Worldwide Draught: No Water, No Lotus.

[Brad Klee]

New Buddhist Times, Dec. 30, 2020. Headline:

Guns, Gliders, Spaceships, and Pulsars--Fifty years later,
Game of Life authors still have yet to discover flowers.

In order to define what is "Conway's Game of Life" (GoL), first we must
define, what is a "Conway"? The obvious pure linguistic interpretation
is that Conway = Con + way, or Conway ~ 言道, and indeed, many
of the /Golden Insiders/ have described Conway as a great lecturer.
Among computer nerds and successful/failed mathematicians there
is a fierce reverence for Conway, suggesting that he may have been a candidate for the manGod Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus, etc/, while
he was alive during the years 1937-2020. This hypothesis is supported
by pseudo-scientific existence of "Garden of Eden" patterns in GoL,
from which we derive the following inference: Conway begot GoL, and
GoL begot the Garden of Eden pattern, thus we can rewrite "CNWY"
in place of the usual Tetragrammaton. However, Conway ultimately
died from COVID-19, so monotheistic deification seems inappropriate,
to say the least.

The other alternative perspective, not mentioned in Siobahn Robert's
recent NYT article "The Lasting Lessons of John Conway's Game of
Life", is that Game of Life is actually built upon the Historical strategy
game "Go", an algebraic invention of the Chinese, from sometime
around the days of Sun Tzu and Lao Tzu (though history of Taoist
interaction with the game is not well understood):

> While at Cambridge, John Conway used to play various games
> using Go board with his friends during teatime. Being bored with
> real games, like “five in a line”, John tried to invent new games.
> ...
> We got first PDP machine in Cambridge, and we watch the game
> on screen without Go boards.
Source: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Game_of_Life

Historically, what was weiqi became baduk in Korea, before it became
Go in Pre-Heian Japan, during the first era of Buddhist transmission,
slightly before the start of the Tendai school. The game Go became
an international phenomena during the era of Japanese Imperialism,
which saw a resurgence of Nichiren's thought (perhaps corrupted or
defiled) in the form of fascistic nationalism, leading to Japanese
participation in WW2 as a part of the Axis Forces. Conway himself
was an adolescent during the war, and later invented GoL in the year
1970, perhaps as a counter-move to the rise of the American hippy
movement, or perhaps to speed-on ending of the War in Vietnam.

The next most natural question is whether or not J.H. Conway was,
in fact, a reincarnation of Nichiren Daishonin, and the answer is "no".
It could be asked whether not Conway was a Lotus-style Shakyamuni
reincarnation, or a world-honored incarnation of Lucifer/Tenji-ma?
In one Buddhist eschatology, he can be described as both, for his
serious work is too difficult for almost anyone to understand, and
his playful delusions are easy enough for mass consumption. The
matter remains that no suitable description of a GoL lotus has so
far been given, and we can't delay this issue with religious nonsense
any longer.

Conway's GoL, whether it is played on a go board, or on one of the
descendent machines of the now-ancient PDP, is a spacetime
simulation of an evolving binary field, in which all actions of life
and death are accomplished, at each integral timestep, by the
evaluation of a simple rule on the Moore neighborhood. Here we
run into another problem, what is the definition of a "Moore", and
what is the simple rule? We leave these undergrad questions for
inquisitive readers, and return post-haste to the issue of the missing
Lotus field.

One basic issue is whether or not the Lotus would be propagating
in still or flowing ambient conditions. The domain for GoL is a roughly
isotropic board of regularly arrayed squares, so looks more like a
pond or a lake, rather than looking like a stream or a river. Since either
lotus, Nelumbo nucifera or Nelumbo lutea, are known to propagate
by cloning at the root level, the GoL rules are actually well suited to
modelling asexual reproduction in still conditions. However, the Lotus
blossom is a pollinating flower, which is attended to by flower beetles
and dragonflies, among other insects. This brings us to a formal
definition of what a Lotus flower would look like in GoL.

Definition. A GoL lotus is a self-replicating binary pattern, with a
yearly period, between living summer phase, and dead winter phase.
It propagates by both sexual and asexual reproduction. The asexual
method involves an extending root system, which ultimately leads
to new blossoms created locally. The sexual method involves shooting
of seeds out of seed pods, and may lead to new congregations created
at a much longer distance.

Scientists fighting online in a secret, password-protected colloquium
have recently debated whether or not this definition would be sufficient,
and those on the side of physics, said "No!" because it is expected that
polynomial-limitations to GoL growth laws would not be capable of
capturing locally-exponential growth/death processes. Mathematicians
argued that, possibly, the global time-synchronization issue cold be fixed
be a non-affine transformation of the entire time axis. A few of the judges
could understand what they were saying, and with the malice voice, called
them "contrived".

