And it's just. And it's just in the draught.
So my apologies for any mistakes. OK, so without further ado.
My talk is virtual reality is a Mahayana interpretation based on the supreme Arae scripture.
Just just get my notes and order here, OK, here we go.
The Suprema, a scripture gun to view her Sioux tribe, is an important Mahayana Sioux tribe that recounts the story of Sidhana,
a young man who sets out on a quest for omniscient a hood during the lifetime of the historical Buddha.
This expansive narrative depicts a cosmic vision of reality wherein all physical and
mental phenomena within space time and to penetrate and into reflect each other.
Now, this non duality of intentionality and things.
Rupert Getin aptly calls the Buddhist principle of the equivalent of cosmology and psychology.
According to this principle,
the various cosmological realms are understood to be the result of the intentional activities of the beings who inhabit those realms.
Simply put, this is a Buddhist understanding of karma.
One's intentional activities over countless lifetimes define the parameters of one's life world.
Thus, there are no free standing objective places apart from the collective karmic conditioning of their inhabitants.
In truth, all conventional reality is virtual.
Now, this principle is dramatically depicted in the opening scene, the new donna of the Supreme Array, when I wrote in a book,
Enters a Meditative Trance, a society that transforms Jeddah Grove into an infinitely vast jewelled space.
Following this body site from the 10 directions travelled to the assembly from world realms incalculably distant from ours to pay homage to by China.
Within the lengthy description of the various powers and abilities, we find this passage,
all all passages from the from you are my own translations of the idea.
Nineteen sixty additions of the Sanskrit text.
So this is a passage. These passages will be heavily redacted for anyone who knows.
This text is very verbose. So I might seem that I'm being verbose, but I'm actually trying to keep it two to a minimum as possible.
But here we go. So this is a description of the the the powers and abilities of the body sought by us.
The text states they had obtained a thorough knowledge that all the realms of being are like illusions,
comprehended that all two targets are like reflections. They were produced by the Gnosis.
That rebirth and all the states of existence is like a dream.
There are purified by the Gnosis that all the results of karma are like reflected images.
They possessed the supernatural knowledge through Gnosis that all accomplishments are like
mirages and had comprehended that the appearance of all worlds is like a magical creation.
This is a standard list we find in Mahayana about Damas, a phenomenon, not that they're like illusions, reflections, dreams, et cetera.
And we'll return to this theme and a little while now, following this elaborate description of this scene,
the narrator informs us that the disciples of the Buddha, the shrimp workers who are not bodhisattva, did not see this transformation that took place.
And so the text reads. However, the great disciples did not see the miracle of the two targets in Jeddah Grove.
They did not see the arrays of the Buddha or His Majesty, his exhibition of supernatural power, his magical performance,
his overlord ship, the miracle of his deeds, his might, his power or the purity of his Buddha land.
They also did not see the incalculable sphere of the body that boasts the coming together,
their assembly, their meeting, their approach, their miracle, their magical performance,
their assembled multitude, the residing in all directions, their array of lion thrones,
their palaces, their manifestations, their valour, their worship of the Buddha, etc.
So the narrator then offers us this rhetorical question, what was the reason for this?
This was due to their lack of the corresponding roots of merit for they had
not collected roots of merit conducive to seeing the miracles of all Buddhas,
nor had they previously praised the purity of the arrays and qualities of all Buddha lands belonging to the world throughout the 10 directions.
Therefore, the great disciples did not see here no perceive, comprehend, attend to understand,
focus on, look at, observe, meditate on, nor reflect upon the miracle of the target to.
What was the reason for this? The range of gnosis of a Buddha is not the range of a disciple.
Thus, even though those great disciples were right there in Jeddah Grove.
They did not see the miracles of the Buddha, but they did not have the basis of merit to witness a fraction of them.
Nor did they have the purity of the Gnosis II, by which they would be able to see the miracles of the Buddha.
What was the reason for this? It was so because they were produced by the vehicle of the disciples.
They had attained their status by means of the disciples past. They were occupied with the collection of practises of the disciples.
They were established in the spiritual results of the disciples. They were dependent upon the gnosis that illuminate the truths.
They were established at the limit of reality. Gather together, they were seated right there in Jeddah Grove.
They sat before behind to the left and right of the Lord, all facing him.
But they did not see those miracles in Jeddah Grove. What was the reason for this?
It was because they not having acquired omission. No sense, not having obtained omniscient gnosis, not having set out from omniscient Gnosis.
Not being directed towards omniscient Gnosis lacked the power to penetrate, find, see or understand the miracle of the two targets.
Just trance. What was the reason for this?
