2020: The Metaphysical Can Opener - Mori Masahiro

Source: The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 18 | Issue 23 | Number 1 | Article ID 5518 | Dec 01, 2020
Mit freundlicher Erlaubnis von Japan Focus


The Metaphysical Can Opener

Frederick Schodt


"I first met Mori Masahiro in the spring of 1986, when interviewing scientists for my book Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia. Mori’s focus was on robots and Buddhism, which seemed a novel combination to me at the time.

In researching robots Mori had found that he had to understand not only the human body’s individual parts and their functions but their relationship to the entire human body and the universe in which it exists. And this had brought him to Buddhism, which teaches that the Buddha-nature is in all things (not just sentient beings) and is where, according to his interpretation, parts of whole systems are simultaneously independent and connected—that a universe and the source of all truth can exist in the single petal of a flower. Only a few years earlier, a book of his essays had been translated and published in English with the provocative title of The Buddha in the Robot: A Robot Engineer’s Thoughts on Science and Religion. ...."

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