Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017, brought to you by Veritas. Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in tech, live tech coverage. We're covering Veritas Vision 2017 at the Aria Hotel. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Stu Miniman. Eric Kessels is here. He's a CTO for Fairbanks, a partner of Veritas's, out of the Netherlands, and Carlos Carrero is Senior Principal Product Manager at Veritas, and we're going to talk OpenStack, gentlemen. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. We love this topic.  OpenStack came out. Many people, including John Furrier, called it a Hail Mary against the Amazon, which kind of was. And now the narrative around OpenStack is, well, it's kind of nobody's really doing it, blah, blah, blah, but there are definitely pockets of interest. The developer community is still, you know, passionate about it, and service providers are, you know, still glomming onto OpenStack. So Carlos, give us the update from Veritas's perspective. What's your interest in OpenStack and your role at Veritas? Yeah, so the key thing is what Veritas has been doing with OpenStack, and also what Veritas is doing with containers, so emerging products for emerging technologies. And one of the key things is, with our partners, Fairbanks, all the things we have been doing to validate the product and to bring the product into market. So for us, Fairbanks is one of the perfect partners, because what the value that they bring with that. So they are OpenStack experts, and he will go through all the content, you know, what they do, but they are really understanding about OpenStack. They really identify the issues that customers have with OpenStack, and how they collaborate with Veritas to build hyperscale as a product, to bring those gaps into a solution, and deliver those enterprise-class services to customers that... I mean, it's the ultimate and true, the true private cloud vision. Stuart, Eric, you guys used to be VMware experts, and decided to move beyond VMware to OpenStack. What was that journey like? Take us back to... Yeah, right. So that was about, I think, five years ago. So we did a lot of VMware implementations, but we, at some stage, we wanted to be a differentiator in the market. So a lot of people knew VMware was more a commodity in the IT. So we started to design a blue ocean strategy for our company, and then we went looking in the open-source market, which open-source initiative was feasible for us to move forward with. And we still were knowledgeable about infrastructure, so then we ran into OpenStack, and we did a technical validation, and we looked on what the attention was in the market. So from that stage, we transferred completely our company from a VMware house to a complete open-source company. But it took us a while, of course, because it was not like a switch of a couple of months.  Eric, can you talk to us about your customers? Did they come saying, I want OpenStack? Are they coming saying, you know, I need to digitally transform? What's the conversation you're having with them that leads to your solution, and what are your customers doing these days? And so when we decided for OpenStack, we, at that stage, we already had the made a decision that we would move forward for the private cloud decision. So we are not focusing on public cloud initiative for OpenStack, so we think that OpenStack was initially built for private cloud environments. So one thing that we saw is that the vendor login for VMware or for Microsoft was pretty big and customers didn't like that anymore. And the costs were pretty high for the VMware licensing. So then we start talking with those customers and say, okay, hey, there's a different kind of way of running your workloads in a different kind of environment. Would you be interested in it if we can cut the cost at 50% for example? And of course, that's always a good trigger to get in contact with our customers. And what we see that our customers are more like enterprise customers, so not big service providers, but just companies like a customer that is running a customer, a customer site so that they can do customer, a call center for that. So it's really an enterprise-like company. And I just want to have the, for days that they decided to move to OpenStack because they needed to expand their infrastructure like with 20 nodes. And if they did it with OpenStack, it was one third of the price in doing that. So more than 50%. So are these cloud service providers predominantly or describe the customers? Yeah, we have, of course, customers that are service providers because I think they have a huge price pressure on providing virtual machines. So they need to cut cost on their infrastructure. And I think OpenStack is really suitable for that because it's flexible, it is open. You can incorporate your management systems into OpenStack very fairly easily. So for those companies, OpenStack was a really good choice of doing that. And we have also other kind of customers that are like we have a packaging company. So they print the packaging for McDonald's, for example. And they have developer departments in their company that want to have really fast VMs for developing their own software. And if you go by more the traditional route, it takes too long before that all is in place. So they want to have some self-service functionality. And that's also what OpenStack can provide, providing self-service for their department. So to make it more easy. Carlos, this morning your CEO Bill Coleman said that the future is software-defined, multi-cloud, and hyperscale. I'm sure you're sitting there, well my product is hyperscale. So maybe you launched the product hyperscale at the OpenStack show in Boston. We got to talk with you on theCUBE there. Bring us up to speed as to that product and how it fits into really the portfolio of you from Veritas, especially I'm kind of curious the multi-cloud world as opposed to this very specifically and on-premises type, type Boston. We talk in Boston. Boston we launched the 1.0 version. Last week we launched the 1.1 version. We're going to launch the next one together with Red Hat. It's one of the key things we're doing together working with them. And as Bill mentioned, it's multi-cloud and it's self-defined. So as you understand the architecture for hyperscale, for OpenStack, hyperscale for containers is really pure software. So that means it's the hardware of your choice. We don't have any locking as Eric mentioned is no locking into any specific platform. That's one of the key things. But also the architecture we're building is that it's the perfect thing for your private cloud because in a multi-cloud environment you still have to have something in-house. So that's the private cloud. With all the data management capabilities that we have with Veritas, we can move the data wherever we want. So typically, and that's the challenge you have with OpenStack is you get a locking, you get a close environment, how do you move the data. We got things already with NetBagget where we can just move the data from the data plane, move workloads somewhere else, do the recover and allow customers to just one click and recover that workloads wherever they want. So that's a perfect thing in all of 360 data management that we got with Veritas. So what do you hear from customers around the functionality? I mean, obviously we hear about the V-tax. People don't want to pay the VMware tax but Eric, you're talking about when you started the conversations with your customers, what if you could save 50%? You must have had conversations with customers and said, well, but I like the functionality of VMware. I like vMotion, I like the recovery capabilities and they're doing a good job of adding capabilities and stuff, so where are we? CTO perspective, in terms of the functionality of OpenStack private clouds versus sort of where VMware is. Yeah, that's a good question because the reason that we get into contact or with Veritas for this kind of functionalities because customers start running workloads on their OpenStack environment and in the beginning they don't worry about backups, they don't worry about quality of service and then they get into production and then they get problems with performance, they get, hey, I need to have a backup, how do I do that? Oh, we don't have a backup. So this kind of gaps that are really not a good result in OpenStack and these were the gaps that Hyperscale filled in. So then though on the functional comparison with VMware we could took away of those concerns and have a real good comparison on the functional level between OpenStack and VMware. I think it was interesting last week we was in the OpenStack Benelux days. I had a keynote presenting Hyperscale and I was talking about quality of service and backup data protection really, so focus on that, right? After that we had a panel with three customers and the moderator asked the three customers, what is your biggest challenge now you got OpenStack, what do you need? The first answer was backup and the moderator said, what do you mean? There is no backup and the answer for 400 people in the room said, now you got free service but that's a private and well now we hear from various. So that's the thing is that you need to move those workloads, you need data protection and they saw the demo where with one click you can recover your workloads and the third customer mentioned that it is quality of service and that's a customer that Eric has been working on already they are already working on installing a Hyperscale and they need quality of service because they have a workload and running on the cloud and they have to make sure they get the performance that they need for some critical workloads and again it's a solved problem that again all the work that we did together with Fairbanks validate and what they need to have is coming all together now. Eric one of the knocks on OpenStack has been I want simplicity and OpenStack it's got all these pieces, how do I put it together? Oh it's all software, wait backup I didn't even think of that. How does Fairbanks help?  