Transcription
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
Ontological analysis: We finally reached the core of the skillful living method for becoming genius.
This is something I discovered back in 2002. When I was doing research on this singularity—not 2012 but the technological singularity—I came across an artificial intelligence concept called an ontology.
Of course I had heard of ontology before, but never really looked into it deeply, scientifically. So I took some time to learn about web ontologies especially. And then with what I had learned, I started analyzing the spiritual teachings that I was studying at that time.
And you know what I found?
They were flawed. They had deep logical incongruencies. This led to the discovery that the translations of my spiritual master’s books were fundamentally flawed. And later on when I was able to get ahold of the original texts, I confirmed this. And the ontological analysis of that text formed the basis for the realization that the whole thing was a fabrication.
And this is one of the things that got me to change my spiritual path and become a Buddhist. If you subject any system of knowledge to ontological analysis, you will quickly uncover its flaws. You will immediately discover its inconsistencies. And you will find why it doesn’t work—or why it does work, if it does work for you.
But to do this, you have to be working with an exact copy of the original information: duplication. You have to understand that knowledge or information well enough to see its cause and effect links: understanding. Then you have to know the science of ontology so that you can use a tool like Protégé to perform a complete ontological analysis.
So you see, all the steps we’ve gone through so far have simply been the preparation for this stage, which is actually the core of our method. Without this ontological analysis, you are not a genius.
Now Protégé is a very sophisticated tool, and the information that you’re working with may not need such sophistication. But in learning Protégé, you will also learn ontology. And by using Protégé to analyze the field of knowledge you’re trying to master, you will learn ontological analysis so well that you will be able to do it without the software.
That’s what we’re really aiming at here. We’re aiming at proficiency of ontological analysis such that you don’t need the support of the software to do it; you can do it in your head. Just like addition and subtraction, if you get good enough at math, you can do it in your head. It’s no problem.
Similarly, anyone who can do this kind of analysis in their head will talk like a genius and will produce results like a genius. For all practical purposes they become a genius.
The only thing that’s missing is the metacognition. So this stage is the heart, but metacognition is the soul of Becoming Genius. And this will prepare us for that final stage.
Okay, just one more time, let’s go over the theory and review a little bit of how we got to this point. According to our method there are four stages of Becoming Genius:
For any given subject the first stage is duplication: making an exact copy of the source materials. That means knowing all the definitions of all the terms and symbols.
The next stage is understanding, where we apply systems thinking and use logic to build a cause-and-effect model of our system. And then you should use techniques like making a taxonomy or an outline, handwritten diagrams and charts and so on to increase your understanding.
Now we’re at the stage of ontological analysis: contemplation of the abstract relationships that you uncovered in the process of understanding. And this sets the stage for metacognition, which is the realization of a new state of being based on what you have learned so far.
There’s going to be several steps in between these that we’ll cover outside of the formal presentation. Because you can’t say everything in a video, there just isn’t enough time or space. I’m going to assume that you have watched the previous videos in this presentation. But if you haven’t, you should go back now and review them before you continue. It’s fairly very important—you want to understand what we’re talking about.
This whole series of videos, in fact all of our work, is based on the ontological conception. That means being is the most important thing. Now I know in our culture we don’t have much background in being, but ontology gives us the tools to understand being and apply it in different ways.
Once we understand the being that we’re trying to attain, then we can figure out the knowing that we need to have that being, and the thinking that comes from that knowing, the doing that comes from that thinking. And finally, we’ll automatically get the having that comes along with that state of being.
It’s a descending process of knowledge. Once you start the thing rolling from the platform of being, everything else comes along more or less automatically. All you have to do is maintain that state of being and all the rest will be filled in for you. It’s much easier, much safer, and it’s easier to catch mistakes too.
Now notice this process is going backwards in time: the being that we want to attain is in the future. We don’t have it yet. But by forming a clear idea of it and defining it in so many ways by duplication, understanding, and analysis, then we can finally have the metacognition that leads to us actually becoming that state of being, whatever it is that we want to be.
And we’ve made so many examples: being a doctor, being a musician, being a pilot, being an enlightened person. To attain these states of being requires that you know in advance what you’re trying to attain. Then you can talk meaningfully of the knowing, thinking, doing, and having of that state of being.
Now the process of being and becoming is known as Dependent Origination. Being is something that we have automatically. We’re always being something or other. But becoming is a process with many stages. Each stage is triggered by the one before it.
So in other words, once we have a certain kind of ignorance, then we automatically begin a certain process of fabrication. And that leads to a specific state of consciousness, name-and-form, and so on.
Now what we’re trying to do is leverage the process of becoming. And the way to do that is to focus on the stage of name-and-form. Name-and-form and consciousness have a very tight feedback loop between them. And this is where we can get the most leverage to influence the outcome of the process of becoming.
