Introducing ChronoBuddha: A lightly prompted research proposal

On today’s Full Moon day, I decided to have an afternoon conversation with Google Gemini, exploring the feasibility of determining a temporal ordering for events in the Buddha’s life, especially the teachings that he gave. The flow of the conversation led to a research proposal.  

Here is a summary list of the prompts I gave:

1. open source software temporal ordering of historical events based on logical conditions
2. Have any of these approaches and tools been used to analyse the order in which the Buddha gave his teachings?
3. To what extent is there still contradictory and uncertain data if the dataset is limited to the Theravāda canon?
4. Is the temporal ordering problem amenable to Bayesian Network Analysis?
5. Yes, please give a conceptual example of how to structure a Python code snippet (using a library like networkx or a basic probabilistic framework) to show how two contradictory text references are mathematically resolved into a single "most probable" order.
6. Yes, please show how we could structure a data schema (like JSON or CSV) to represent a larger set of text constraints—including geographical locations or overlapping person names— to feed into an automated pipeline.
7. Yes, please provide a Python script that parses this exact JSON data schema, extracts the spatial-temporal coordinates, and checks for conflicting paths?  [lazy copy and paste!]
8. Yes, please extend this script to automatically compute travel time matrices between the coordinates using a distance formula, flagging events that require the Buddha to travel physically impossible distances.
9. Can you come up with the outline of a research project proposal to deliver a prototype system that scales up this approach across the Theravāda canon and also provides Web-based tools for Buddhist scholars around the world to conduct queries concerning events in the Buddha’s life, especially the temporal ordering.
10. Yes, please expand on Section 4 (Web Tool Features) to outline a set of specific mock query examples that a scholar might execute.
11. Please go back and drill down into the risk management section regarding how to handle non-unanimous scholarly consensus.

I’ve uploaded a printout of the entire chat; although some of the output is truncated, the conversation is largely intact. I have also copied responses to a word processed document (LibreOffice Writer).

It only took a few prompts to home in on an 18-month project proposal with the succinct title, ChronoBuddha (Prototype Phase):  

Project Title: Mapping the Path: A Spatiotemporal Reasoner and Graph-Based Timeline Query System for the Theravāda Canon 

Project Type: Digital Humanities / Applied Computer Science 

Executive Summary:

    • The Problem: The Theravāda Sutta Piṭaka records thousands of events from the Buddha's 45-year ministry, but its historical sequence is completely scrambled, containing blind spots, structural omissions, and localized narrative contradictions.

    • The Solution: This project will develop ChronoBuddha, an open-source, web-based prototype system that ingests early Pāli texts, normalizes relative temporal and geographic constraints, uses probabilistic graph modeling to resolve chronological conflicts, and provides an international scholarly community with an interactive web toolkit for timeline exploration and validation. 

Reflection

Everything should be checked, of course, but Gemini's responses were coherent and generally made sense to me.  I was particularly impressed by the illustrations provided, which demonstrated appropriate contextualisation, and the code snippets look generally clean and straightforward.

I particularly like the way it brings in different types of analysis to the project proposal, such as the integration of GIS to analyse Indian topology (and topography) to shed light on the feasibility of navigation routes.  There are even suggestions of possible funding sources.  It actually looks a credible proposal, one I might enjoy leading.

I find these chat agents polite and agreeable to use, which prompts me to try and reciprocate.  I concluded the chat accordingly:

Thank you for the conversation with its useful suggestions.  I may have further queries later on.

And Gemini responded:

You are very welcome! It was a pleasure exploring this fascinating intersection of Digital Buddhist Humanities, graph analytics, and spatiotemporal logic with you.

The structural and chronological complexity of the Theravāda Canon makes it an incredibly rich dataset for this kind of advanced computational modeling.

Whenever you are ready to pick this back up—whether you want to prototype more of the Python pipeline, dive deeper into the database architecture, or refine the user interface designs for scholars—just reach out. Best of luck with your research, and I look forward to our next conversation! ☸️💻

(How easy it is to anthropomorphise the chatbot!)