This is because what is to be perceived within the range of vision of the noble body,
suppose is not to be perceived within the range of vision of the disciples.
Therefore, although the great disciples were right there in Jeddah Grove,
they did not see the powers of the Buddha, the purity of his Buddha land or the gathering of the boat.
He sought funds. So this assertion is then illustrated with several analogies highlighting the virtual and karmic nature of conventional reality.
There are many, and I'm just going to give three of them here just to give you a taste of what the examples are like.
So the text reads,
it was just as if many hundreds of thousands of hungry ghosts gathered on both banks of the Great River Ganges afflicted by hunger and thirst.
Naked without shelter with skin and limbs,
a tawny brown colour withered from the wind and heat harassed by a murder of
crows terrorised by wolves and jackals did not see the Great River Ganges.
Some would see it as dried up. Waterless are filled with ashes due to the impediment of their obstructive karma.
In just the same way, those elders, the great disciples, although they were present right there in Jeddah Grove,
did not see the miracle of the Tarcutta or comprehend it due to their eyes being covered by the veil of ignorance
that is opposed to omniscience and because they had not obtained the roots of merit for the stage of omniscience.
OK, now our second example or stuck in analogy.
It was just as if a man on a great festival day in the middle of a large group of people were to become sleepy,
having fallen asleep in that very spot.
He would see in a dream a city of lights with a multitude of beautiful abodes and the entire base of Mount Sumer with its trees,
with a collection of parks be strewn with manifold divine flowers filled with hundreds of thousands of
millions of billions of nymphs and inhabited by hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of demigods,
et cetera, et cetera. He would know himself to be situated there, and he would see the entire place as adorned with this celestial array.
But the entire group of people situated right there in that place would not see, would not know, would not perceive this.
What is the reason for that? This is due to that vision belonging to the man and the dream,
and not to the great crowd of people, even though they were right there in the same place.
And just the same way those body sort suppose the lords of the world directed toward awakening through
the extensive power of the Buddha through the skilful acquisition of their own roots of merit,
through the skilful undertaking of their vows to attain omniscience through the skilful practise of the qualities of wealth to target us,
they saw penetrated into and understood the miracle of the Buddha.
But those great disciples, led by the most excellent pair, did not see or know this because they lacked the vision of the body burst.
And then for our our final analogy. It was just as if a man knowing the ways of all medical plants would be able to collect
medical herbs upon a majestic mountain strewn with medicinal plants in the Himalayas.
But in that very same place, hunters of wild boars, cows, goats,
bears and deer or other men without knowledge of medicinal plant law who ascended into the Himalayas would not know the application of the essence,
power affect efficacy or utility of medical herbs.
In the same way,
those bodhisattva us who have penetrated into the range of the target has no source and have perfected the range of the miracle of the body.
Sight birds knew the range of the miracle of the two targets trance.
But those great disciples, led by the most excellent pair residing right there in Jeddah Grove, who are contented with their own conduct,
unconcerned with the conduct of others, abided indifferent and did not know the range of the two takata's miracle or the range of his trance.
So. What drink?
So as students of Indian Mahayana, we can learn much from these passages, one highly significant point worth mentioning,
which I've not seen discussed in any great detail in the literature on the topic is that the Supreme
Array offers a compelling and philosophically nuanced apology for the appearance of the Mahayana,
according to the need to honour. The Buddha taught the Mahayana right from the beginning,
but the disciples and those less spiritually advanced simply could not perceive it, even when sitting right in front of him.
Another significant point, which is the focus of this paper, concerns the nature of karma and reality.
As we all learnt as undergraduates, Carmel literally means action, Carmen, and for Buddhists, this is specifically intentional action because actions,
plant seeds Bjarne that bring forth results are fruit power,
such as our current realm of existence or gender appearance, social status, our abilities and handicaps.
They have a direct impact on how we experience our lived world. In fact, our intentionality constructs our experience.
In the model of dependent arising, there is no sharp distinction between psychology and materiality.
Thus, there are no freestanding objective places apart from the collective karmic conditioning of their inhabitants.
In truth, all conventional reality is virtual,
and the virtual reality we live in is the one we deserve as either punishment or reward for our past deeds.
In the Mahayana, these notions are further reinforced onto logically with the concepts of emptiness and the dreamlike or illusory nature of phenomena.
Since all phenomena lack substance, they are like dreams, illusions, reflected images, et cetera.
A corollary to this idea is that as one advances on the body sight, the path to developing good karma or roots of merit,
one gains access to more exalted levels of reality, wherein one directly experiences the interpenetration and not obstruction of all spacetime.
