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What's your AI success story? What made you realize you had to change? And what does a hopeful future with AI look like to you? AI Hope with Geoff Livingston asks three simple questions of people doing the hard work of adapting and thriving in the AI era.
# A Bhuddhist Approach to AI: cleaned transcript (Descript export, pre-intro timecodes)
Source: Descript project "A Bhuddhist Approach to AI", composition 5f18e858, exported Nov 8, 2026 after Agent Underlord cleanup (Studio Sound on, 112 fillers muted, 154 pauses shortened to 0.6s). Timecodes below do NOT include the intro offset.
[00:00:00] What a nice way to start this conversation. I do wanna let you know that I am recording just the speaking portion of this, but I will turn it off. we're gonna do this kind of like a sangha, if you're familiar with a traditional Buddhist sangha. Usually there's a conversation, and then people share their perspectives.
[00:00:18] And, I feel like that'll probably be best, and then you can ask questions. Other members of the sangha can participate as well. So, change is in the air today, and alls you have to do is look outside and see the wind blowing, watch the leaves fall from the trees as they shed their summer coat and prepare for winter.
[00:00:44] And it's amazing how easy it is for trees, right? They just realize the light is getting shorter every day. They change their colors, and then they drop when they weaken enough, and then the tree hibernates and sleeps, as it waits for spring to arrive. But for us as humans, change is often very, very difficult and for many, including myself, is a point of suffering, particularly when I don't want the change to happen, when it's unwelcome.
[00:01:23] And I know we all deal with this. This is the nature of things, and it's something that's been going on for millennia, right? But in today's world, anybody that has a job that's working is dealing with AI, good and bad, and I've been in the field for ten years and, it's been something that I help people through every day, multiple times a day.
[00:01:51] I was literally talking to a chief legal officer yesterday of a significant, Five Oh One C three just grappling with how do we bring this into our culture when our culture is to fight for the environment? And all the data center issues and all the mindfulness issues that come with these companies and the way that they approach their business, much less the humanity side of it.
[00:02:14] And one has to wonder, how did I end up in this position where I'm dealing with this technology? And it's only because I'm a, a geek, and I've always moved through technology, and I see it as impermanent. I remember, and as many of us do here, 'cause I, I don't see any, I don't see any Gen Z people here, right?
[00:02:34] Yeah. I'm sure they'd be watching on their phone. But, I remember when the World Wide Web broke, and then email happened, and everybody said, "Stop faxing things. Start emailing them." And AM radio going away, although I think it's... Is it still around? I'm not sure. Yeah, they fought that off, huh? Yeah. And then all the different things that have happened through the years.
[00:02:57] typewriters going away, computers arriving, Prodigy, AOL, the internet, the World Wide Web, dot-coms, the burst, mobile media, social media, big data. Really, AI is big data. They just had to rebrand it a few times to start selling it, I guess, in my mind. But, it has become something that, as I've moved through my career, people have asked me: How do you keep evolving?
[00:03:24] How do you keep moving forward and just being relevant in each technology movement? And, it's something which I really didn't have an answer for, but I realized it has nothing to do with the technology at all. It has everything to do with, my mindset and Buddhism, which I came through, honestly, through initially my family and my, my, parents who were hippies.
[00:03:51] Grew up with these iron Buddhas around the house and incense and tarot cards. My mother was an astrologer. And then being a good rebellious teenager, I kinda moved away from that. But, as Caitlin and I moved through our life, together, we decided that we needed to have a common spiritual bond. And at her behest, she took me to a Plum Village retreat.
[00:04:12] For those of you who don't know what that is, that's Thich Nhat Hanh and, his, Buddhist practice, which is, comes out of France. Thich Nhat Hanh was a, a Zen monk who was nominated by MLK, for the Nobel Peace Prize. So long story short, Caitlin suggested we did this retreat, and the rest is, history.
[00:04:33] I became a Buddhist formally. My Dharma name is Infinite Compassion of the Heart, which I question whether it's true many times, but I seem to come back to it. And, The concept that really a-appeals to me in this is part of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. It's called impermanence, and I know many of you are familiar with this concept.
[00:04:58] But impermanence just basically means nothing stays the same. Nothing stays the same. So when change arrives, it shouldn't be a shock. It should be, "Of course." Nevertheless, there's the emotional and spiritual and human clinging to our lives that we have, and as such... Hey, Holly. Let's get her a bolster.
[00:05:23] As such, things move really quickly. So I think when I look at how change really impacts humans, AI is an easy one because we're all like, "Oh my gosh, this is terrible. This is great. It's terrible. It's great. Oh my gosh, I love that I can make anything in my air fryer now because of ChatGPT or Claude." But at the same time, the idea that, people are getting cancer a lot faster because people are building out these data centers without mindfully building them in a manner that'll be serving the community in a, in a healthy fashion, it's really disturbing, right?
