Vision on a Lake

In Tibetan Buddhism, Dalai Lama is an incarnation of boddhisattva of compassion. Conventionally, he is regarded as the political and spiritual leader of Tibet, the head of Tibetan Buddhism – the emphasis is on spiritual issues, spiritual guiding and leading. There can be only one Dalai Lama at a time. When a Lama dies, his or her soul passes into an infant born nine months after his decease. That is, boddhisattva finds a new living person for revealing himself.

Since year 1391, Dalai Lamas have been searched and enthroned. The current Dalai Lama is fourteenth and his name is Tenzin Gyatso, now expelled and living in India after China’s invasion to Tibet in 1959. Dalai Lama can also be a woman and outside of Tibet. During Tenzin Gyatso’s press conference on his visit to Finland, he remarked that if he dies now, it is just logical that his successor will be found outside Tibet.

As quite often is the case when describing and translating religious terms and concepts, the nuances and the context become lost and the message conveyed by the religion distorts. Nevertheless, I still try to slightly clarify the Buddhist term boddhisattva. In Sanskrit boddhi means “enlightenment”, sattva means “truth”. It refers to a being aiming for a supreme degree of enlightenment, combining the pursuit of wisdom, compassion and perfection in various virtues. And to form a connection to water, this book’s subject, Dalai Lama literally means ocean of wisdom. Therefore on a certain level, there are water, wisdom and truth present in Dalai Lama. The current Dalai Lama and water are deeply related in an other way also – the amazing story of the events leading to his discovery describes it.

Beginning his serving at the age of two in 1876, the thirteenth Dalai Lama Thupten Gyatso - Tenzin Gyatso’s predecessor - also experienced a period of being a refugee in India. During his time there he was fascinated by several modern inventions – currency system, postal service, electricity - and brought them with him to Tibet. After his demise in 1933 the search for his successor was initiated by the government of Tibet. The search began beside a lake.

The sacred Lhamo Latso lake in Chokhorgyal, Tibet.

The lake is a sacred Lhamo Lhatso, about 140 kilometers south east of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital. According to the Tibetans, visions of the future can be seen on surface of the lake. Each Dalai Lama visits the lake at least once during his life to have some view and insight into his coming personal events. In the beginning of the search, the regent of Tibet arrived to the lake and had a vision of three Tibetan letters: Ah, Ka and Ma. He also saw a picture of a monastery with roofs of jade green and gold, and a house with turquoise tiles. Given the vision seen in the waters as a guide, search parties consisting of high lamas and dignitaries were sent to all parts of Tibet, the Land of Snows, in 1937.

In Amdo, some 260 kilometers north east of Lhasa, search party led by Sera Monastery’s Lama found a place which matched the description of the secret vision. They went into a house, there was a little boy inside. The leader of the party was wearing a rosary that belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama. The little boy recognised the rosary and demanded it. They said that he will get it if he can name the leader of the search party. “Lama of Sera”, the little boy replied correctly. The search party continued to a series of other tests and became confident; this boy is the successor Dalai Lama, incarnation of boddhisattva of compassion.

Dalai Lama search party with Tenzin Gyatso.

The mystery of the three letters in the vision was resolved: Amdo  (Ah) is the name of the province; Kumbum (Ka) is one of the largest monasteries in the area; Karma Rolpai Dorje (Ka and Ma) is the monastery above the little boy’s village.

Tenzin Gyatso in 1937.

Recalling the moment of the search party’s arrival 60 years later, Tenzin Gyatso tells that he was very happy when he was recognized as the next Dalai Lama. Since he was a little child, he has had a strong desire to go to Lhasa.

Considering the prolonged history of the Dalai Lama institution it is quite surprising that Tenzin Gyatso presents as his personal opinion that “the Dalai Lama institution has served its purpose”. As early as 1963, he made a draft constitution which is based on democratic system and enables the possibility that the power of the Dalai Lama can be removed. The constitution gives the future of the Dalai Lama institution to the hands of Tibetan people who can vote for continuing the tradition. However, to clarify any doubts, he assures that as long as the Dalai Lama institution is useful and relevant for Tibetan culture and its people - as long they want to have it, it prevails.