You can just roll this out and how much is it? The customers actually, some customers like that flexibility, service providers oh I've got my management layer and things like that. What's kind of the typical environment and give some of the variables? So based on the journey that we made and of course there were good projects and bad projects there's the learning curve that we also needed to do but we managed to build the best practice for OpenStack so we now can do an implementation of OpenStack in less than two weeks because we know the components we know what you should do and what you don't have to do and so we have a good starting point about an environment where you have 11 nodes in total as a good starting point for having a production environment for OpenStack and then with hyperscale included then you need to add two data nodes additionally because then that's necessary for the copy that you need to have but 11 node configuration is from our perspective a very good starting point where you start with different customers but different sizes of course. Do you deploy the OpenStack distribution that the customer have preference on that? I know Veritas has a couple of options so. So we have a preference for canonical distribution because it's very open. I think the good thing from canonical is that the function set that they provide as an open source product is exactly the same if you want to have that with a managed service from canonical to it and I think the real cool thing about canonical is their way of deploying OpenStack because it leverage a really consistent way of deploying OpenStack so for us it's very important that when we deploy OpenStack that the result is the same on every customer side and that's what the tools from canonical providers with. So I want to ask you about what you just said about you could do an OpenStack deployment in two weeks. I can hear some cloud guy going oh, I'll just go to Amazon and spin it up. So I wonder if you could address that and as well how does that compare for instance to a VMware installation of a deployment of a private cloud, those two examples. I think when you look at the private cloud from VMware I think for the installation it takes about the same time thing but that's all about notability of the partner that's doing the installation because that's the journey that we had so we can do the implementation fast and that they can rely on that environment because as you know in OpenStack in the beginning was a little bit doubt about if it was production ready or not and to take that away it must be a solid implementation and that they can rely on that and then they can make sure that they can put their really important workloads also on top of OpenStack instead of making decisions and yeah should I run it on that or not? So from your standpoint it's parity in terms of deployment ease and functionality we could debate that all day long. What about the public cloud example? How do you respond to somebody who says oh we'll just spin it up in AWS or Azure? Yeah I think the public is still a good thing but it's not a bad thing to have public cloud because I think in the most companies you have a hybrid cloud environment so you will have VMware and maybe you have a public cloud and the private cloud in one company but it all depends a little bit on the type of workload that you're going to run inside of that environment so I think there are workloads that you can run on the public cloud but... Yeah Eric does Fairbanks get involved with how they manage that? You're going to kind of hybrid a multi-cloud environment we know Carlos wants to jump in with Veritas to answer Yeah we get the question a lot of course because we know the infrastructure how it works and as you probably know there are a lot of cloud orchestration products in the market that can do the multi-cloud management but to be honest at this moment there's not one real good product that handle all the clouds correctly and managing all the bits and pieces that you need to have for an infrastructure so we're still looking on that to find the one that can do that What's on your wish list? What are you looking for from the ecosystem? I think it's really good to have the... That there is no difference anymore about the type of workloads that you can run on different kind of environments so that you choose based on functionality what you are going to run on that now you see that's a lot about focus on virtual machines but actually it all goes about the application because that's the on the end that's something what needs to be run on that environment and having the manageability to manage the application and I think that's more important than managing the infrastructure underneath it How about jumping in with the multi-cloud commentary? Yeah well I think is that the end is the customer choice and what we do as a company is being able to give them the choice right is that we don't care and that's the norm of DNA really we did that on the past as Mike Farnrow explained today is that we didn't care about the operative systems at the beginning now we don't care about if you are using open stat containers and what do you want to run those so that is the way we're building problems nowadays with Veritas is your choice so we don't care about that anymore All right Carlos, Eric, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE Appreciate it Thank you You're welcome Okay keep it right there buddy, Stu and I will be back with our next guest we're live from Veritas Vision Hashtag Vitas Vision This is theCUBE, right back


Catch up and get ahead with the edge for the week of January 25th. Join Nowcast SA for the live webcast of San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor's lecture on Cities and Citizens. Her remarks will kick off the UTSA College of Public Policy's Distinguished Lecture Series this semester. The free event will be in the Buena Vista Theater of the Downtown Campus. Thanks to underwriting support of Nowcast SA non-profit member UTSA College of Public Policy, anyone can watch the event live or replay the video later. I'm the Mayor, but I'm also a community development professional. I'm also a former instructor in urban administration. I'm trained as a planner, but most importantly, I'm the mother of a sixth grader. Did you or your household earn $60,000 or less in 2015? If so, you're entitled to free help preparing your income taxes. And you guessed it, we have a map for that. Go to Nowcast SA to see a map of all of the volunteer income tax assistance offices in the San Antonio area, along with hours and directions. Our story also has a list of documents you need to bring when you go. Join Nowcast SA and ATERP Texas for the live webcast of the Texas State Senate District 26 candidate debate at 11 a.m. on Friday, January 29 at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. The Democratic candidates for District 26 are the incumbent, Jose Menendez, and Trey Martinez-Fisher, who is the Texas House Representative for District 116. Sarah Lucero from KENS5 TV will be moderating the debate. There are no Republican candidates running for the seat that was previously held by Letizio Vandepu. Thanks to underwriting support from ATERP Texas, you can watch live or replay the video later. Nowcast SA webcast a poetic tribute to Texas State Poet Laureate Carmen Tapoya at San Antonio Central Library, and you can go back whenever you want to replay the energizing, electrifying evening featuring poets such as women of ill repute, Anthony the Poet. Check out Amanda Flores, rendition of the poem, Manu Genovelli. Thanks for watching The Edge. See you next time.


