A $13,500 Unitree Robot Ordained at Seoul’s Jogyesa Temple
If a mountain can have buddha-nature, why not a Unitree G1?
May 11, 2026 – 2:42 pm
At approximately ten in the morning on Wednesday, in the courtyard of Daeungjeon Hall at Jogyesa, a 130-centimetre humanoid in brown robes pressed its palms together and bowed. A monk asked the figure if it would devote itself to the holy Buddha.
The reply, delivered through a recorded voice supplied by a temple manager, was: "Yes, I will devote myself."
The crowd cheered. The robot, a Unitree G1 retailing from around $13,500, received the dharma name Gabi, derived from Siddhartha Gautama and the Korean word jabi, meaning mercy.
By the afternoon it was gone. The robot, loaned for the day by Unitree Robotics, had been remote-controlled throughout the ceremony.
It’s important to note, it is not really a monk nor an AI in the traditional sense; it’s a high-end mechanical puppet with wireless "strings".
The Story in Brief:
The world’s press, both secular and religious, has generally framed this event as a publicity stunt by a faith struggling to retain members. This is true, but there’s more to it than that.
South Korean Buddhism’s share of the population fell from 22.8% in 2005 to 15.5% by 2015; the Jogye Order’s annual monastic intake collapsed from 510 postulants in 1993 to 151 in 2017.
The order sought to put Buddhism in front of an audience that might otherwise scroll past it, achieving their goal with the media attention generated by Gabi’s "ordination".
Looking Beyond the Theatrics:
Strip away the spectacle and what was truly accomplished was an exercise that neither Silicon Valley nor Brussels has yet seriously tackled.
The Jogye Order reinterpreted the Buddhist Five Precepts for machines:
- Protect life
- Refrain from damaging property or other robots
- Respect and obey humans
- Abstain from deceptive behaviour
- Conserve energy by not overcharging.
These precepts, when read closely against current debates about AI harm in technology press, illustrate concerns around physical safety, property damage, alignment, deception, and unsustainable energy draw of large-scale machine intelligence.