At this point, editors for the New Buddhist Times, attempted to contact
either Chris Moore or Melanie Mitchel of Sante-Fe institute to see what
could be done about the question of the missing Lotuses, but we don't
know if either were available or not. Instead, we were able to find an
interesting article by Melanie Mitchel, hosted on little-known aeon.co:

https://aeon.co/essays/complex-systems-science-allows-us-to-see-new-paths-forward

Obvioulsy there are a lot issues out there, like who should we blame
for the appearance of COVID-19? Should we blame Nelumbo lutea
or should we blame Nelumbo nucifera? One argument says that war
sanctions introduced by Nelumbo trump against Nelumbo nucifera
affected only the poor, inadvertently causing conditions for COVID-19
to enter Human-Body ecosystems. Another argument was "Who Cares
about poor people in China?" So a standoff was reached, rather than a
peace treaty.

The other issue is that the Lotus Nelumbo lutea lives only in the eastern
half of the United States of America. Racist U.S.Americans are extremely
hateful toward "Invasive Species", so would probably rebel against the
idea of propagating either lutea or nucifera into new Western Locales.
Even if inherent racism could be overcome, the desert climate in New
Mexico, worsened by twenty consecutive years of draught, precludes
the possibility of developing a climate-controlled Lotus hatchery as
seen in Huxley's "Brave New World". At D4 conditions, there is loss of
agriculture, water shortage, water emergency, and probably worse.

While we are all waiting on the imminent release of Villeneuve's Dune,
computer simulations, thought-experiments, and other forms of Theory
are on-going. The simple truth is that Computational Universality is a
red herring for scientific research, in many cases, a time-wasting trap.
A binary field might not be the best representation of lotus. Even if a
particular growth pattern could be construed as a growing lotus field,
likely it would be too ugly to accept as such. The lotus flowers, especially
if you have seen them in person, are amazingly beautiful!

Fifty years later on the Game of Life, we are still moving on to do more
complicated simulations involving network topologies, insect actors,
animal actors, and aquatic/mud conditions and fertilizer chemistry.
If you or anyone you know is being detained by an Evil Zen Master who
claims that GoL is the only way to understand "Propagation of the Lotus
Sutra", please introduce them to the Vajra Sword of Prince Manjushri,
which should cut through their delusions, and wake them up to a wider
world of mathematics where more productive work can easily be done.

As far as differential equations are concerned, an interesting starting
place is "Summer Insect Pandemics in the United States":

https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SummerInsectPandemicsInTheUnitedStates/

Even this is naive pattern matching, and in the future we would like to
see more population dynamics at the plant / insect level with full
environmental geometry and multi-species interaction. The rebellious
types could even describe this research as complicit with the efforts
of Extinction Rebellion. Happy hacker hunting, just try to survive!

Signing off,

--Brad

[Brad Klee]

Endnote: Swords are mentioned twice in the translated "Teachings of
Man Gong" (Try Ctrl+F):

https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Teachings-of-Man-Gong.pdf

Section I, "What Am I? Find your true self." Item 7:
> Just like the prisoner screaming as he is dragged, twisting behind a
> horse, the chains of karma drag us down the road of suffering.
> Repeatedly, we follow the cycles of life, sickness, old age and death.
> Only your wisdom sword can cut these chains.

Section III "Human Life" Item 37:
> We are like brothers born of the same womb (mother earth) confronting
> each other with guns and swords. Who are we really going to kill by
> sharpening our swords? Who are we really killing by making arms?
> This is the human tragedy.

[Chas.]

Brad Klee distorts Buddhism for fun

On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 12:05:58 PM UTC-8, brad...@gmail.com wrote:
> Endnote: Swords are mentioned twice in the translated "Teachings of

[snip Brad Klee's utter nonsense.]
___________________________________________________________________

Brad Klee, meet Nichiren Daishonin regarding Taoism +

On Saturday, December 26, 2020 at 5:55:45 PM UTC-8, brad...@gmail.com wrote:

[snip the Taoist plagiarisms]

My view of Taoism is that of Nichiren Daishonin: before the dark ages, Taoist priests in China appropriated Buddhist texts and forged them into Taoist teachings, which are plagiarized. This does not, however, improve them, on the contrary that slander of the Law makes them a great evil:

From "The Opening of the Eyes," WND I, pp. 224-225:
https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/30#para-19