[00:05:58] And that we're funding these, and these guys aren't paying for them, and that every AI company feels it needs five hundred billion dollars of them. So there's all the context that we've already discussed. But then there's also real work and changes that happen there, and everybody in this region has gone through that in the past couple of years, I believe, either directly or indirectly because of what happened with Doge and the economic cuts.
[00:06:26] And without signing off on either side, I will just say that it was very hard for the region, generally speaking. And then, of course, there are relationships. we have relationships come, go. We have people that leave us through natural courses, death, children leave, they grow up, friends move.
[00:06:49] we have romantic relationships come and go sometimes as well. these are all real things that we cling to, that we have our memories of And they are always evolving, even when they're the same, and the same people are in our lives, they're not the same. We change. We change, we evolve, we grow.
[00:07:10] Our bodies get old. They become a little less pliant. We have to do a little more yoga. All the things, right? And our health changes as well. for me, some of the, even the mentality has changed. What used to really matter to me matters a lot less. I care much more about impact. Me, I think we were talking about a room where I spoke to, 500 people.
[00:07:33] It was, like, government contractors. I hope I helped them. I know today speaking to 10 people about spirituality is like having chocolate cake as a pair- compared to, a vanilla wafer. I will take that chocolate cake every day of the week, Impact and getting down to what the meaning of life is.
[00:07:52] At this stage of my journey, it's everything. So change is everywhere, right? Change is everywhere. So dealing with it has been really what Now Is Gone is about. And
[00:08:07] Like any good journey, this happened because of change. And what happened last year, in part because of Doge, was I had a business collapse, and then my father died two weeks later. And so it was kinda like a one-two punch where I had, the rug ripped out from underneath of me, and it was devastating.
[00:08:28] And I had been trying to make this AI business, my AI consulting business work for, about two and a half years at that point, and we were doing so good until Doge happened, and it just destroyed it, 'cause we were focused on civilian agencies and nonprofits, and we all know what happened. And it was h- created hardship at home as well, you know.
[00:08:50] So it was a, a lot of stress, a lot of stress, and I wasn't dealing well with it. I was a hot mess. And, I would like to say I was on top of my zen game. I was r- I'd been reading-- I read some sort of a book every morning. I'd been reading Pema quite a bit, and she talks about how now that she's 80 years old, she's on point now when crisis arise.
[00:09:12] She, she perks up. I'm not 80, and I definitely don't feel that way. I still ha- struggle with impermanence when hard change arise. But I did end up at the mat, and that's how I started to really kinda come back, was sitting every morning, sometimes for f-five minutes, sometimes for 30 minutes, and then I would journal And then within six weeks, I was writing this book.
[00:09:39] This book was done in 12 weeks. It flowed right out of me. Came right out of me. And I used AI as a central premise because everybody was struggling with Claude and Gemini, and there were lots of changes that started happening this year that are really rolling forward today with all these, quote unquote, "agents."
[00:09:59] Although I question the veracity of that word, which we can have that discussion afterwards. But, it just felt like this was the right time to write this and apply these principles to that book. So the book is really founded on the four noble truths. and I would say basically to get through impermanence and the kind of struggles where we're fixated on things, we have to surrender.
[00:10:25] And that's like the central premise of this, is that, okay, we fight change. We cling to what we want things to be, the memory of what was and what we believe should be. And I think some of even our zeitgeist struggles with this country right now are people really fighting to hold a memory of what was, maybe even 60, 70 years ago, and force it onto the world now when they can't let go and accept that change has happened.
[00:10:54] It's long, long gone, right? The ability to move beyond today, even this moment now is gone, is really where I think the ability to adapt to change comes from. Because we can constantly look at everything and see and appreciate that change has come But if we don't do that, we suffer. If we don't see every situation as a passing memory, as Pema says.
[00:11:23] I'm a huge Pema fan, by the way, if you haven't picked that up yet. the first Noble Truth, and my pronunciation is terrible, and I, I'm glad I have my, better half here. Dukkha, D-U-K-K-H-A, is really that we suffer when we cling, when we hold. That is also the second Noble Truth in the Dharma, right?
[00:11:44] One is suffering, two is clinging. And we cling to what we want. We cling to what should be. We cling to the ideal maybe that we were raised with. This is also the seeds of our ancestors, right? Like my dad never understood Jeff the entrepreneur, right? This was something that I reckoned with during my sits.
[00:12:05] my dad always wanted me to have that job, right? And it made sense. He was a company man that worked in the same place for twenty-five, thirty years. Different era, right? Talking about applying what happened in the '60s to the 2020s. Different era, different time. And there are some people that can do that still.
