”

In Japan, Buddhist priests have been warning for more than a decade that their form of Buddhism is facing extinction. The Japan Times reports Goto hopes Kodaiji’s robot priest will be able to reach younger generations in a way traditional monks can’t.

“Young people probably think a temple is a place for funerals or weddings,” he said, “it might be difficult to relate to fuddy-duddy priests like me, but hopefully the robot is a fun way to bridge that gap. We want people to see the robot and think about the essence of Buddhism.”

And Mindar, who delivers sermons inside the 400-year-old Kodaiji temple, isn’t the first reported robot priest.

There was BlessU-2, the blessing robot, who in 2017 was part of an installation by the Protestant Church during the summer at the World Reformation Exhibition in Wittenberg, Germany.

And a Buddhist temple near Beijing developed the two feet high, saffron-yellow robe-wearing robot monk Xian’er that could chant mantras and explain basic tenets of the religion.

Perhaps as Vatican officials debate a proposal that attempts to ease a shortage of Catholic priests in the Amazon that would allow older, married men to be ordained, a Catholic robot priest will emerge next.

Like what you read? Check out more from my WorkingNation blog, The Looming Robot.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

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