I’m a great fan of Feedly, an RSS news reader that allows me to monitor hundreds of websites. I was a Google Reader fan before Feedly and I don’t remember what before that. I just can’t imagine life without some form of automation to scrape together the news from each website I monitor.
As an early adopter of Feedly, I’ve been able to acquire “Pro” level features at minimal expense. (The Pro+ features normally cost $12 a month. They are currently discounted to $8.25 a month for the first year.)
One of those Pro+ features is Leo, a personal AI Research Assistant who helps identify items of specific interest.
At the moment I have Leo identifying any article about the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren or T’ien-t’ai or about my former employer McClatchy Newspapers (watching for bankruptcy’s impact on my pension) or Christian Pulisic, the US National Soccer Team player currently with ChelseaFC.
But Leo, being intelligent, is always trying to learn while it reads along with me. Periodically an article in my news feed will include a question from Leo asking whether he was right about the topic of the item.
Today’s quote from the Writings of Nichiren Shonin entitled “The Three Venerables” is a case in point.
Leo looked at this:
In this sūtra it is said: “Now this Sahā World is all My domain, where all the people are My children. However, this world is full of various sufferings, and it is I, Śākyamuni Buddha, alone who can save them.” To those against the Lotus Sūtra, it preaches: “Those who do not listen to the Buddha when He taught and tried to persuade them that they are slanderers of the dharmas will all fall into the Hell of Incessant Suffering without fail.”
and Leo concluded this must be about “Global Health.” Or at least Leo felt 80 percent certain the topic was Global Health. Leo asked me whether he was correct.
While I can see how the world population falling into the Hell of Incessant Suffering without fail could be considered a Global Health issue, I told Leo, “Sorry, no it’s not.” I can only guess what people searching for “# Global Health” issues thought about this quote.