The Game of Life

In its own way, water is capable of processing data. To aid in comprehending this concept, let’s play a classic game: the Game of Life.

The Game of Life by John Conway visualizes how simple rules generate a complex and diverse outcome. In 1970, John Conway worked as a mathematician in Cambridge University, England. During that period, he initially presented the principles of the game in an article published in Scientific American. Currently, it is a widespread and inspiring classic, creating interest through generations, in different sciences and disciplines.

The game area is a grid of cells, square paper for example. Each cell has eight neighbours and two states: alive (filled) or dead (empty). The initial pattern of living cells is set to game area. The pattern is up to you, the player. Experiment freely and open-mindedly with different patterns - you will see, learn and be surprised about how the game eventually proceeds.

The rules - the algorithm - for the Game of Life are as follows:

If a living cell has two or three living neighbours, the cell will be alive on the next generation also. Otherwise, the cell dies of loneliness (less than two living neighbours) or of overpopulation (more than three neighbours).

A dead cell comes to life if it has three, no more or less, living neighbours.

For each generation, the states of all the cells are calculated using the previous generation as a basis. When every cell’s new state is determined, generation changes, i.e. the entire game area is swapped to a new one displaying cells with new states.

The pictured example stops after six generations leaving an empty grid, with no living cells on it. Some patterns continue for several generations, some go on forever. The initial situation on the game area defines the result; randomness is not involved. In the spirit of Einstein’s famous proverb: in the Game of Life world, God does not play dice, for sure. On some versions, it is possible to alter the outcome by dropping living cells to a game area in mid-game. In that case, however, the deepest nature of the game might become slightly blurred.

The outcome (output) from the current generation acts as a seed (input) for the next generation. This is an iterative and recursive process - process feeding itself. Recursion is a way to achieve richness of the form and outcome with only a few short rules. You can think the world working similarly; taking the current state of everything - every particle, every planet, every apple hanging on the tree - applying some rules to them, spitting the next state out and starting it over again.

One of the major significances of the game lies in its ability to teach and pinpoint how simple rules can lead to unexpected, varied and diverse results, to unknown territory. Upon playing with it, it is very easy to believe that a beautiful and intricate flower of nature can indeed emerge as a result of a simple process. The two dimensional world of the game is an excellent playground and laboratory for studying and researching all kinds of phenomena.

At first, the game was run as a manual process. Graph paper and physical game pieces were used. The computers were utilized later and now the Internet is full of Game of Life programs with all kinds of variations.

It has been proven that on a world of Game of Life it is possible to simulate the basic building blocks of computers: logic gates. In principle and in practise, a computer can be built inside the game world. However, the game area would be an enormous one and the task would be elaborate; though it could be accomplished with an other computer program.

The Game of Life world is digital; each cell can have two states. Go by the water, toss small stones to it. The waves mold the water surface, which acts as the game area. Let’s define so that water molecules take the role of game cells. The state of each molecule is governed by the state of the neighbour molecules, and naturally, by the current state of the molecule itself – resembling the Game of Life rules. Waves on a water surface are analog; they can be of multiple levels of height. In this sense, the water molecules constituting the waves can have multiple states. Each emerging version of water surface is an outcome of a recursive process.

If Game of Life operates on digital, two-state logic, it can be presented that surface of water operates on analog, multiple-state logic. Water can process a highly vast number of inputs in parallel. It takes a massive computer to create and emulate a detailed real-time simulation of water; the splashes, the waves superimposing on each other, the movement of colliding surface-tensioned water drops. In fact, current computational power is not enough for simulating moving H20 molecules in a glass of water - all 10^24 of them. As a bold proposition and thought experiment, could there be a method of utilizing water’s processing capabilities – is there a way to program a bucket of water? Will there be a sleek sphere filled with water which, after connecting it to our personal computer, provides additional processing power?