This is about my decision of not having any connection with the publications of false teachers. Guru Rinpoche said that in degenerate times many would claim to be teachers, show charisma and intelligence, but lead beings in the wrong direction. I have firm certainty, arisen from reflecting upon much information, that the author of that book you had in your table is such kind of false teacher. In this way for sure he is an object of compassion, not someone from whom we should try to learn something.

I once bought two books from this “geshe”. At that time I was starting in the dharma and knew nothing of the controversy around him. Normally when I order books from amazon.com, they take at the top 6 weeks to arrive. Those books took 6 months. This was very fortunate, though, for during this time I came into contact with information about the controversy, and “doubt tending to fact” had arisen. Worried I went to my lama and asked what I should do. I remember clearly when he said it was best not to read the books. I actually asked “but is there any wrong information in them?” and he said, and this are his precise words “no, and this is what makes them even more dangerous.”

Since I study philosophy I know truth is independent of whoever speaks it. Yet I am also a dharma practitioner, or I try do be, and I know we create a karmic connection with the teacher when we offer our attention and time to his explanations. Also, since I am very far from understanding the dharma, it is very easy for me to be misled. That’s why I think people who have not achieved the result should still be careful and take teachings from only the purest and most uncontroversial teachers. Even a drop of poison in a big jar of milk turns all the milk into poison, nothing else. That’s why I get my milk from the cleanest farms I know about. If I hear from very respectable sources there’s something funny happening at that farm, since I still don’t have the laboratory of final understanding to test the milk itself, I have to choose according to the finest information available.

The Dalai Lama himself says he is still trying to understand emptiness himself. So, I believe anyone lower than the Dalai Lama should take dharma-milk as carefully as I take it. If you yourself have achieved final understanding, and have the laboratory to test the milk from the funky farm, then of course you can study such book. But then it would still be really a very unfortunate thing if the Geluk tradition were in such degenerate state as to have to rely in such a bad name. I can’t believe that with so many great teachers in the past, this day one would have to choose to rely on controversial apostates. It is almost as if someone had taken the cow away from the farm because it was sick and still we would seek the milk from THAT cow amongst the great herd of the Geluk tradition! It really puzzles me.

So I believe I have created so much virtue in instilling “doubt tending to fact” towards those publications, when refusing to translate information related to that book. I rejoice in my action.

Of course, even if the contents are right, and the reader knows for sure how to establish this by himself, to buy such book is the same as sponsoring the death of the Dalai Lama. It is like hiring a hit man which happens to be dressed like a monk. While he is going to kill the Dalai Lama, he may create some virtue, because people see the monk habit and maybe develop renunciation; or maybe he tells the four noble truths to some people in order to keep in disguise—this relates to the contents of that book—but when he puts the gun to the Dalai Lama’s head, I don’t believe any benefit created in his path would be worth the final result. So that’s how I see things.

I think you will finally think in this way also, since as far as I know, we agree this “geshe” is doing a practice the Dalai Lama himself claims to be bad and should not be done.

You may still develop a different reasoning, and I respect that. Yet both through samaya to my guru, which is beyond words, and through my own reasoning, I beg to differ. So in the future, if you ever consider using me as a translator to Portuguese again, which I would really find to be an honor in any case, you just have to take into consideration my position. Then you choose according to this.

On a lighter tone, I include here some technical information about the meaning of “sound” in “sound reasoning”, because you may find such technicalities interesting, in case you happen to not know about the way western philosophy deals with the concept of “soundness”. Also I researched and it seems the Dalai Lama finds Artificial Intelligence to be possible (although I agree with you that it is not necessarily desirable).

Best regards,
hoping to be able to meet you again in the near future,
Eduardo Pinheiro (a lazy lay practitioner wannabe
Sometimes referred to as “Padma Dorje”).

Soundness (from Wikipedia)

A logical argument is sound if and only if

1. the argument is valid
2. all of its premises are true.

A proof procedure (e.g. natural deduction) of a logical system is sound if it proves only valid formulas (also tautologies). In notation, a logical system is sound if implies .
In mathematical logic, a logical system has the soundness property if and only if its inference rules prove only formulas that are valid with respect to its semantics. It most cases, this comes down to its rules having the property of preserving truth, but this is not the case in general.

