Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how Mindar - an android manifestation of the Kannon Bodhisattva delivering sermons at the Kodaiji Zen Temple in Kyoto - travels through the imagination of roboticists, consultants, religious actors, or tourists, since making its way out of the Laboratory in 2019.

Paper long abstract:

Mindar, an android manifestation of the Kannon Bodhisattva delivering sermons at the Kodaiji Zen Temple in Kyoto is unveiled in the temple's press release as "speaking to the modern person, expounding on the essence of the Heart Sutra, the most universally familiar of all Buddhist scriptures" (February 23, 2019). Drawing on the idea of enchantment (e.g. Gell 1999), this paper analyzes how Mindar travels through the imagination of roboticists, consultants, religious actors, or tourists, since making its way out of the Laboratory in 2019. As the robot moves to the temple, its meaning and purpose are constantly transformed in relation to specific social, material, and discursive practices.

Based on digital ethnography (policy documents, promotional materials, reviews, surveys, media outlets, legal landscape), we trace the narratives on the making, delivery, and deployment of Mindar in terms of: the robot's dual nature (human and non-human, living and immortal, enchanting and estranging, cute and uncanny, cold and warm etc.); its tangible and esthetic features; its emotional interactions and autonomy; related implications for Buddhism in contemporary Japan and doctrinal compatibilities. In relation to the latter, we look at the ways in which Mindar complicates and challenges the doctrine on "Not-Two" in Japanese Zen Buddhism, a non-dualistic philosophy explaining human-universe relationships including those between life and death.

By providing a background picture of robotic presence in Buddhist rituals in Japan, we outline the potential of Mindar for enchanting through ideas, values, and symbolic structures e. g. as a redesigned Buddhist statue with modern robotics technology, standing at the boundary of spirituality and objectivity.

At the same time, the paper will contribute to universal debates on openness about human-nonhuman relations, ethics of technology and AI, the role of non-human actors in religious practices, the popular cultural imagination of human-robot interaction, or post-humanist imaginaries beyond Man.