“How do I respond appropriately?”

Zen teacher David Loy thinks that question might be the whole of wisdom. It isn’t asking what the solution is or who’s to blame. It’s asking what this moment actually demands of me.

When we sat down in 2022, the #ClimateCrisis already felt like it couldn’t wait, and #AI was still something most people filed under “later.” Neither one is “later” anymore.

Loy has spent his life trying to close a gap the East and West kept widening: personal enlightenment on one side, social revolution and systemic change on the other. He argues we can no longer keep them apart. Individuals make society, but society also makes individuals. Change only one and you haven’t changed much.

We talked for two hours, and it went to places I didn’t expect. Why he calls this the most dangerous moment in our civilization’s history. What a fellow Zen teacher’s idea of brain implants and the gamification of enlightenment says about us. How the “delusion of separation” connects #ExistentialRisk, democracy, and the dream of colonizing Mars.

Then he got to stories, and to why he believes the world is made of them.

I keep coming back to that one. If the world really is made of stories, what story are we telling with #ArtificialIntelligence? And who gets to tell it?

#Buddhism has been working on that kind of question for 2,500 years. Silicon Valley has been at it for about 25.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with David Loy on Zen, EcoDharma, AI, and Story: [ https://snglrty.co/3FhCWtO](https://snglrty.co/3FhCWtO)

Prof. David Loy works on bridging the gap between the East and the West, Buddhism and modernity, personal enlightenment, and systemic change.