Soundness theorems are among the most fundamental results in mathematical logic. They provide the initial reason for counting a logical system as desirable. Once assured that no falsehoods are provable, it follows from the completeness property that every validity (truth) is provable. Together they assure us that all and only validities are provable. Most proofs of soundness are trivial. For example, in an axiomatic system, proof of soundness amounts to verifying the validity of the axioms and that the rules of inference preserve validity (or the weaker property, truth). Most axiomatic systems have only the rule of modus ponens (and sometimes substitution), so it requires only verifying the validity of the axioms and one rule of inference. Soundness theorems come in two main varieties: weak and strong soundness, of which the former is a special case of the latter.

Weak Soundness

The weak soundness theorem for a deductive system is the result that any sentence that is provable in that deductive system is a true on all interpretations or models of the semantic theory for the language upon which that theory is based. In symbols, where S is the deductive system and L the language together with its semantic theory, and P a sentence of L: ?S P, then also ?L P. In other words, a system is weakly sound if each of its theorems (i.e. formulas provable from the empty set) is valid in every structure of the language.

Strong Soundness

The strong soundness theorem for a deductive system is the result that any sentence P of the language upon which the deductive system is based that is derivable from a set G of sentences of that language is also a logical consequence of that set G, in the sense that any model that makes all members of G true will also make P true. In symbols where G is a set of sentences of L: if G ?S P, then also G ?L P. Notice that in the statement of strong soundness, when G is empty, we have the statement of weak soundness.
Relation to Completeness

The converse of the soundness theorem is the semantic completeness theorem. In the strong form, it says for a deductive system and semantic theory that any sentence which is a semantic consequence of a set of sentences can be derived in the deduction system from that set. In symbols: G ?L P, then also G ?S P. This result was first explicitly established by Gödel, though some of the main results were contained in the antedated work of Skolem.

Informally, the soundness theorem for a deductive system tells you that everything you can prove in that deductive system is (universally) true. And thus, that undesirable falsehoods cannot be proved. Hence, derivation can be trusted with respect to the semantics. Completeness states that all truths are provable.

Gödel's first incompleteness theorem guarantees that for languages sufficient for doing a certain amount of arithmetic, there can be no effective deductive system that is complete with respect to the intended interpretation of the symbolism of that language.
Thus, not all sound deductive systems are complete in this special sense of completeness, in which the class of models (up to isomorphism) is restricted to the intended one. The original completeness proof applies to all classical models, not some special proper subclass of intended ones.


BUDDHIST REINCARNATION AND AI

Quoted from the book, Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind by Jeremy Hayward and Francisco Varela. Shambala, 1992. pp. 152-153.

DALAI LAMA: In terms of the actual substance of which computers are made, are they simply metal, plastic, circuits, and so forth?

VARELA: Yes, but this again brings up the idea of the pattern, not the substance but the pattern.

DALAI LAMA: It is very difficult to say that it's not a living being, that it doesn't have cognition, even from the Buddhist point of view. We maintain that there are certain types of births in which a preceding continuum of consciousness is the basis. The consciousness doesn't actually arise from the matter, but a continuum of consciousness might conceivably come into it.

HAYWARD: Does Your Holiness regard it as a definite criterion that there must be continuity with some prior consciousness? That whenever there is a cognition, there must have been a stream of cognition going back to beginningless time?

DALAI LAMA: There is no possibility for a new cognition, which has no relationship to a previous continuum, to arise at all. I can't totally rule out the possibility that, if all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer.

HAYWARD: A stream of consciousness?

DALAI LAMA: Yes, that's right. [DALAI LAMA laughs.] There is a possibility that a scientist who is very much involved his whole life [with computers], then the next life... [he would be reborn in a computer], same process! [Laughter.] Then this machine which is half-human and half-machine has been reincarnated.

VARELA: You wouldn't rule it out then? You wouldn't say this is impossible?

DALAI LAMA: We can't rule it out.

ROSCH: So if there's a great yogi who is dying and he is standing in front of the best computer there is, could he project his subtle consciousness into the computer?

DALAI LAMA: If the physical basis of the computer acquires the potential or the ability to serve as a basis for a continuum of consciousness. I feel this question about computers will be resolved only by time. We just have to wait and see until it actually happens.