... To illustrate, in the period before the appearance of
... Buddhism, the proponents of the non-Buddhist teachings in
... India were not so bound up in their own views. But after
... the appearance of the Buddha, when they had listened to and
... observed the Buddhist teachings, they became aware of the
... shortcomings of their own doctrines. THEY THEN CONCEIVED
... THE CLEVER IDEA OF APPROPRIATING BUDDHIST TEACHINGS AND
... INCORPORATING THEM INTO THEIR OWN DOCTRINES, AND AS A
... RESULT THEY FELL INTO EVEN DEEPER ERROR THAN BEFORE. THESE
... ARE EXAMPLES OF THE ERRORS KNOWN AS "APPROPRIATING
... BUDDHISM" OR "PLAGIARIZING BUDDHISM." [Note 29:
... "Appropriating Buddhism" refers to the incorporating of the
... Hinayana teachings by non-Buddhists into their own
... doctrine, claiming it as their own teaching. "Plagiarizing
... Buddhism" refers to the plagiarizing of Buddhist teachings
... by non-Buddhists who set forth Mahayana teachings as the
... doctrine of their own school. They are described in Great
... Concentration and Insight.]
...
... The same thing occurred in the case of non-Buddhist
... scriptures in China. BEFORE BUDDHISM WAS BROUGHT TO CHINA,
... CONFUCIANISM AND TAOISM WERE RATHER NAIVE AND CHILDISH
... AFFAIRS. BUT IN THE LATER HAN, BUDDHISM WAS INTRODUCED TO
... CHINA AND CHALLENGED THE NATIVE DOCTRINES. IN TIME, AS
... BUDDHISM BECAME MORE POPULAR, THERE WERE CERTAIN BUDDHIST
... PRIESTS WHO, BECAUSE THEY HAD BROKEN THE PRECEPTS, WERE
... FORCED TO RETURN TO SECULAR LIFE, OR WHO ELECTED TO JOIN
... FORCES WITH THE NATIVE CREEDS. THROUGH SUCH MEN, BUDDHIST
... DOCTRINES WERE STOLEN AND INCORPORATED INTO THE CONFUCIAN
... AND TAOIST TEACHINGS.
...
... In volume five of Great Concentration and Insight we read:
... "These days there are many devilish monks who break the
... precepts and return to lay life. FEARING THAT THEY WILL BE
... PUNISHED FOR THEIR ACTION, THEY THEN GO OVER TO THE SIDE OF
... THE TAOISTS. HOPING TO GAIN FAME AND PROFIT, THEY SPEAK
... EXTRAVAGANTLY OF THE MERITS OF LAO TZU AND CHUANG TZU,
... USURPING BUDDHIST CONCEPTS AND READING THEM INTO THEIR
... ERRONEOUS SCRIPTURES. THEY TWIST WHAT IS LOFTY AND FORCE IT
... INTO A MEAN CONTEXT; THEY DESTROY WHAT IS EXALTED AND DRAG
... IT DOWN AMONG THE BASE, STRIVING TO PUT THE TWO ON AN EQUAL
... LEVEL."
...
... On "Great Concentration and Insight" comments on this
... passage as follows: "THOUGH THEY ARE MONKS, THEY DESTROY
... THE TEACHINGS OF BUDDHISM. SOME BREAK THE PRECEPTS AND
... RETURN TO LAY LIFE, AS WEI YÜAN-SUNG DID. THEN, AS LAYMEN,
... THEY WORK TO DESTROY THE TEACHINGS OF BUDDHISM. MEN OF THIS
... KIND STEAL AND USURP THE CORRECT TEACHINGS OF BUDDHISM AND
... USE THEM TO SUPPLEMENT AND BOLSTER THE ERRONEOUS WRITINGS.
... THE PASSAGE ON 'TWISTING WHAT IS LOFTY . . .' MEANS THAT,
... ADOPTING THE OUTLOOK OF THE TAOISTS, THEY TRY TO PLACE
... BUDDHISM AND TAOISM ON THE SAME LEVEL, TO MAKE EQUALS OF
... THE CORRECT AND THE ERRONEOUS, THOUGH REASON TELLS US THAT
... THIS COULD NEVER BE. HAVING ONCE BEEN FOLLOWERS OF BUDDHIST
... TEACHINGS, THEY STEAL WHAT IS CORRECT AND USE IT TO BOLSTER
... WHAT IS INCORRECT. THEY TWIST THE LOFTY EIGHTY THOUSAND
... TEACHINGS OF THE TWELVE DIVISIONS OF THE BUDDHIST CANON AND
... FORCE THEM INTO THE MEAN CONTEXT OF LAO TZU'S TWO CHAPTERS
... AND FIVE THOUSAND WORDS, USING THEM TO INTERPRET THE BASE
... AND MISTAKEN TEACHINGS OF THAT TEXT. THIS IS WHAT IS MEANT
... BY 'DESTROYING WHAT IS EXALTED AND DRAGGING IT DOWN AMONG
... THE BASE.'" These comments should be carefully noted, for
... they explain the meaning of the foregoing description of
... events.