Most happy to welcome our second speaker of this session. So Jayendra Soni who does not need any introduction yet. Let us say that not only he has extensively written on earlier giant authors such as Umas Vati and Kunda Kunda, but also he's working on later authors such as Prabha Chandra and Vidya Nandi in which there should be way more references to Buddhism. So Professor Soni today will offer us a presentation on the Vidya Nandi's discussion with the Buddhists on Svasam Vedana Pratyaksha and Pramana. So thank you. I'm not in this case. So thank you very much indeed. It is always a pleasure to be here and even a great honor. This presentation is a continuation of a short study that in 1999 was one of the earliest albeit brief textual studies on the scholar monk Vidya Nandi of the 10th century. It was based on a small section of his commentary, the Tattvartha Shloka Vartika on Umas Vati's Tattvartha Sutra 1.6. Unfortunately, I do not have to say anything more about the Tattvartha Sutra. The paper at that time dealt mainly with Vidya Nandi's rejection of the Buddhist view that only parts of an object are directly open to perception and that the object as a whole cannot be cognized in an unmediated way. In order to better follow the context in which Vidya Nandi dealt with the theme, I had briefly discussed some aspects of the problem with reference to Dharmakirti because Vidya Nandin quotes him. Dharmakirti, on the other hand, is unthinkable without Dignagar. And further, when dealing with the universals and particulars, the views of these two Buddhist giants also had to be briefly contrasted with the Nyaya Veshasika perspective, which I did. Vidya Nandin's commentary on this sutra entails a total of 56 shlokas with a prose vartika on each invading various lengths, ranging from a line or two to a couple of pages, sometimes combining shlokas, mainly two of them together. In 1999, I had dealt with the first 10 shlokas and their vartikas, showing how Vidya Nandin sees the Pramanas and Nyayas as respectively yielding a knowledge of the universal and of the particular, for which he uses the synonymous pairs, Aamshin, Ava Yava and Ava Yavin, arguing that an object as a whole from the Jain point of view is no less real than its visible parts. I am now, today, limiting myself here to some aspects related to the concept of Swasamvedana, Pratyaksha and Pramana in his commentary to this sutra, 1.6. I am particularly keen on knowing where Vidya Nandin obtained his basic ideas from, which allowed him to effectively direct them against the Buddhists. In vindicating the statement of the sutra he is commenting on, Vidya Nandin emphasizes the point that a Pramana is not a Nyaya because they serve two separate epistemological functions. In objecting to the Buddhist view, Vidya Nandin appeals finally to perception, which the Buddhist also accepts as a Pramana and crunches the argument by saying, at the end, the object as a whole is clearly perceived as a single gross object like its parts. In his lengthy vartika to this stanza, Vidya Nandin immediately then goes on to tell the Buddhists that the notion of an object as a whole is not a superimposed conceptual or mental construction. It is not a Kalpana, meaning thereby that the object as a whole really exists. It was here that I located two quotations from Dharmakirti's Pramana vartika. In commenting on this sutra, Vidya Nandin is obviously adopting a position that by his time became traditional about Pramana furnishing a cognition that is comprehensive and naya a limited one in determining its object only partially. Indeed, he's indebted to his predecessors for this insight and such a debt is not unique to Vidya Nandin because it is found in practically all the Indian traditions. This debt, however, takes on a special significance when in the spirit of discussion and debate, it is further developed and used effectively to contest an idea or an opponent and not merely utilized to simply explain a concerned point. Vidya Nandin seizes the opportunity to apply some of his predecessors' insights when debating with the Buddhists and the others. So for our purposes now, let us briefly see what Umaswati, Pujapada and Akalanka say on this very same sutra in order to set this record straight with regard to Vidya Nandin's reliance on them. This I had omitted previously. In his auto commentary to the Takvata Sutra 1.6, Umaswati says that both the twofold pramanas, so paroksha and pratyaksha, and the nayas, negama, et cetera, will be dealt with later. Hence, here, there is nothing significant by Umaswati on his own sutra. Vidya Nandin only defends it and is indebted to him for the sutra itself. Pujapada is a bit more specific in his Satvarta Siddhi commentary to the sutra where he strives in a brief way to draw a clear distinction between the crucial terms in the sutra, pramana and naya. Pujapada begins by saying that pramana is mentioned first in the sutra because it is more important than the word naya with lesser syllables. And here he is showing his acquaintance with panini. He then makes a special effort to clearly distinguish between the roles, saying that a pramana cognizes an object as a whole and naya, only its specific state, namely a part of it. So it is clear that Vidya Nandin utilizes this point against the Buddhists. This is what Pujapada says in a part of his commentary to Tatvarta Sutra 1.6. It has been said, after grasping an object through pramana, naya determines the object accurately according to its specific state. Further, a pramana grasps the object as a whole. Thus it has been said, pointing out the whole rests on a pramana, pointing out a part of it rests on naya. I'm interested in these two quotations that Pujapada gives. The Hindi commentary and explanatory translation says that they are argama quotations. What is intriguing for me is that the first of these is no longer retained, kept alive, but the second one is. And I meant, I'm showing this to you because perhaps some of you recognize from which argama it might be. Pujapada then goes on to talk about naya, dravya arthika naya, and pariyal thika naya, omitting gunar thika naya. And he says at the end of what I'm showing you here, all these dravya pariyaya and the aspects related to them are to be known through pramana. So naya is to be known through pramana. Vidyanandin obviously relies on Pujapada for this basic view that the pramanas and nayas are different in their roles, as the sutra itself implies. And also that these roles can be insightfully associated with the knowledge of universals and particulars respectively. It is interesting that in his Sarvathasiddhi commentary, Pujapada speaks of the two nayas, dravya arthika naya and pariyar thika naya. And the question is how to relate these to universals and particulars. What is the difference between, for example, pramana grasping the object as a whole and the naya called dravya arthika naya? At the end of the quotation, Pujapada says that the nayas are to be known through pramana. We know that in Jainism, a dravya, it's guna and it's pariyaya thematically belong together. So substance quality and it's mode or modification. Pujapada takes these into consideration when commenting on the sutra by clearly distinguishing between the roles of the pramanas and the nayas. Whenever these were first mentioned in the Jainic tradition. The statements attributed to the argamas have not been identified. And for my purpose, this is all I want to say about Pujapada. Perhaps we can talk about that more in the discussion. Akalanka's commentary that that part the rajavartika on this sutra is in five pages divided into 14 sections of the critical editions that are used and is thus more elaborate than Pujapada. In section three, Akalanka repeats Pujapada's second unidentified quotation but omits Pujapada's quotation beginning pragriha pramanataha. It is noteworthy that in his tatvata shloka vartika vidyanandin also omits the one quotation, but refers to the other when commenting on the same sutra in his vartikas to 1621 to 1645 and also in other places. For example, ashtasahastri yuktyanushasanatika in two places. So how do I know about all these places? And it might be interesting for you to know that I wish to thank Himaltrika for this information. He has a very valuable resource, the Digital Corpus of Vidyanandin's works. It enables a search for the word, a phrase or parts of them, the search function is generally made available online. So I thank Him for His help here. In the last section, Akalanka uses the word trayakara, the threefold form of the grasper, the appearance of the object and the role of consciousness. His commentary here is very brief and I wonder whether he is hinting at a crucial issue in Yogachara epistemology, namely the doctrine of tri-svabhava, dealing with the triple nature of existence and the problem of reality and appearance with the intricate discussion of the status of the object in relation to the manner in which it is known, namely the distinction between the object out there and the object as it is known. Akalanka