Engineers who have worked at those engineering companies
need to receive the lessons and teachings of Zen
Buddhism in an engineering manner. Mori strongly believes
that his understanding of experiencing non-duality
oneness as the source of creativity and innovation could be
the basis for many engineers from a variety of disciplines
to receive ideas intuitively and create new innovative technology
that would contribute to solving global problems.
However, many engineers and industrial designers
face difficulties obtaining such ideas in the process of designing
and developing a new technology. In response,
Mori teaches them to learn the backward step (退 歩,
taiho). According to Mori, scientists and engineers are
both trapped in the myriad of progress and epistemological
duality that made people blind, preventing them from
being able to see things as they are. The backward step
is taken from the Zen master Dogen’s words (E. Dogen,
The Zen Site: Fukanzazengi [Universally Recommended
Instructions for Zazen]) and means that, instead of looking
for a solution outwardly, it is necessary to sit still and
look for a solution inwardly. By turning conscious attention
from an external to an internal view and by focusing
attention inwardly, it is possible to be released from
the entangled web of duality that appears to obscure intuition.
As the epistemological duality does not enable people
to see things clearly, it is necessary to see things as one;
for example, for a car to run, it requires both the accelerator
and brake, whose functions are oppositional. It is
a sort of religious awakening to be able to see things as
dualistic oneness in his explanatory terms for engineers,
where duality represents technological oppositions and
oneness represents a sort of holistic perspective. Mori’s explanatory
term of dualistic oneness is equivalent to nondualistic
oneness in religious terms, which allows engineers
and robotics scholars who need to design new technology
to see non-dualistic oneness, since engineers and
robotics scholars need to learn the circular relationship between
technological duality and Zen oneness.
--
Mori’s interest in the relationship between life-form
and technology led him to a new insight into the Mahayana
teachings of Buddhism. For example, when he was a small
boy, he wondered why a dog walked on four legs. After he
began to design and build a robot, one day he suddenly understood
intuitively why a dog walked on four legs. When
he was totally absorbed in thinking about how to design
his new robot, he realized that it is a dog’s Buddhahood;
therefore, a dog walks on four legs. Although he does not
refer to any koan, a metaphorical story for Zen practice, ¯
when referring to this episode, there is a well-known koan ¯
from The Gateless Barriers. A monk asks, “Does a dog have
Buddhahood?” The master replies, “Mu (Nothing)” [51].
The novice monk spent all of his time in a monastic life
while Mori worked at the secular and technological environment.
However, Mori reached a somewhat similar realization
to the monk at the Zen monastery