Metafizyczna obecność i pustka mechanicznego ciała. Android Kannon w świątyni rinzai zen

Abstrakt

In recent years, robots have begun appearing in religious temples and events. One of the most recent developments of this kind is Mindar, a robotic manifestation of bodhisattva Kannon, preaching the Heart Sutra at the Kōdaiji Temple in Kyoto. Mindar is both a technological innovation and an artifact embedded in Buddhist iconography and thought. The android draws its status and agency from ritual consecration, the narratives that surround it, and its mechanical body that quite literally materializes Rinzai teach­ings about emptiness. While Japanese Buddhist statues of the past would come “alive” by means of wondrous divine presence, Mindar is animated and speaks by means of techno­logical wonder. At the same time, turning Kannon into a machine and a preacher, created an entity in many ways more akin to statues and animatronic figures than contemporary robots. While its recursive movements and speech are fully orchestrated and repetitive, it is unlike many religious robots, not simply a sophisticated device, but also a ritually established and conceptually contextualized manifestation of a perfect being.