Gereon Kopf

In June, I met about two dozen scholars, practitioners, and AI professionals at a conference in Taipei, as well as hundreds of people in the audience and online, to discuss the intersection and/or overlap of Buddhism and AI. The conference was envisioned and organized by Ven. Yifa and sponsored by the Woodenfish Foundation.

The concept “self” is definitely one of the paradigmatic perennial questions. It has occupied a central place over the past 2-3 centuries in a variety of philosophical traditions. Today, it figures prominently in psychological, metaphysical, moral, epistemological, and political discourses— What role does the “self” (“what we call self”) play within psychological development? What is the “self”? Are we moral agents who are responsible and accountable, morally as well as legally?

In my reflections in this feature, I will be looking at a few gongans/kōans (“public cases”) to see if they hold any wider significance for us today, beside their role as pedagogical device in the spiritual training of Zen Buddhism. I believe that some can function as philosophical texts and contribute to debates today. The kōans that I would like to talk about are all from the Wumenguan. The title can be translated as The Gateless Gate, The Gateless Barrier, or Wumen’s Barrier/Gate.