is evidently presenting the Buddhist view that consciousness, Vidyana, bears or carries in itself only the form, the akara of the object and not the object itself which is out there. The word samviti, which he uses, is a synonym for samvedana or awareness and swa samvedana or self-awareness is involved in the mechanism of how we cognize things and it implies that cognition is self-valid. It does not need another cognition for its admissibility and legitimation. Vidyana then takes up these points in his commentary to the sutra in more detail than Akalanka, as we shall see. Akalanka also briefly deals with other views and the general trend of his commentary seems to be that the Jainas are not irrational and that their ideas are compatible with those of Sankhya, Vaisheshika and the Buddhists. Akalanka implies, as the key words to section 14 say, that neither the Buddhists nor the others can object to Jaina views because there is no incompatibility in all the utterances. It seems here that in this commentary to Tathātasruta 1.6, Akalanka is unusually conciliatory in saying that the Jaina views can be reconciled with what the others say. This conciliatory tone applies probably only in the context of the mechanism of the process of knowing what we know, not in the ontological context of there being a permanent conscious principle, the jiva, which for the Jainas in the final analysis enables cognition and a knowledge of the Jaina Siādvāda. Vidyādandin is much more forthright in his commentary and even more detailed on the same sutra. And although one can see his debt to his immediate predecessors, especially Akalanka and Puja Pada, it is clear that he adds other insightful dimensions to the ideas related to epistemology and ontology and to the Buddhist position itself. It is known that several ideas in Buddhism are not uniform. For example, the concept of Svarasamvedana, the definition of Mano Vidyāna, and its relation to Manasa Pratyakṣa, to name but just two. The concept of Aleya Vidyāna in Yogacara would be an added topic in Buddhism. To obtain a clear picture of the development of these ideas and other intricate details in Buddhism and to back them up by textual evidences is even for the Buddhist scholar, a major task. It demands a thorough study not only of the Gnāga and Dharmakirti, but also of Vasubhanu and the Sautantrika influences, apart from Nyāya Vaisesika. With a basic acquaintance of the Buddhist ideas, I am trying now to follow Vidyānandin's main line of argument. What I'm attempting here is to see how he interprets specific Buddhist ideas and not to investigate how his presentation of them may or may not correspond to a Buddhist text or tradition he might be referring to. It is well known that in Indian scholarship, ideas are often mentioned just for the sake of argument and are not necessarily direct quotations. You are lucky if you find a couple of them. Often the poor Vapaksha is not clearly identifiable. Moreover, it seems that at times, Vidyānandin springs quickly between the major ideas of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, perhaps even including Sautantika nuances. Further, the shades of differences among them, without specific references, makes the task of following Vidyānandin all the more difficult and complicated. Once again, I'm confronted with the thought that Jain philosophy without an insight into the other schools is incomplete and indeed vice versa, that a study of the other schools will be incomplete without also stating Jain ideas either as a contribution or as a critique. The term Sversamvedanā, with its synonym Sversamviti, is indeed a complex one and the dictionary meaning is knowledge derived from the self. In its technical application, it is variously translated as self-apprehension, self-cognition or self-awareness. It also seems to be generally accepted that the concept of self-awareness is by no means uniform in the Buddhist tradition. The main thrust in interpreting it is that self-awareness entails a cognition of itself, that cognition is aware of itself as cognizing an object and that this cognition itself is the result, the pillar of cognition. A special issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy was dedicated to the topic of Sversamvedanā in 2010 edited by Birgit Kellner. Among the thought-provoking articles in it is one by Dan Arnold and I cannot help withholding a footnote I wrote in this presentation here where I say that his article seems to have an anachronistic starting point and is like the proverbial cart being put before the horse. Dan Arnold says on page 329, we can then usefully equip ourselves with some conceptual tools for reading Dignaga and his Indian followers and critics by briefly considering Franz Brentano and David Hume to exemplify certain aspects of a perceptual understanding of self-awareness and by then considering the sense it makes to say that one of Kant's main transcendental arguments against Hume is in the service of an essentially constitutive understanding thereof. And I must say that without this mattering of Buddhism that I have I wouldn't have understood his perceptual understanding and his constitutive understanding. Should one not rather say that Dignaga's and Dharmakirti's conceptual tools help in understanding Brentano and the others when one reads or re-reads him, especially when one tries to make fruitful comparisons. Anyway, this just by way of an aside. The key term Swar Sambhvedana is unmediated direct cognition. It is a kind of production and it is said to have been introduced into debates on logic and epistemology by Dignaga in the fifth or sixth century. It was further developed and elaborated by Dharmakirti soon thereafter. Since then it continued to occupy a prominent place in the debate on epistemological matters, not only specifically for Buddhism but also for Indian thought generally. Vasubandhu's earlier works also feature prominently in Buddhist epistemology since the time of Dharmakirti and Dignaga. Without going into the details of the differences with regard to Dignaga and Dharmakirti and there are several differences between them, we can note here, Dharmakirti's four kinds of direct cognition, each being called a specific type of pratyaksha. There is a big debate about whether these four are also traceable in Dignaga. The four pratyakshas that he mentions are Indriya Pratyaksha, Manasa Pratyaksha, Swar Sambhvedana Pratyaksha and Yogi Pratyaksha. So I'm of course interested in Swar Sambhvedana Pratyaksha which is self-awareness for example of desire, anger, ignorance, pleasure and pain and also a self-awareness of every cognition. Let us delve into perception a little bit. Pratyaksha is by and large the cognition derived through the sense organs and their respective objects seen generally as being direct without anything intermediary between the object and the perception of it. The senses, the Indriyas are the instruments through which the perception takes place enabling us to cognize and identify the object as such and such a thing. However, the instruments themselves, the Indriyas cannot be said to account for the cognition as such namely for the knowledge, for the Prama or the Pramiti of the object as something. For this consciousness needs to be acknowledged, a conscious principle that is inalienably associated with the cognition process. The crux of the matter is that Vidyanandin in this commentary to this sutra is using the generally accepted view that the entire Pratyaksha process is a direct one and regarded by all schools as the only unmediated means of cognition and that it is the basis of all other means like Anumana and so on. You need Pratyaksha even when you use Anumana as a Pramana. In the debate it is assumed in the background so in Vidyanandin's background and indirectly thematized here that for the Jainas cognition finally takes place because of the inalienable role of the Jiva. When Vidyanandin deals with Swasam Vedana in his commentary to the sutra he leaves out the intricacies of Manasa Pratyaksha which has been referred to as a conundrum in the Buddhist Pramana system and about which there is an ongoing concern also in special issue that I mentioned. Vidyanandin sees Swasam Vedana as the most important kind of Pratyaksha Pramana highlighting it not only because it is the basis of every cognition but also to bring out the element of consciousness intrinsically associated with it when we cognize an object. In this sense he is taking the compound Swasam Vedana as a genitive Tat Purusha to mean an awareness of one's self of the conscious principle which is responsible for the awareness at all and awareness of its inalienable role finally. In epistemological matters the status of the external object is crucial for both the Jainas and the Buddhists. The Jainas are realists and so they acknowledge the existence of the external object allied with their acceptance of universals and particulars which are also revealed in cognition. As for the Buddhists the matter is quite complex and complicated. Matthew Capstein, I hope that