“Buddhist Texts in the Digital World: A Report of New Developments”

“Buddhist Texts in the Digital World: A Report of New Developments” Keynote Address World Buddhist Forum, 2012 Lewis Lancaster University of California, Berkeley University of Hong Kong, University of the West There are “moments” when an event occurs that signals the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Like many such “moments”, they may not be recognized at the time and even later may be forgotten as subsequent events take the limelight. For Buddhist Studies, such an event happened in the computer lab at Mahidol University in Bangkok in 1988. It was the “moment” of the completion of the input of the Pali tripitaka. Under the direction of Professor Supachai, the head of that laboratory, the first complete version of a Buddhist canon had been put into the format of the new digital technology. Later, the event would have a public record as the material was presented to the King of Thailand on his Sixtieth Birthday. At the very second when the final word was placed on the hard drive of the server in that lab, a new era of Buddhist studies began. Since that ground breaking effort in Bangkok, the work of input of Buddhist materials has never ceased. When the Pali digital version was moved from the hard drive of the computers at Mahidol to a CD Rom technology, another crucial step had been taken in the technological revolution. From that “moment”, scholars could possess the entire Pali canon in this remarkable format. It was a puzzling time. How should we think of a small round disk? If the whole canon was contained on it, did it become a sacred object? Should it be treated with respect or even reverence? Many people could hardly fathom the function of the disk. In fact, some people in Thailand secured the CDs to place on their altars as an object of veneration. This same question about the nature of digital canons arose in Korea when the whole of the version preserved at Haein Monastery printing blocks was digitized. It was also put on CD Roms. When the time came for the celebration of the completion of the input project, a grand celebration was planned in the arena built for the Olympic games. The audience came from all parts of the nation and filled the arena’s 12,500 seats. Again, the question was how to consider the new small objects which now contained a record of one of the most prized cultural heritages of Korea. Finally, it was decided to treat the CD Rom like a relic and so a crystal stupa was constructed with the disk visible in the very center of it. This new type of stupa was carried by a group of monks into the arena and placed at the altar on the platform. At that point, the digital era presented us with a physical object which could be handled and even used in ceremonial rituals. For some, the question was still “where is the canon?” It was a good question because the digital format exists only in the realm of the electron. The canons of Buddhism had been reduced to a series of “0”s and “1”s. They were, in effect, existing in a single line that was “read” by the software so that a display could be constructed on the screen for users to see words and characters. The canon was then moved from physical objects such as palm leaves, birch bark, paper, stone, metal surfaces to an invisible swirl of particles. It was as if the Buddhist teachings about emptiness had come to real life. The canon was in a form that had no attribute of the physical surfaces. It was empty of any ability to be displayed without the conditions of dependency on some other element; the image on the screen could only arise dependent upon the software and hardware. It was not permanent since the image on the screen would disappear when the machine was turned off. It could be best described by the Buddhist ideas about the nature of existence: that is: momentary and dependent without an essential essence. As advanced as the CD Rom appeared to us, a new “moment” was occurring which would change the entire use of the computer. In 1990, Tim Berners Lee released a new program called “World Wide Web”. From that “moment”, we entered the internet world, which had no equivalent in history. Connectivity between hundreds of millions of computers around the world superceded the physical CD Rom disks. Now Buddhist studies had to face yet another shift as the canons could be accessed directly through the network. In this environment there is no physical dimension to the canon, no object which can be touched and treated with respect. Buddhist texts had become invisible until the user made a link with a server located somewhere in the world. Usage of the on-line canons soared because the information became available on demand at any hour of the day and without the need to wait for the acquisition of an object. Today, it is a rare scholar who does not make use of this form of information. I don’t know whether the next great “moment” of change has occurred or not. Most of the activity we see about us today is application and enhancement of the previous discoveries and inventions. Cloud computing and ubiquitous computing are ways of using what we already know. The canonic information exists in the “cloud”, that is it exists in computers located at a distance from the user. Through the new hand-held instruments, users can access the “cloud” as they ride the subway or walk down the street. It is everywhere (i.e. ubiquitous) at once. It is little wonder that we reevaluate the role and function of library buildings that house codex items on shelves which must be accessed by index and on-duty staff during certain hours of the day and perhaps certain days of the week. Google Books has reshaped the landscape through the digitization of millions of books from our research libraries. With more than 16 million books already in the program, it is larger than any university library and will eventually be larger than any national library. . Perhaps the next “moment” will be identified as the arrival of Quantum computing. If that turns out to be one of these great “moments” then it started in 1982 when