[00:12:23] It's pretty cool that they can. Just not me, and that's okay. But, coming to understand that, clinging to that memory clinging to the idea of the way I should look, clinging to the way my eyes used to be before they got all wrinkled and tired, clinging to the memory of just even three, four years ago when I went for a run, how quickly I would recover, and how much longer it takes now.
[00:12:51] All the things. Clinging to the memory of my child, who used to be such a sweet person.
[00:12:57] And is such an age-appropriate asshole. Sorry about that, YouTube. But, he's a good kid, but oh, he's also age-appropriate and will, quickly tell me all my faults. So, all these things that we cling to, and I know you identify. I can hear it with the laughs. But when we see these things as impermanent, it's easier.
[00:13:17] and so I think one way I look at that is through detachment. get away from the moment necessarily, the unpleasantness of the moment. for example, we were talking about... I'm gonna make fun of our cell phone use. We were talking about cell phone use in the house and, like any good teenager, my child is attached permanently and, believes they are here with their academic prowess, and they are more likely here, in large part because of Instagram and Pinterest and other fine phone applications.
[00:13:51] and, we have this conversation a lot, and I took a picture of both Caitlin and Leo yesterday together in bed on their phones, like... And I said, "No, we don't have a phone problem." I sent it to them. They're like, "Well, you're on the phone all the time." And, then we had the classic parental debate about whose fault it is that the kid's on the phone.
[00:14:14] "You're the, you're the one that taught him." No, no, no. Who was the one that introduced him to the computer when they were, what, seven months old? The baby literally saw Elmo on the computer and flipped and face-planted into the keyboard. And the love affair with the screens began then.
[00:14:32] But it was really unpleasant this morning when my kid was going back at me o- on the threads. it was funny last night. This morning, I caught a couple of really fresh comments via text age appropriate. And rather than reply, I detached And for me, it was, this is where he's at, and I don't need to engage, and this will change.
[00:14:56] This will change. And this is what I mean about, clinging to the way you should be, the way you should talk. Now, there's a respect thing, and maybe there's a conversation there or parenting, but not in that moment, right? To me, it is more about what you should be, what I think you should be, forcing my ideal on this child as opposed to where they are, and also letting them feel the consequence of their actions.
[00:15:22] They have big dreams. This boy does. He has big dreams. Wants to go to, a baby Ivy League. So we'll see. We'll see. There's also the reality of it. We can show him the way, but you can-- they have to want it. People have to want to adapt and change, and that's his journey. I can only show him how I adapt and change.
[00:15:42] So resisting the reality of the moment is where the pain is. So we've all had toxic moments in our life. I looked at that little text as a bid for a toxic moment, which I didn't have It didn't have it or it chose not to have it We can choose We can choose
[00:16:05] So moving beyond that really requires us to decide to not cling and hold on to our absolute kind of ideals that aren't based in the moment. Going back to AI, 'cause I promised I would talk a little bit about it today, even though I'm, I haven't talked very much at all about it today I can't stop this from happening.
[00:16:30] I can't stop every software machine on Earth or program or managed service from wrapping a chat box into itself and calling itself AI. I can't stop these organizations from stealing my data, even though they say they may not be, or they guarantee it. I promise you, they are stealing it, some of them. I can't prevent
[00:16:55] companies, governments, and organizations from using this technology inappropriately, but I can voice my dissent to that. And I think we saw that on Tuesday as well. And I'm not talking on the federal level. I think on the state level. Just look at what happened at Texas. That was as much about these data centers as it was the immigration issue
[00:17:18] So deciding to stop clinging to the ideal is what lets me move forward with the technology. Because, I can help a nonprofit use this technology to save lives, which I'm-- I am doing, in India and in Africa, showing them how to move better, more efficiently, even creating a force multiplier for a dramatically underfunded, understaffed cause, right?
[00:17:51] This is where it can do well. Or for a person like me, who even though I play with technology left and right, and Andreas is gonna laugh, my hard drive is a bloody mess, right? But I can use this to help clean it up and do so in a fashion that actually makes sense to me. I could never do that, and I definitely wasn't gonna pay Geek Squad four hundred dollars to do it.
[00:18:14] Little things like that, it can make a difference. It can make a difference for people in the right way. But it requires mindfulness, and it requires use cases. So and it also requires A sense that I am going to stop clinging to absolutes. And what I mean by absolutes are I will never use this And we'll never, ever touch it Or, or I will only use this.
[00:18:41] I see the other side of it too The other thing with any of this kind of binary thinking, which is very Western by the way, the win-lose thing is the classic, right? We're gonna win in AI. We're gonna win. America's gonna be number one in AI, or, these companies, we're gonna be the first ones to do this and slash 30% of our workforce, all these crazy things, and then they end up hiring all the people back because they didn't really understand what they were dealing with.