We’re all going through the process of becoming at every moment. We can’t stop it. It’s a habit. The process of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Noble Path, is the way to stop being and becoming. But we’re not ready for that yet.
First we have to reach satisfaction in our being and becoming and attain the type of being that we desire. And then we’re going to be ready for the Eightfold Path. So first of all, we have to go through the process of becoming, make it conscious, make it deliberate, and attain the type of being that we really want.
Even to communicate with ourselves requires a language. And that is name-and-form. Name-and-form is language or ontology that determines the types of consciousness, the types of being that can exist in our universe. And of course, the more different types of being we’re aware of, the more we can consciously choose the type of being that we want and create it.
Now, in our study of ontology, we already introduced the concept of a triple. The ontological triple is the atomic unit of ontological structure, a triune entity that means three-in-one, usually consisting of subject, object, and their relation. Generally, the parts of a triple correspond with the subject, object, and predicate in the grammar of most ordinary languages.
So we’re going to use triples extensively in our ontological analysis of being and becoming, and in our ontological analysis of specific fields.
We’re not stuck with subject, object, and predicate or subject, object, and relation. We can have many of these stacked up, put together into complex structures, definitions of definitions, categories of categories, relations of relations, and so on, to express very complex structures of being and becoming.
And that’s just what we’re going to do in this tutorial. We’re going to use the ontological triple in its most common form of is-a. Is-a denotes membership of an item in a category: “A horse is an animal.”
An ontology is-a science; it’s a member of the class of sciences. So is-a denotes membership of an item in a category. Items can be categories, qualities, instances, other ontologies, etc. In other words, this is a very flexible scheme that can show the relationships among anything and everything. For example, ontology is-a science.
There is no limit to the number of other relations, as the category of relations includes anything that can be expressed in logic, including indeterminate logic. So is-a is only the most common and fundamental of them. And that is used in taxonomies such as the one that you developed in the previous section.
For example, the logical obverse or counterpart of is-a is belongs-to. It also denotes membership of an item in a category; but now the subject and object of the previous one, is-a, are reversed. So instead of “ontology is-a science,” we have “ontology belongs to the category of sciences.”
This is the format most commonly seen in taxonomies and other outlines. You would have science, ontology is-a science, ontics is-a type of ontology, and so on.
The triple format is the basis of all ontologies, but in complex real-life situations, a more sophisticated design and presentation format is required. Nobody can keep track of the number of triples in a complex subject like ontology itself, for example, or the teaching of the Buddha.
In the teaching of the Buddha, there are many, many, many triples. These all have to be put into a more comprehensive format and method of presentation, so that we can actually work with them.
What can we use to do that? Protégé is a sophisticated open-source ontology editor. It supports modeling ontologies via a web or desktop client. You can use it online or you can use it on your computer. Protégé ontologies can be developed in OWL, RDFS, and XML schema. These are different formal languages for expressing ontology triples.
Protégé is based on Java, so it runs anywhere, is extensible, and provides a plug-and-play environment, providing a flexible base for rapid prototyping and application development. So you can use Protégé to design computer programs. You could use it to design books or any other kind of presentation.
But mainly, you use it to design ontologies that can then be queried and the relations brought out in the form of logical queries to your knowledge base. We will use Protégé as a tool for learning more about ontology and ontological analysis.
Please download it now from this URL and install it on your computer. The rest of this video will use Protégé 4.1 for tutorial and demonstrations of ontological analysis. So you should install this program on your computer. If you don’t, you’ll have no way to practically see what we’re going to talk about in the rest of the video. So you really need to install the program.
It will run on anything: Mac, Linux, or Windows (notice the order) and you can use it for all kinds of really cool stuff besides what we’re doing here. So if you learn this tool, it will open up a whole bunch of new insights for you in any field. Once Protégé is installed and running on your computer, download the document, Protégé OWL Tutorial Version 1.3 from this URL.
Then stop the video, open the PDF document, and get familiar with the material before proceeding, because the terminology that we’re going to use in the succeeding parts of this video is based on the tutorial. So if you haven’t read the tutorial—or even better, worked your way through the tutorial—then you’re going to be lost, okay?
Take the time to work through the Protégé Pizza Tutorial. As you complete each chapter, think of how you could use the features you learned to input your subject taxonomy and expand on it.
You did complete a taxonomy on your subject in the last section, right?
The mind-mapping section, because if you didn’t, then you’re not going to understand why we’re going into this, and you’re going to be lost again. So please go back, review the other videos, and if there’s anything that you haven’t done yet in the tutorial, do it now—because otherwise you’re going to have so much backed up that you’re not going to be able to follow this discussion.
At some point, the light should go on in your brain: this is powerful stuff. The discipline of ontological thinking will enable you to make many new discoveries about your subject. Now, ontological analysis is something that you can apply in any field, but really you should only apply it in a field that is complex enough that you can’t hold the whole thing in your mind at one time.