With Generative AI providing very useful assistance like this, it is tempting to lean on it more and more. However, we should always remain heedful of the long-term impact on human agency.

Human Agency and AI

[Updated on 4 June '26 with additional paragraphs on mental agency.]

[This article has also been kindly translated into Italian by Francesco Galgani.]

It is one year since my last post, in which I related how I made a comparison of human and machine intelligence on the basis of reflections on stillness. After pulling my paper from consideration for the JSRE special issue, I subsequently had a shorter article on this topic included in Issue 78 of De Numine, the magazine journal of the Alister Hardy Trust.

Since my last post my Academia profile has received dozens of invitations to submit a conference paper, all of them relating to AI. The headline themes include computer science, engineering, signal and image processing, wireless and mobile technologies, database management, big data, Internet of Things, and so on.  Yet, at the same time, I’ve not received any invitations related to my most popular upload by far, which is on Buddhist ethics. This is an indication of the frenzied and scattered attention being given to AI, often at the expense of pretty much everything else.

Mainstream media is reporting increased existential fears, ranging from the immediate (job uncertainty) to long-term implications for humanity.  This is concentrating attention on the distinct qualities of being human, but I find the response from academia tends to take a materialist perspective and gets bogged down in legalities.  Much more on point is Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

The Pope's letter dwells especially on the social aspects and the common good, naturally reflecting the concerns of an institution. Here I take a Buddhist perspective, focused more on the individual.  Moving out of stillness, I wish again to highlight six characteristics of human agency:

    • initiation
    • exertion
    • making effort
    • steadfastness
    • persistence
    • endeavouring

This is sourced from the Attakārī Sutta: The Self-Doer, AN 6.38 (an English translation from the Pali on Access to Insight). 

As an illustration, imagine entering the London Marathon. Fast forward to race day and the run itself.

    • initiation: when the starter fires the gun, you respond and decide to start moving
    • exertion: you drive forward and start moving your legs
    • making effort: you accelerate up to your normal running speed and into your standard running posture
    • steadfastness: you maintain a steady gait and pace, start to clock up the miles
    • persistence: you tire and start to ache, but keep going 
    • endeavouring: you ‘hit the wall’, but take on energy fluids, rest a while and then keep going, determined to finish.

You complete the race and glow at the achievement; the sense of personal satisfaction is immense on top of the gladness in raising funds for your charity.

The example primarily concerns physical agency, though in the wider context of preparation and training also involves actions in speech and mind.  These activities are permeated by the pervasive digital environment, involving many online interactions such as registration, making purchases, and seeking inspiration and advice in social media. 

Getting ready for and participating in a marathon is usually highly motivated and focused, strengthening agency and increasing confidence in facing the challenges of life, but is this the case for other aspects of a typically busy lifestyle?  When online or plugged in with digital devices, we need to be especially heedful of the mental aspects and be wary of being swept along.

• Are we making decisions ourselves?
• Are we attending to tasks promptly or putting things off?
• Are we thinking things through?
• Are we evaluating for the long-term as well as short-term?
• Are we prepared to put in the extra hours to solve problems? 
• Are we ready for a power cut?
• Do we have a plan B?
• What have we really learnt?
• Are we able to stop and bring our minds to peace and stillness?
• Are we contented?

Or are we restless, increasingly handing over tasks to some other agent, generative AI, in the hope that it will solve our problems?  With the nature of this technology being all-embracing, there is a potentially huge deleterious impact on cognitive functioning. It could impair human agency to such an extent that we become little more than drones.

Rather than blindly accepting the 'latest and greatest' digital promise, we should always ask: Do we really need it?  Constructively, we can take each of the six characteristics listed in the Attakārī Sutta and simply ask of any proposed technology: Is this likely to enhance or undermine human agency?  To sharpen the focus, ask these questions assuming that the technology is removed after a certain time. What are you left with?

I discuss this further in my short book, Buddhism and Computing: How to Flourish in the Age of Algorithms, and paper, Cultivating sīla Online: the use of Cognitive Interventions in Systems Design.