he would be here gives a succinct account of the issues involved in the inquiry into our knowledge of the external world. He says, while Dignagar held that the objects of our perceptions are particulars bearing unique characteristics his concept of the particular becomes the point of departure of a number of difficult questions. Is the object that we perceive actually something that exists out there in the world just as we perceive it or is it or is the object something that arises within our sensory field perhaps corresponding to an external object that served as a stimulus but not in fact identical to it or is the object exclusively an object of consciousness on the basis of which we construct the idea of an external world that does not exist in reality. As depressing as what this all demands in our study of Vidyanandin with regard to the Buddhists let us in any case see how all these aspects that I dealt with above are encapsulated in three shlokas of Vidyanandin's commentary to this Tattvata Sutra 1.6 where the word swasamvedana occurs. We barely have time now to briefly look at them in concluding this work in progress. Vidyanandin says, if the pratyaksa that is swasamvedana is the only real pratyaksa then why is there no proof for a sentient principle which has the form of aamshah aamshin? The reference to aamshah aamshin I think is a reference to Dravya, Vuna and Pariyaya which applies not only to Jiva Dravya but also to Ajiva Dravya. The second shloka where the word appears is if even the accumulated knowledge is such an error, then what is without error? Because otherwise the evident self-awareness would not make known the cognition and the atoms out of which the object is made up. This in itself would be a theme for the paper. And my final example of how we use swasamvedana is like the external objects here in our cognition of the objects of the world, self-awareness is never what is bereft of the parts which make up the whole because perception makes known the one thing with its parts both the external and internal objects. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Thank you very much for your lecture. And I think the project to tackle the many, many consequences of the integration of a non-realist stance into a realistic one is a fascinating project. So is there any question on this or I myself have to process a bit on this? So yes, you do have a... As the James are concerned, there's no problem about it. But when you're comparing it with the Buddhist, then you are getting into a maze of different positions. I think if we take just Vidyanandin as a Jaina alone, we have no problem. But he discusses the others as well. And that's where we end up with all this talk. There are other questions. We have two minutes left. Yeah. According to the definition that is given in the Sankyakarika, it was mentioned, whatever does not have consciousness. According to the, yeah, so this table, for example, would be regarded as unconscious as a thing, yeah. The jainists say that all the elements are animated through the jivas that inhabit them. So the body is material. It becomes animated through the jiva, the conscious element that is in a living being. That would be the distinction. If there is no living being, then the object is inanimate. I'm only presenting to you what the Indian think of it. Okay, over the last quick, yeah. Yeah, but prana itself is not jiva. It is a prana is material. I wouldn't say prana is present in the jiva, but chetana is. And chetana and prana are two different things, I think. I think that would be an extension. I think the basic point is chetana. If something else is added to chetana, then I think this would not belong to the Swabhava of chetana. Okay, thank you very much again. And no last but not least, our youngest and very promising scholar is to close this day. I'm just happy to welcome my colleague, Elaine de Yonker, starting a PhD in Ghent University with Eva de Klerk on the conception of the other in Jainism. And today she will talk about the examination of the Buddhists in Amitagati's Dharma Pariksha, a reflective look on Jaina criticism. Early in my PhD, you noticed that my title has changed a bit and also the content since I've written the abstract because at that time I was still really starting with the whole thing. So as we all know, the Jain tradition never developed in an isolated environment but instead was confronted with and influenced by all sorts of ideas and practices that were circulating in the subcontinent. Many texts give evidence of these context between the Jain and other traditions, be it oppositional or not. The Dharma Pariksha, on which lies the focus of my PhD, is an example of how the Jains dealt with their others, especially with the dominant Hindu tradition. More specifically, this text deals with the Hindu Puranic and epic stories by criticizing them in a satirical way. As such, the text can be placed in a tradition of the Jain Puranas and Jain versions of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Other than this, the Dharma Pariksha is also often compared to the Dhurta Kiana by Hari Bhadra, because next to having a similar content and structure, both texts are somewhat special in that they are satirical towards religion, which is not that common or does not seem to be that common in the Indian tradition. Using stories in satire to criticize other religious traditions, the Dharma Pariksha was most likely to be read or to be heard by a Jain lay audience, with the goal of converting them or directing them back on the correct path. Of the Dharma Pariksha, there are several versions written from at least the 10th century onwards by Vigambara Jains, and there are also some latest Shweta Amara versions. The oldest one was composed in Apabramsha by Harishena in 988 of the Common Era, but Harishena himself states that he based his work on an older version by a certain Jayarama, but up till now this text has not been found. The most popular version of the Dharma Pariksha is the text by Amitagati, written in Sanskrit in 1014 of the Common Era, and this text is also probably based on the same text as Harishena's text was based. And manuscripts of this Sanskrit composition can be found in many collections all over India, at least North India, and it's supposedly also the basis on which later versions have inspired their version. The later versions were written up to the 18th century in Sanskrit Hindi, Gujarati and even Kannada. They seem to have more or less the same content and differ only in language and style. And for this paper I will only focus on the text by Harishena and by Amitagati. The Dharma Pariksha consists of a frame story into which many smaller stories are embroidered, and it tells a story about two Vidyadharas, Vidyarajini possessing humans with the ability to fly in search for the truth, at least according to the Jain religion. One Vidyadhara called Manu Vega is concerned about his friend Pavana Vega because Manu Vega is a devoted Jain and it seems that Pavana Vega has diverged from the right religious path. So in search for help to get his friend back on the right track, he goes to... so he comes down from his mountain and he goes to Ujjain where he meets a Jain monk, Jina Mati. Hearing Manu Vega's problem, Jina Mati advises him to go to Pataliputra, a city dominated by Brahmins, portrayed as experts of the Hindu scriptures. There Manu Vega engages in discussions with the Brahmins proceeding from incredible stories he makes up about his life. What happens is that for every story, the two Vidyadharas take up a different form, as Vidyadharas are able to, before entering the city, thus playing a different character.  When the Brahmins do not believe him, he justifies his story by referring to parallel episodes from the Hindu Puranas or from the Hindu epics. And in this way he proves the inconsistency of Puranic Hinduism. After every such discussion, the Vidyadharas go outside of the city where Manu Vega explains to Pavana Vega some didactic passages on the Jain doctrine. In the end of the Dharma Pariksha, Pavana Vega is converted and he accepts the vow of a Jain layman. So from this plot it's clear that the real venom of the Dharma Pariksha was directed towards the Hindu tradition. It were the Brahmins about which the Jain audience had to know that they had to write the wrong ideas of writing wrong, yes, the wrong conduct and the wrong stories also. And this is made clear in the several sub-stories where we all talk about Madhukara, the Tomara King and the cow, a servant and the aloe for fools and then the pulinda and the skat, etc. Stories that are afterwards compared with Puranic or epic stories such as the story of Yama and Chaya, the sacrifice of Ravana, the birth of Vyasa, etc. And then in the end of the text, in the second to last story, we find a story in which two Buddhists are staged. This is the case both in the text by Amitagati as it is in the text by Harishina. Because the text is about criticizing the Brahmins, we might be wondering why exactly the author chose to stage people