Richard Feynman opened up this field of research. The reason for the exploration into the mysterious realm of Quantam was the knowledge that there is a point where the “0”s and “1”s will become so large in quantity that the physical dimensions of our current computers based on transistors cannot handle the load. The promising aspect of Quantum Computing is that it will allow a seeming unlimited mass of data to be processed at very high speeds. Already, a machine known as D-Wave claims the ability to do some form of Quantum computing and the first machine was sold last year. The Quantam approach gives promise that not only can we handle larger amounts of data, we can also process it rapidly and efficiently. There will be a number of these “moments” as we move toward totally new methods of computing in the future. Each of these “moments” will have a lasting and crucial influence of the way we do out study of Buddhist texts and history. These great “moments”, and I think they are great “moments” in human history, have already dramatically changed the face of Buddhist scholarship. It is true that we in the Humanities are timid about using even the current state of the technology to its fullest extent, much less thinking about the ramifications of size and factoring that could come with the new developments in the future. Nevertheless, Buddhist groups have moved rapidly into the field of digital input and they are to be congratulated on this recognition of the new technology and the use they have made of it. The research of today becomes more and more dependent on the input, markup, and serving of the data. However, there are still far too few projects that make optimum use of the computational power available in the digital canons We have a growing number of examples of the results of computer aided information when compared with the older methods. In a recent movie Moneyball, a real life story is told of how statistics were used by a major league American baseball franchise to assembly a winning team of players. It went against all accepted practices in baseball and was ridiculed by many who said that only traditional methods were valid. When the Oakland team had the longest winning streak in the history of professional baseball, it seemed to signal that the statistical method was superior. However, it was only after a few years that the Boston team won the World Series by using this statistical approach and people finally accepted the idea that statistics could be used more effectively than the intuition and predictions of professional talent scouts. In a very recent event, the computer and statistics have come to have a major and rather shattering impact on the game of international chess. For some years, computer programmers challenged the world masters of chess to play against the computations of the machine. At first the human master always won but finally the computer became so well programmed that it consistently beats even the best players. This year the problem came to a head when it was thought that players were using the computer during international matches. Instead of human intuition and expertise, it was suspected that the computer was being employed by those chess masters who were winning. Such use of computers is considered to be cheating and there is a move to make sure that no such supports are available to the players. When we consider these examples, we have the worse-case scenario. That is, in some activities humans are second-best to the computation of a computer program. It is potentially devastating to the game of chess. The international matches that attracted such a large following in the past are now second-best examples of the game. One of my colleagues at Berkeley who has been a life-long enthusiast for chess has stopped playing. Now that the finite number of logical moves can be controlled through the computer more effectively than by the human agent, he finds it has lost its appeal and mystique. If computers are denied to the tournament players it is a recognition that those players are second-best. A novice observer can follow the match and by using the computer can make superior moves to those being made by the contesting masters. Suppose, we move this over to Buddhist Studies and ask the question of whether a novice with a computer program and the entire Buddhist canon available in digital format can equal or exceed the knowledge of any professor or religious teacher. Does this mean that humans become second-best in terms of knowledge about the word use in texts? Many years ago, when I was doing research on my Ph.D, I spent two years finding every example of target words in some hundreds of pages of text. It was a labor intensive process of reading each line searching for the words. Today, that same task can be done in about 15 minutes. In this regard, as a scholar, I am second-best to the computer that can count with great accuracy every example of a word or phrase. In publications, one of the great scholarly efforts in Japan was to publish indexes for each volume of the Taisho edition of the Chinese canon. Dozens of scholars spent years preparing these volumes known as the Sakuin. However, once the digital form of that version was available, the Sakuin became a second-best listing of terms and the publication of new volumes was halted. Scholars and teachers must re-evaluate their role and approach. Today, I would not follow the strategy of research that I used decades ago. It would be the height of folly to spend years manually searching for every example of a word when the search engine can provide the answer in a few seconds. Does that mean that my role in scholarship is finished? Any person can equal my previous research quickly and accurately. We cannot respond to such issues by turning our back on technology. History records examples of how people have attempted to stem the tide of new innovations. We give the name “Luddite” to such people, referring to the time in England when a group called the Luddites attempted to destroy mechanical looms that were replacing hand weaving. It was the reality