From "The Hero of the World," WND I, pp.837-838:
https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/102#para-12

... In China in the seventh year of Yung-p'ing (c.e. 64), the
... second emperor of the Later Han dynasty, Emperor Ming,
... dreamed of a man of gold. [Note 17: This refers to the
... tradition that Emperor Ming (28–75) dreamed of a golden man
... levitating above the garden. He awakened and asked his
... ministers about the dream. One of them said that he had
... once heard of the birth of a sage in the western region
... during the reign of King Chao of the Chou dynasty and that
... this sage had been called the Buddha. The emperor sent
... eighteen envoys to the western region in order to obtain
... the Buddha's teachings. And at the request of these envoys,
... two Indian Buddhist monks came to China in c.e. 67 with
... Buddhist scriptures and images on the backs of white
... horses.] He thereupon dispatched eighteen emissaries,
... including the scholars Ts'ai Yin and Wang Tsun, to India to
... seek Buddhism. AS A RESULT, IN THE TENTH YEAR OF
... YUNG-P'ING, CYCLICAL SIGN HINOTO-U, TWO SAGES OF CENTRAL
... INDIA, KĀSHYAPA MĀTANGA AND CHU FA-LAN, WERE BROUGHT TO
... CHINA AND ACCORDED THE HIGHEST ESTEEM. THOUSANDS OF
... ADHERENTS OF CONFUCIANISM AND TAOISM, SCHOOLS THAT HAD UP
... UNTIL THEN PRESIDED OVER ALL IMPERIAL RITES, RESENTED THIS
... AND LODGED A COMPLAINT WITH THE EMPEROR. THE EMPEROR
... DECREED THAT AN OPEN DEBATE BE HELD ON THE FIFTEENTH DAY OF
... THE FIRST MONTH IN THE FOURTEENTH YEAR OF YUNG-P'ING.
... OVERJOYED, THE TAOISTS ERECTED AN ALTAR FOR A HUNDRED
... CHINESE DEITIES AS THEIR OBJECTS OF DEVOTION. THE TWO SAGES
... FROM INDIA HAD AS THEIR OBJECTS OF DEVOTION THE BUDDHA'S
... ASHES, A PAINTING OF SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA, AND FIVE SUTRAS.
... [Note 18: Sutras translated into Chinese by Chu Fa-lan and
... Kāshyapa Mātanga, including the Sutra of Forty-two Sections.]
...
... AS WAS CUSTOMARY IN THEIR RITUALS PERFORMED BEFORE THE
... EMPEROR, THE TAOISTS BROUGHT IN THE SCRIPTURES OF THEIR
... SCHOOL, AS WELL AS THE THREE RECORDS, THE FIVE CANONS, AND
... THE WRITINGS OF THE TWO SAGES [NOTE 19: TWO OF THE FIVE
... EMPERORS, T'ANG YAO AND YÜ SHUN.] AND THE THREE KINGS,
... PILED SOME OF THEM WITH FIREWOOD, AND SET THEM ABLAZE. IN
... SIMILAR RITES IN THE PAST THESE BOOKS HAD ALWAYS WITHSTOOD
... THE FLAMES, BUT THIS TIME THEY WERE REDUCED TO ASHES.
... OTHERS, WHICH WERE PLACED IN WATER, HAD PREVIOUSLY FLOATED
... ON THE SURFACE, BUT NOW SANK TO THE BOTTOM. THE TAOISTS
... CALLED OUT FOR DEMONS TO APPEAR, BUT TO NO AVAIL.
... UNBEARABLY HUMILIATED, CH'U SHAN-HSIN, FEI SHU-TS'AI, AND
... OTHERS DIED OF SHAME. WHEN THE TWO INDIAN SAGES PREACHED
... BUDDHISM, THE BUDDHA'S ASHES ASCENDED TO HEAVEN AND THERE
... RADIATED A LIGHT SO BRILLIANT THAT IT ECLIPSED THE SUN. THE
... BUDDHA IN THE PAINTING EMITTED A LIGHT FROM BETWEEN HIS
... EYEBROWS. MORE THAN SIX HUNDRED TAOISTS, INCLUDING LÜ
... HUI-T'UNG, [Note 20: Lü Hui-t'ung was a Taoist in the Later
... Han dynasty. According to The Record of the Lineage of the
... Buddha and the Patriarchs, he and other Taoists converted
... to Buddhism when they were defeated in debate in the
... presence of Emperor Ming in 71.] FINALLY CAPITULATED AND
... ENTERED THE BUDDHIST PRIESTHOOD. WITHIN THIRTY DAYS OF THIS
... CONFRONTATION THEY BUILT TEN TEMPLES OF BUDDHISM.