from other religious affiliations or why the author on which they base their composition chose to do this. Staging religious others other than the Brahmins has no real functionality in refuting the Hindu tradition. The exemplary stories might be about any kind of person or character. So why exactly are the Buddhists playing a role here? Before going into that question, I first want to explain to you the plot of the story of the two Buddhists. Okay. So in this story, the two protagonists of the Dharamparikshad, Manovega and Pavanavega once again enter the city of Pataliputra, this time dressed up as two Buddhists. So they are Raktapatta in the text. As they enter the city, they are noticed by the Brahmins who approach them to ask them who they are and if they want to discuss with them. Manovega, the devoted chain of the two, tells the Brahmins they are the sons of two Buddhist laymen. Once they were protecting the clothes of Buddhist big shoes that were lying in the sun to dry, when two terrifying jackals came near. Immediately the two sons climbed upon a stupa to flee from the jackals. However, the beasts took up the stupa and flew with it into the sky. The two sons started crying and upon hearing their cries, the big shoes came back outside. Immediately the jackals went even further. It's this 12 or 32 Eugenas where they let the stupa fall down underground. As they were about to devour the two sons, some hunters with dogs and weapons arrived there, scaring away the jackals. Happily saved from these frightening beasts, the two sons decided to start travelling and to become Buddhists amongst themselves. Wandering around, they arrived at Tapata Liputra, the city of the Brahmins. Hearing this absurd story, the Brahmins do not believe the Buddhists and they ask them to stop lying and telling the truth. Manovega, dressed as a Buddhist, he reacts by asking the Brahmins why they do not believe his story as there are also such stories to be found in the Puranas, upon which the Brahmins react that he should tell them what is so in the Puranas if they should believe him. And so then Manovega starts telling the story of the Setubanda from the Ramayana. When Sita is abducted by Ravana to Lanka, Rama wants to get her back and therefore orders his monkey army to go to the south of India and build a bridge crossing the ocean to Sri Lanka. In order to do this, the monkeys lift up mountains and rocks very easily and here is a parallel with the jackals who elevate the stupa. The Brahmins then realize that if they do not believe the story of the Buddhists, they should also not believe the story from their own Ramayana. And after this, Manovega takes Pavanavega outside of the city and explains to him how the Brahmins and their stories are wrong. This is how the story is told in both Harishinas and Amitagatis dharma pariksha. From this telling, we cannot include what opinion the two authors had towards Buddhism. The story does not say anything negative about Buddhism. In the end, the two young lay Buddhists even turn towards the Buddhist way by taking diksha themselves. This might even seem rather positive. Ose, who studied the dharma pariksha together with the Dur Takyana as examples of Indian satire, he thinks that this setting is just a favorable setting for a marvelous story because there are also a lot of fantastic elements in Buddhist stories. And also because the main plot is set in Pataliputra, which is also Buddhist present at a time. The use of Buddhist characters in the story might be completely neutral, although I do found it noticeable that the story comes in the end right before a story about Shwetambaras, which is then the last story. The position and the combination of the two religious others gives the impression that the author wanted at least mention the religious others before ending the composition of dharma. By mentioning these religious groups by giving them certain characteristics they are maybe demarcating their philosophical worlds existing of only those others that are relevant to themselves for their own demilitation. Further, we maybe can see some mockery in here because the story is completely absurd. Two young Buddhists climbing a super and then the super is lifted by two animals. It's not only sense at all. Also their decision to become monks after they were saved does not really have a rational base. So the aspect of mockery is certainly present here but still it's not clear if it was directed towards the Buddhists or just towards the Brahmins. Overall it's hard to draw any conclusions on the why of using Buddhist characters in the story and you might just say that this is just a short idea in refuting the Puranic version of the Ramayana. If both Harishina and Amitagati take up a story I just told in their composition can we see some differences there? So the story in both texts develops in the same way and has almost the same content. So the only differences are that in the beginning of the text Harishina gives a bit more details. He says that the two sons come from the city of Vikrama and East. In the Harishina's text also the jackals fly 32 Ujanas away whereas in Amitagati's text they flee 12 Ujanas away further but that's it and then stylized overall it can be said that Harishina's text is more dynamic and has more quicker dialogues whereas in Amitagati's text we find a lot more metaphors and it feels more contemplative but this might just be a difference in language because Harishina's text is in Abhabramshah. So no, there are no essential differences in both texts and we cannot make any other conclusions on this story from just the comparison of the two. However, a bit further in the Dharmapariksha we do find relevant difference between Harishina and Amitagati related to Buddhism. In the 17th chapter of the Dharmapariksha by Amitagati we find a passage that directly attacks Buddhism. This passage is not fine in Harishina's text and is this a personal addition to the plot by Amitagati. It comes right after the last of the invented stories for which the two Vidyadaras had taken on the form of Shweta Amiras. Where at that point in Harishina's Dharmapariksha Pavanavega asks Manovega an explanation of dharma which is the Jain Dharma. In Amitagati's Dharmapariksha Pavanavega asks his friend to tell him the characteristics, the visualization of the doctrines, Shastra of the Brahmin and others and this is Adi. Upon this question in Amitagati's text Manovega first explains what aspects are wrong in the Brahmanical doctrine and then turns his criticism towards the Buddhists and this is the Adi. For Manovega Buddha's birth out of the armpit of his mother as such breaking her body does not show any compassion but it shows that the Buddhist tradition approves of violence. That the Buddha eats meat also approves that there is no compassion on this tradition. He criticizes the Jataka story in which Buddha sacrifices to a tiger because she would otherwise eat her own cups because this shows that the Buddha lacks of self-control. Then Manovega attacks some trinal aspects of Buddhism. He says that if everything is empty including the Buddha how can there be the establishment of attachment and liberation? If the soul does not exist it remains meaningless and if everything is just momentary then nothing really exists. For these reasons Buddha is only a fool and he cannot have omniscience. So from this passage it is very clear that at least for Amitagati he had a negative attitude towards Buddhism. He does not only find it necessary to explicitly refute the Brahmanical tradition which is the overall goal of the text which is to make sure his audience knows for sure that the Buddhist way is also not the one to follow. Amitagati here uses a more negative structure than Harishena does who in the end wants to convince his audience of the merits of Jainism in a more positive way. Harishena seems to put more trust on the formative power of the stories and for him it is enough to ridicule the Brahmans in order to effectuate the refutability of their tradition. Amitagati on the other hand wants to build a rational base upon which the refutability of the Brahmans and Adi can be proved. He wants to give the audience a reason why. Furthermore by explaining what is wrong in the other traditions he also tells his audience what Jainism is not. In this way he marks the borders of the Jain identity. For Amitagati surely the Buddhists and their ideas and conducts are to be found on these borders. If we think again about the earlier story of the two Buddhists, lay sons in this slide, we are now sure that the story at least for Amitagati did not want to convey anything positive about Buddhism and I also think for the other authors. The idea that the Buddhists are mocked at through this absurd story now seems more likely. However, because the explicit refutation only comes in Amitagati's text there is no direct link between the two so we still cannot say this with certainty. What I do believe we can see in the usage of Buddhists in this story about Ajakles and the Supa is a demarcation of the relevant philosophical worlds. So by naming them and giving them some characteristics, notably at the end of the text, they are marked as a certain religious group with a definite identity. The definition of the Buddhists has some implication. One is that the Buddhists are a group with a definite identity and that it is a different religious tradition. Another is that they are opposed to an us that also has a definite identity. So the author says to his audience something like we are all Jains and we are not like them. Further, the story and especially the refutation in Amitagati's text shows that the Buddhists are still thought of in the 10th and 11th century as part of the Indian philosophical world relevant for the Digambara Jains. They are still important enough and they still pose enough challenge to the Jain identity to argument with and to refute them. Thank you. Thank you for this very lively and most insightful presentation. We still have a few minutes. Does anyone have any question? Yes? Sorry? Yes. I've searched for this. I tried to find the same story somewhere else. I couldn't. I think Jackals also appear in Buddhist stories sometimes. So I think maybe that's the reason why. No? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yeah. Thank you. It was actually one of the things I wanted to do, so thank you. No more questions here. Well, as it is no time to conclude our annual workshop, I would like to thank again all the speakers for their very stimulating and I will now let Peter make the final remarks safely. Yes, not much to add really, except again to thank all the speakers and the audience for the wonderful presentations and discussions. And the remark that, of course, we are planning to, or at least offering the possibility to publish the papers. And as usual in our current frame, we suggest submitting papers to the IJGS, the International Journal of Jena Studies, which is published online here, and individual papers can be published as they come in. And the journal is peer-reviewed, so the publication is not guaranteed, but I think all the papers here were excellent and would brilliantly fit into that journal. And every three years, a print version of the papers that accumulated are published in Mumbai by Hindigrant Karyale. Yes, the speakers are invited for the conference dinner, which will take place at about seven, and we have to walk a little bit. But to maybe possibly thank you, accompany us. So at least two guides, it's better for you who don't have a modern implement and can find through the map the place to follow one of us. Thank you very much for coming, and hopefully next year we see you again.


And whatever is happening to you in your life, it's just one expression of life. When you open up your mind to that and you start to experience that connectedness, then you realize whatever you touch and feel is just temporary and everything else is eternal. It's infinite and you're part of that infinite and you have that infinite power inside of you and you can access that infinite power whenever you want.


I think, as you can see from the earlier speakers, it's pretty evident that the energy system is now moving in sort of a new and challenging direction where the focus on sustainability is pretty much creating a paradigm shift in terms of how power systems are constituted and managed with move away from what we would traditionally have called traditional linear value chain models to more joined up and integrated approaches where energy and in particular ICT are increasingly interlinked and intertwined and the customer is increasingly at the forefront and all of this is happening at the same time as we're seeing more integration with Europe both in terms of physical interconnection I've never been so jealous as when I saw that map that he put up there by the way but also the coupling of energy markets and I think you know it is a very important point about how critical a functioning energy market is to the integration of renewables. I think this chart here just shows how the the European energy mix is evolving and this is a slightly different version of what Arne put forward earlier but it's the same point what it shows is that in terms of electricity its proportion of the European energy mix is set to double out to the period to 2050 from about 18 percent to close to 40 percent and then for that electricity mix in terms of the scenarios that were modeled we can see that renewables moving from about 18 percent to somewhere north of 55 percent and in some cases up to 90 percent I mean that's a huge and staggering shift in terms of the overall European energy mix and I suppose highlights the importance of the seminar here today and what we're talking about. I used this slide an awful lot many of you will see me put it up before and it shows the levels of non-synchronous generation in the various power systems across Europe and this just looks at synchronous power systems a lot of the time we look at countries or whatever but this looks at synchronous power systems so you have Ireland and Northern Ireland we've our nearest neighbour in Great Britain you've the large continental Europe power system Scandinavia Cyprus and Malta the two small ones and I think you know and these are just pulled together from national renewable energy action plans in terms of targets for people out to 2020 what you can see is in terms of penetration of wind onto a synchronous power system the level of ambition here in Ireland and Northern Ireland is significantly ahead of what's been done in other countries and Petter talked about the scale of ambition in Denmark and he's connected to two synchronous power system which brings a whole range of its own challenges and I think it's a huge amount that we can learn from there when you have a large amount of renewables on one small synchronous system there are a whole other set of problems that you need to to look at and address and there's some things there that I think that where we're at the forefront of developing this and so there's a huge amount that we can learn and develop and then share around the other power systems and in Europe in terms of moving it forward so in terms of this morning I mean I think in transitioning to high power system with huge levels of renewables on it you can book at the challenges into sort of three categories power system and technical challenges financial and market and political and regulatory and I suppose the theme of today's conference was around managing high levels of renewables and a power system I'm just going to talk about the first one I wouldn't dare anyway talk about regulatory or political matters anyway and on the system and technical ones I was just going to look at that the two dimensions first strategic infrastructure the need to deliver to enhance and develop the grid so that we can move this renewable power from where it's generated to where it's needed and also maybe talk just a little bit about the plans for interconnection here where we're at in terms of interconnection existing and also plans for future interconnection and secondly maybe talk about the need to come up with new and innovative solutions in terms of how we operate the power system well of course always ensuring that the lights stay on all day every day and I suppose this this latter one is in particular where this intertwining of energy and ICT comes particularly to the forefront so I suppose turning first to diversity to delivery of strategic network infrastructure we have a network program underway grid 25 it involves about 200 different projects right around the country capital expenditure of about 3.2 billion out to 2025 and that's expanding and extending the network everywhere from Cork to Kildare and from from Dairy to Donegal and I suppose over the next few months three of these major 400 KV projects are going to be coming out into the public domain a few weeks ago we launched the next phase of consultation on the grid West program which is this one from out into to Bella Carrick to connect up wind farms there we started drawing route corridors on a map and there's been quite a lot of public engagement on that it's going quite well the second one is we'll be going back out to public consultation on the north-south interconnector which has been a traditionally a very difficult project and will continue probably to be a very difficult project we expect that to be relaunched probably in the next three to four weeks early early April and then later about a number of weeks after that the gridling project the next phase of consultation gridling the project that goes 400 KV line 260 kilometers from Cork to Great Island and then on up to the south of Dublin and again we'll be going out with route corridors on a map and you know that tends to engender a different form of conversation with with communities but I suppose in that context we recognize though that building this transmission infrastructure is does have a significant impact on communities and the environment and you know we are absolutely committed