that hand weaving for large quantities of ordinary cloth was second-best to the mechanical devices in terms of speed and even certain elements of quality. Second-best is just not good enough to survive and win allegiance. As Buddhist scholars and teachers we are now challenged to describe our role within the world of technology. I strongly feel that we have a crucial role to play in terms of interpretation and application of large amounts of data to our lives. First, we should welcome with open arms the computations of the computer, the analytic capacity to deal with massive amounts of information, and the ability to create and display imagery such as graphs, maps, and tables. The Buddhist doctrine of “Skill in Teaching” (upaya) has never been more needed than now. It is urgent that the people with knowledge and background take their rightful place in the process of dealing with Information Technology. Information is available in massive amounts all around us but the creation and discovery of it is not a final goal. How we use the information, how we make application to our understanding of the history and development of the human record, how we use it for decision making, how we apply it to human problems, and how we chart our present and future course of action still requires effort and thought. In this regard, we are not second-best to computation. However, in order to make the best possible use of information, we must recognize and allow the full use and capacity of computation to be a part of our research and teaching. One team of scholars working at University of California, Berkeley, University of the West, Los Angeles, City University of Hong Kong, and University of Illinois has started to use computation and algorithm analysis on Buddhist texts. In plain terms, we have started to do a very simply task of “counting.” That shifts the focus from merely qualitative research based on the intuition and experience of a single researcher to a quantitative arena in which we can now have available to us a high level of computation. This type of research goes beyond search and retrieval because it gives us a new view of words and the interrelationship of texts and vocabulary. A first publication emerging from this work, was to see how far counting and computation could be used for a single Buddhist doctrinal term. Lewis Lancaster, Howie Lan, Ping Au Yeoung, “Pattern Recognition and Analysis in the Chinese Buddhist Canon: A Study of ‘Original Enlightenment’”. Pacific World. Third Series, vol 60, 2010 It was an extreme test to determine how much information could be discovered about a term without doing the normal approach of “reading” the natural language text. For this initial test, we selected a Chinese compound which has often been translated as “Original Enlightenment”. The choice was made because it is a term that has been widely studied and has a dominant place in current writings and teachings within East Asian Buddhism. Our software contained a great deal of metadata or indexing. It had a record of 1514 Buddhist texts contained in the 13th century printing blocks of Haein Monastery in Korea comprised of over 160,000 pages. This is the oldest complete set of blocks for the Chinese Buddhist canon and was the basis for the readings of the famous 20th century Japanese Taisho Edition. For each of the texts, the cataloging included: name of translator, date of translation as reported in the oldest Chinese catalogs, dynasty in which the work was done, and place of translation. With all of this in place, we began to “count”. To my surprise, through this method, we could establish the first use of the term, the instances where adjacent characters did not form the term, anomalies where dating and translator attribution were called into question, a clear history of the spread of the term, the discovery of companion or satellite terms that appeared together in the same texts, and even determining the meaning of the term. These were tasks that had occupied previous scholarship for years. We could use those reports to test the results of the computation. From this effort, I feel that I understand the history of the development of Chinese Buddhist thought in a better way. I know that I can trace any word rapidly and have reports that give me a view of the usage over the centuries. It is left to me to do the final interpretation but my response is now backed up with thousands of bits of information that have been processed and analyzed for me. I don’t need to do any of those computational tasks by hand, I don’t need to be second-best. Rather, I seek for ways in which my knowledge and my expertise can be best applied and where I can make the greatest contribution. Buddhist teachers must determine how best they will instruct and guide future students. The truly successful ones will be those who explore the whole world of technology and find the avenues where they are the best resource for providing interpretation. It will be a challenge and we must all be prepared to respond in ways that are honest and insightful. New ways of finding and presenting information may result in changing my previous point of view. My conclusion after working for years with the digital technology is that there is much more to say about Buddhist texts than has yet been said. The computer is an instrument to help us find out aspects of this expanded view of the literary heritage of Buddhism. In this way, we will begin to have some great new “moments” in Buddhist research and teaching, when information is presented that we have never seen before or previously considered. Our role as a best-source for students will be enhanced and we will have assurance that our information is complete and well processed. Unlike the Chess masters, we will not consider the use of computation to be cheating, but rather just a natural process of gathering and assimilating data over which we have quality control. In this way, the computer does not make the scholar or teacher “second-best”. Instead, it will provide a “skill in teaching” that is more powerful that anything we have seen before.