From "Letter to Hōren," WND I, p.514:
https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/62#para-76

... THE SITUATION WAS SIMILAR IN CHINA. AFTER MĀTANGA HAD
... INTRODUCED BUDDHISM TO CHINA, HE HELD A DEBATE WITH THE
... TAOISTS. WHEN THE TAOISTS WERE DEFEATED IN DEBATE, THEN FOR
... THE FIRST TIME THERE WERE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR FAITH IN
... BUDDHISM, THOUGH THERE WERE MANY MORE WHO DID NOT.

Here, Nichiren Daishonin describes how there is a time and capacity for any given set of teachings. When that time has passed and the capacity of the people has advanced beyond the need for those teachings, then practices of those teachings become less that useless, they cause misfortune and misery. Now in the Latter Day of the Law, only Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra can prevail over the impurity of the Saha world to remove the misery of the people and bring them real benefits that are durable and persistent.

From "On Repaying Debts of Gratitude," WND I, p. 714:
https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/88#para-169

... The stupa built by Nirgrantha Jnātaputra over a period of
... several years conferred great benefit upon living beings,
... but when Bodhisattva Ashvaghosha bowed to it, it suddenly
... collapsed. [Note 67: This story appears in A History of the
... Buddha's Successors. King Kanishka happened to pass by the
... stupa adorned with seven kinds of treasures that Nirgrantha
... Jnātaputra, one of the six non-Buddhist teachers and the
... founder of Jainism, had built. He mistook it for a Buddhist
... stupa and worshiped it, whereupon it collapsed. The
... Daishonin says that Ashvaghosha was the one who caused the
... stupa to collapse, probably because King Kanishka was
... converted to Buddhism by Ashvaghosha.] The Brahman Demon
... Eloquence taught from behind a curtain and for a number of
... years succeeded in fooling others, but Bodhisattva
... Ashvaghosha berated him and exposed his falsehoods. [Note
... 68: This story appears in Record of the Western Regions. In
... India there was a conceited Brahman named Demon Eloquence
... who amused himself with paradoxical theories and worshiped
... demons. He lived in a forest secluded from people. Because
... he conducted debates from behind a curtain, nobody had seen
... his true form. One day Ashvaghosha, together with the
... ruler, went to confront him in debate and argued him into
... silence. Then Ashvaghosha lifted the curtain, exposing his
... demonic appearance.] The non-Buddhist teacher Ulūka turned
... himself into a stone and remained in that form for eight
... hundred years, but when Bodhisattva Dignāga berated him, he
... turned into water. The Taoist priests for several hundred
... years deceived the people of China, but when they were
... rebuked by the Buddhist monks Kāshyapa Mātanga and Chu
... Fa-lan, they burned their own scriptures that purported to
... teach the way of the immortals.

Taoism is really just more Shinto god-worshiping, and false deification of kings and Emperors to justify oligarchy.

Brad Klee, you must stop promoting these evils in a newsgroup dedicated to Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism.

-Chas.
___________________________________________________________

Brad Klee distorts Buddhism for fun

On Sunday, December 27, 2020 at 12:09:19 PM UTC-8, brad...@gmail.com wrote:
> Dear Chas,
>
> Although your quotes from Nichiren regarding the admixture
> of Taoism and Buddhism are interesting from a historical
> perspective, I don't think you should accept them as scientific
> fact. Use a little skepticism. Don't believe everything you read.
> Opinions are a penny a piece.

1. What you call an "opinion" is history, related by the honest sages of the Lotus Sutra tradition, in particular Nichiren Daishonin, founder of Nichiren Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra. If you call him a liar, then why are you spouting distorting rhetoric in his newsgroup? Why not spout your filth somewhere else?

2. Apparently, you consider appropriating someone else's work and plagiarizing it into your own filth, as simply standard practice and acceptable. That is one secular crime, however, the Lotus Sutra is the supreme teaching, supreme over all other teachings preached before or after the Lotus Sutra was preached. Now your appropriation of the Lotus Sutra and plagiarizing it into your own filth becomes a crime against the true nature of life itself, a slander of the one true Law.

[snip the rest of your evil slanders]

-Chas.
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