Automata in Tibetan Buddhism (&c.)

By David Chapman, 7 February 2012

The American Academy of Religion has a Call for Papers for the Tibetan section of its 2012 meeting.

Among the more intriguing topics:

  • Systems of Religious Education in Tibet (monastic and ngakpa)
  • Religious Propaganda in Contemporary Tibet
  • Agents and Automata: On the Life of Animate and Inanimate Objects

Whoa!  That last one certainly caught my eye, since I was an artificial intelligence guy in my previous life. "Agents and Automata" is straight-up AI jargon; and what has that to do with Tibetan Buddhism?

Maybe quite a lot. Look forward to reading the proceedings if I can get my paws on them.

One of the conveners is Sarah Jacoby, who is doing some of the most interesting current ethnographic work on Tantric/ngakpa practice in contemporary Tibet.

[Thanks to Alex Hubbard for sending me the CfP.]