[00:19:09] Absolutes
[00:19:10] But we can take baby steps, right? We can move a little bit into the gray and explore. We can see things. The book talks a lot about thinking liquid, and what it really specifically talks about is using water as a flow analogy, and water always moves to the sea. Always, even when it's evaporated, right? It rains eventually, and it comes back to Earth, and it moves to the sea.
[00:19:39] It freezes. It may be in a glacier locked for millennia, but thanks to, us, they're melting. But the water moves to the sea. The water moves to the sea, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, sometimes directly, sometimes in very crazy loop circuitous patterns, right? But water always finds the path of least resistance and moves to the sea.
[00:20:04] And I think, when I consider our impermanence and our noble truths, the fourth noble truth is like the, the Dharma itself, right? Finding the path. When we have our own beliefs and where we wanna go in our life, when we know what's true to us
[00:20:20] Finding the path is a lot easier. I've already talked a little bit with the AI thing about helping people and helping causes and really kinda getting into that spiritual side of it. For me, that's my path with this is, has-- The technology may not even be relevant in five years. I don't think it's gonna go away, but I think it's more like electricity.
[00:20:40] It's gonna be more and more present. But whatever the technology is, it's still just a means to an end to me. I will discard it if it doesn't help achieve my North Star, because I wanna get to the sea. That's my flow state. And, Susan's totally laughing 'cause she used to coach me. She's totally laughing.
[00:21:02] She knows. Yeah. And, and thank you for all your help. So w- understanding where you wanna go is everything with this. And sometimes understanding isn't finite. That's the other thing that's beautiful about not having to have a, like a, a binary fixed vision of, "This is what must be." A general direction, a general purpose may be enough to start walking, and the path unfolds.
[00:21:30] It's not gonna be a direct linear 100 miles maybe. It may be 230 miles to cover that 100 miles, and that's okay So when I consider, how we do that, it begins by pausing and reflecting. And that pause is daily. Sometimes it's in the moment. Sometimes it's really about observing a situation and not reacting to it, but maybe just giving it a few minutes, few hours, or even a few days to respond to it.
[00:22:00] And you know the difference. We all know the difference, right? And being able to respond in our spiritual truth, our North Star, our flow, our belief system, everybody's got their own. That allows us to go. That allows us to find where we wanna be. So maybe you don't ever use Grok because of your spiritual beliefs.
[00:22:24] Maybe you find an environmentally friendly AI, and there are a few out there. maybe you choose to only use machine learning for now and write everything yourself. Whatever it might be with the-- this little s-situation, maybe on the larger context with the country or immigration or any of the other myriad of issues that face us as a people, or maybe just simply, "How do I live more comfortably because I have not done so for a long time, and I would like to have a better year, a better time in twenty twenty-seven," which is as worthy using that as your North Star, pausing, reflecting, "Does this help me do that?
[00:23:10] Or is it something that should be rejected?" And what I mean by rejected is when we pause, we can, and this is all in here, we can take stock, see whether something is impermanent, something that's going to Change, right? Again, most likely. And then we can literally take stock of our own views of it and our own use of it, and keep what's saleable and let the rest go.
[00:23:37] And that's what I mean by discarding technology if it doesn't serve my purpose or discarding a, an idea. I don't have to be right today anymore. What's right today will be wrong in two years. And what's wrong today will be right in two years. And that's where we're at, the way things change so quickly.
[00:23:57] Consider the whole idea of working from home, working remotely 10 years ago and what the pandemic did to that. In a month, over. Just everybody worked from home And I would say that you look at some of these office buildings today and their signs, there's-- we still have not come back to work. And although some people really want us to, things, will never be the same.
[00:24:21] What was right 10 years ago for work is no longer the same. Things change. So
[00:24:29] I would say that when we look at that inventory and we move out of what's holding us back, and we make a decision to let it go, that's when we can get into our flow state and begin taking those steps to whatever our journey might want us to be. And so I think really committing ourselves, maybe coming back to the mat, which is often the case for me in the morning, and realizing maybe yesterday I didn't do such a great job with this.
[00:25:03] Maybe I need to let go of that thing that I was so desperately holding on to. this idea that, of the way my kids should approach their studies with their Instagram. Poor Leo, he's being made such an example of today. He'll look at this video in 10 years and be like, "God, Dad." But, letting go of these ideas and being willing to let them go and move forward is really the trick.
[00:25:26] It really is the trick. And then we can adapt. So what I'm going to close with are just a couple little ideas here from Plum Village. So, Thay used to have, five remembrances, and these are the fourth and fifth remembrances, which I'm gonna share with you. For some reason in Buddhism, everything's got a number, like the Eight Noble Tru- Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path of Glory, the Five Remembrances.
[00:25:54] All right. So number four is, "All that is dear to me and everyone I love are all of the nature to change."
[00:26:04] And number five is my actions are my only true belongings
[00:26:10] So with that, thank you for listening to me for just a few minutes today, and I look forward to hearing from you