Why is that? Because the ontological analysis will reveal things about the relationships among the parts of your subject that you could not see because you couldn’t fit the whole thing in your mind at one time.
Take any big subject like zoology, medicine, music, and so on. There are so many potential relations there that you’re not aware of because your mind is too small.
Or the Buddha’s teaching, for example. The Buddha’s teaching is extremely complex and deep. It has many different relations in it, and I don’t think anybody really has mastered all those relations and can see them all at once.
Of course, once you master the teaching or the practice, then you can see a lot more. But still, the ontological analysis will bring out many things you never suspected were there. By the time you finish this tutorial and are familiar with Protégé, you should have plenty of ideas about how to analyze your project. I guarantee that once you begin to input your project into Protégé, you will gain valuable insights into it.
This ontological analysis is how you prepare yourself for the breakthrough of a metacognition. In other words, metacognition has a certain background. It needs a certain context to be able to happen. It is a type of meditative practice that melts through the barriers that prevent deep insight.
But to get the most out of cognition so that it becomes a metacognition, a cognition about cognitions, you have to have a deep grounding in the fundamentals of your subject. You can’t be a surface program. You can’t be winging it. You can’t just be glib.
You have to have deep understanding and complete facility in the fundamentals of your discipline, whatever it is. Once you have acquired this background and understand all the complex interrelationships in your subject, then you can go on to the next stage, not before.
That’s why each one of these stages of duplication, understanding, and ontological analysis is a prerequisite for the next stage. And if you try to jump over one of them—like most people try to jump over the stage of duplication because it’s just so much plodding work. I know, I’ve done this myself.
And then I’ve got myself into hot water because I come across something that I would really like to understand or really like to be able to do, but I don’t have sufficient background; I don’t know the understanding; I don’t have the definitions of the terms, and so I’m stuck until I go all the way back to the beginning and plod through the whole thing and clear all the terms and clear up my misunderstandings.
So save yourself the trouble. Save yourself the time and the heartache. And just do it right from the start.
This is how people develop tremendous facility, tremendous comprehension, and tremendous ability in any subject: they get their fundamentals down cold. And then they build an understanding. And then on top of that, they do an ontological analysis.
It’s very clear to me. I’ve done it in three or four different fields now. It works every time. And the more rigorously you proceed from the beginning, the better it works.
So here’s a project idea for you. Having a hard time deciding on a project? What about using Protégé for an ontological analysis of the Buddha’s teaching? You start from the Suttas, you think about them, and then you simply put the structures into Protégé and start connecting them with different relations until something clicks.
It won’t take long. This analysis already exists in the Abhidhamma and is summarized in Viśuddhimagga. But they were written centuries ago in a different culture. Plus, there is no substitute for going through the process yourself.
Here’s a challenge from me personally, that you take this tool, Protégé, work through the Pizza Tutorial, learn about ontology, learn how to use the program, then do an analysis of the teaching of the Buddha. I guarantee the light is going to come on and you’re going to see so many things you never saw before.
You want to become good enough at ontological analysis that you can do it in your head. That’s the point of mastery. So let’s see, how would we get started? Here I’m creating a new OWL ontology, and just checking to make sure the default base is where I want it to be.
Very good. Now I’m typing in the name Buddha-dharma. Okay, let’s continue. Just check that it’s going to be where I want it to be in the directory structure. And then select OWL XML so it will generate an OWL file, and we’re finished.
This is the home screen and what I’m going to do here is select the first entity and then add a subclass. And that’s going to be the Four Noble Truths. Now I’m going to click add subclass again. And I’m going to enter the First Noble Truth. And then I’m going to go ahead and do that for the second, third, and fourth Noble Truths.
So this is not rocket science. It’s almost like outlining but you have much more scope with the relationships, the relations that you establish between the entities. Now I’m going to add a comment on the First Noble Truth. Here’s the comment window and I’m going to fill in the definition, the verbal definition. And do the same for the others.
Now the verbal definition is going to be different from the functional definition. And the functional definition is determined by the relations of each class with the other classes in the ontology. So what we’re doing here is simply identifying them for our own purposes with a comment.
Later on we’ll identify them functionally as cause-and-effect and many, many other relationships that are possible in Protégé. And that’s going to be the actual ontological or functional definition of each entity.
There. That’s the Four Noble Truths. Next I’m going to add another subclass, the Noble Eightfold Path. And under Noble Eightfold Path I’m going to add all of its parts, beginning with Right View and so on. There’s the Eight Factors of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Let’s do one more. This time let’s add a subclass to Thing; call it Dependent Origination. Now I’m going to add more subclasses for the stages, 12 stages. Notice that Protégé puts underscores in the spaces of the names of any of the classes that you enter. So that’s Dependent Origination and we’re going to do this with all the major categories in the Buddha’s teaching.