to ensuring that we do work with all stakeholders to ensure that any issues our concerns are raised that they're addressed that people have the opportunity to understand our proposals to engage with our team and ultimately to have an input into and influence how these projects are ultimately developed notwithstanding all of that you know these tend to take a long while to develop and they tend to be difficult projects to move through the process. Just to talk about interconnection just for one quick second I suppose in tandem with making sure that our transmission grid here is fit for purpose we're also looking at opportunities for further interconnection with Europe. Last year we completed the construction of the East West interconnector which is 500 megawatt HP DC interconnector with the UK doubling the interconnection capacity between this island and our nearest neighbor and this will increase security supply it will increase competition driving prices down and it also provides a route to market for renewable energies. Some of you will know here the importance of having a market structure that works is critically important such that that that route to market can be captured by the renewables and that they can can use it and we might come back to that later on in the discussion but we're now actively looking at other opportunities for further interconnection beyond the East West interconnector we're just finalizing some initial feasibility studies done in conjunction with the French transmission system operator RTE about the feasibility and the benefits for further interconnection with France and this is showing significant benefits to societies on both sides in terms of producer benefits and we'll be looking at how we best take that project forward. In addition as I'm sure you're all aware there's significant interest in large-scale additional interconnection between Ireland and the UK in particular associated with the memorandum of understanding recently signed between the government here and the government in the UK and what we have done is we've worked with our colleagues in UK National Grid to look at how best this could be interconnected with both systems you know what's generally talked about is a gigawatts of wind farms in the midlands of Ireland connected into an availing of support systems in in the UK and what we looked at what what what we looked at was what was the best way to connect this was it best to do it just as a point connection of a wind farm in Ireland as a two specific points in the UK or was a connection method where it was integrated with both grids would that deliver benefits to either our boat systems and the analysis clearly showed that there were significant benefits if this was developed in a manner where the connections were integrated into the grids on either side and there's a report on that available on our website and I suppose this is a non-going process I mean the two governments in associations with the two regulators are looking at framing and setting out this intergovernmental agreement my understanding of the timeline is that the hope is that that will be done early quarter one next year and we're working with CERM with other colleagues to try and just frame what is the best way to do this and to move forward but there's an awful lot of a lot of interest in it and in terms of scale it is very important for I suppose for Ireland taking a selfish perspective that it's done right so I suppose moving quickly to the second of my themes I suppose smart grids and the need for smart grids and innovative solutions I think that the the complexity of the electricity system and the energy system is increasing exponentially as levels renewable levels increase on the system and also as user participation starts to increase with a proliferation of smart devices smart meters and you know the extent to which electric transportation is electrified through through the use of electric vehicles and I suppose to illustrate some of the complexity of this this is a graph of real-time operation of the system and the extent to which we can accommodate renew wind on the system today so today we will manage the system with up to half of the demand being served by renewables or non-synchronous generation in terms of winds this is operating in this in this blue area and when it goes above if the wind starts to blow such that it will go above that we have to curtail the wind and I don't talk about how he won't do that in Denmark but he has that market that he can export it to so he's sorted quite often that luxury doesn't exist here and to that extent we need to pull it back what we know is that in order to meet the 40% target so today we're at about 18% of final energy from renewable sources in electricity to meet the 40% target without curtailment going sort of through the roof here to on sustainable levels we know we need to move that 50% up to 75% by 2020 and there's a range of programs underway to do that in order to sort of if you like push us down this curve here and to make to ensure that wind farm projects remain investable and interconnection also pushes you down this curve or actually creates a second curve which is underneath it which will reduce the levels as well and so in order to manage all of that what we've got is we've got a smart grid program that effectively has four strands to it the first DS3 this is delivering a secure sustainable power system it's a multi-annual program right across industry that looks at how we change the operation of the power system including changing market arrangements and we're well advanced and in terms of looking at the the system services and how they should be remunerated it also looks at things like advanced tools and control centers demand response and all of that and we're using an advisory council around that as well to try and ensure that we get input from industry at all stages and trying to bring the industry along with us so it's quite an intensive program and many of you in the room here involved in various different aspects of it the other elements of our smart grid program I suppose are the technology and infrastructure piece and this is looking at how we maximize the utilization of the grid that's there is being built and I suppose we've had some particular successes with new upgrade technologies high-temperature low-side conductors we're looking at dynamic line rating and innovation such as that to try and push down the costs of doing the of integrating renewables on this this is all about efficiency and effective delivery of grid and using what you have as efficiently as possible the demonstration projects demonstration projects that's an initiative where we are looking at taking commercial technologies that are available maybe in other markets or maybe from other purposes and applying them here to see whether they can solve particular problems here and we've got two that are underway one of them actually looks at the integration between heating and the electricity system to see with Glenn Dimplex and their quantum heater and work is quite well advanced on that and we've got a healthy pipeline of projects out for the next number of years looking at things in that space and the final one is the smart grid innovation hub and this is an initiative that we launched with the NDRC the National Digital Research Centre and this is about trying to find smart grid concepts out there and provide an environment in which they can be sort of developed tested nurtured and ultimately turned into to commercial proposition so it's like a commercial incubator with us with the power system sandbox attached to it and so we have all those sort of working in a life cycle effect to try and get smarter better ways to operate the power system to allow us to integrate these levels of renewables in a cost efficient and effective way as well. So I suppose in conclusion I think you know the electricity system in Ireland in Europe and around the world is changing at airbridge we're committed to ensuring that in Ireland and Northern Ireland we have a power system that's fit for purpose that delivers secure reliable sustainable power where it's needed when it's needed. To ensure this we have a nationwide investment program grid 25 to deliver the expanded strategic infrastructure network infrastructure that's needed and in tandem with that we're evolving how we operate the system with smart grid solutions. I suppose delivering on all of this requires extensive stakeholder and community engagement which we're absolutely committed to but the transmission grid is vital strategic infrastructure it's the lifeblood of the energy system and you know it must be developed to ensure that we have secure sustainable competitive energy supply that supports the economy that supports industry that supports regional development supports jobs supports investments and supports the harnessing of the terrific renewable resources that we have here for the benefit of everyone. So with that thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.