Advance body sight does exist simultaneously in multiple realities through infinite space and time,
skilfully occupying countless referential frames or dimensions of experience every instant.
Moreover, as a body, Sotloff's mental powers increase their ability to control and manipulate the very fabric of reality also increases.
Now, in this vision, there are infinite virtual realities, all Inter penetrating each other.
The totality of these and their ultimate ground is called in the Supreme Array, the Dharma Realm, or Dharma data.
However, we may conceive of this ground as in some sense a groundless ground, since the ground does not exist independently of the phenomena.
The Chinese Hawaiian Masters expressed this well with the notion that the firms that phenomena sure depend on the Dharma realm as Principal Lee,
but principal also depends on phenomena. Thus, conventional and ultimate reality inter penetrate each other and co arise.
So this is basically in a nutshell, this is the the view of the Supreme Array a very, very important my on a text.
Now this view that all experience is virtual may be applied to our current ethical
thinking around the technological creation of virtual reality or VR technology.
This notion? Has been largely inspired by a recent, thought provoking monograph by Peter her shock,
some of you might know of it, but it's called Buddhism and Intelligent Technology toward a more humane future.
And I'll just give a quote from from this book that I think is very illustrative of a connecting
point between this ancient Indian Mahayana text and our current technological breakthroughs.
He writes to anticipate why the concept of karma might be particularly relevant
for clarifying the risks of a craving and control driven attention economy,
as well as the more general value conflicts accentuated by the intelligence revolution.
Consider how our internet experience is now shaped by self improving algorithms, decision making procedures that use patterns of our searches,
preferences and purchases to determine and structure the web content made available to us.
These algorithms are designed to continuously shape and reshape our online experiences to bring them
into ever closer accord with what we would like based on our own expressed aims and interests.
In short, the values embodied in our connective behaviour are used recursively to configure and progressively reconfigure our online realities.
In effect, the computational factories of the intelligence revolution are functioning as karmic engines.
So. We see already in this new attention economy how social media such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube are inherently karmic.
Our intentionality determines our online experience.
In this way, online experience is never ethically neutral and our intentions and online behaviours shape our online reality.
Within the context of global consumer capitalism based, as it is largely on greed,
the karmic outcomes of our migrations into these new virtual realities cannot be good.
Already, we are witnessing the potentially irreversible transformation of our little blue
dot planet Earth into the horrific vision of the hungry ghosts described above.
However, so much of us, especially the younger generations,
have been captured by the phantasmagorical virtual realities of social media and
barely notice the environmental collapse taking place in real time around us.
And then just one final point I would like to make touching on this concept of a virtual realities.
I'd like to mention the what's known as the current simulation hypothesis, not the simulation hypnosis, which I which is a misprint in my abstract.
So apologies there. So I'm looking at the simulation hypothesis,
which is basically the notion that we are in fact not living in the real world, but living in an artificial simulation.
Now, much has been written about the current simulation hypothesis,
and there are some rather prominent individuals, such as Elon Musk, who accepted as a strong possibility.
Now, the philosophical font of the current debate stems from a paper published by the philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2001 and
then reprinted again in 2003 and philosophical philosophical quarterly called Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
And then just to to summarise very briefly, Bostrom argument in his own words, I'll just have a I'll just have a quote from him.
So he writes many works of science fiction, as well as some four forecasts by serious technologists and future apologists,
predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future.
Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct.
One thing that later generations might do with their super powerful computers is run detailed simulations
of their forebears or of people like their forebears because their computers would be so powerful,
they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently
fine grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct.
Then it could be the case that the vast majority of mines like ours do not belong to the original race,
but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.
It is then possible to argue that if this were the case,
we would be rational to think that we are likely amongst the simulated minds rather than amongst the original biological ones.
Therefore, if we don't think that we are currently living in a computer simulation,
we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forbearers.
This is the basic idea. So what I mean, what Bostrom is saying in a nutshell, is that.
If we do advance to this point where we can run these simulations, then it's likely that we would run these simulations and we would run many of them.
So many, in fact, that it's much more likely that we are now living in a simulation than than not, which is as quite a mind bending notion.
But just to to bring this back around to the Mahayana in the gunda view,
how what what I'd like to say is that we can notice in this argument that there
is an original rate race residing in the real world who created the simulation.
However, from the point of view of the Mahayana, all reality is virtual.
So even if we are the playthings of the gods, even the gods are subject to the law of karma.
Thus, whether we are in a virtual reality nested within a larger virtual reality might be of some interest.
But there is no final real world to arrive at.
Only reality is nested within realities nested within realities.
In other words, it's turtles all the way down, and karma is the engine that drives it.
Thank you.