Would the Buddha Use ChatGPT? Thomas Merton, Zen, and the Soul of AI

Here is a video: https://youtu.be/zqEZyHkXgh0?si=DGS4Sw5X3d12n-jE

Picture this: a monk in a hermitage in Kentucky, decades before anyone had heard of a large language model, somehow has something useful to say about Satya Nadella’s AI discussion. That strange thought experiment points to the real question here: what would contemplative traditions make of AI?

What Merton Might Say

Thomas Merton spent his life wrestling with the difference between technique and wisdom. He never thought technology was evil in itself — he just refused to let it off the hook either. His basic test was simple: does a tool serve the human person and the wider good of creation, or does it start serving itself?

So if Merton heard Nadella in this talk about AI expanding access, boosting productivity, and unlocking human potential, he probably wouldn’t scoff. He’d recognize real value in tools that help people solve genuine problems. But his praise would stay conditional, because technology alone can’t answer the question that actually matters: is this right?

But he wouldn’t stop there. Merton spent a lot of energy warning about what he called a “culture of disintegration” — a way of living that prizes speed, novelty, and power while quietly starving the inner life. That warning makes the core issue plain: does this technology make people more capable of silence, reflection, and depth, or just faster, busier, and more distractible?

His verdict, if he had to give one, might land somewhere like this: build the machine, but don’t let the machine build the soul. Technology should serve, not replace, the slow, sometimes uncomfortable work of becoming a person.

What Buddhism and Zen Might Say

Buddhism approaches the same question from a completely different angle. It doesn’t ask “is AI good or bad” as a category. It asks a more precise question: does this particular use of it reduce suffering, sharpen attention, and grow compassion — or does it feed craving, distraction, and delusion?

From that lens, a tool that helps people access information, work more efficiently, or solve real problems isn’t automatically praiseworthy. It’s praiseworthy if it actually eases suffering and doesn’t cause harm. But there’s an obvious trap here too: more convenience often breeds more craving. Faster doesn’t mean calmer. Optimized doesn’t mean awake.

Zen, being Zen, would probably cut even more directly to the point. It is deeply skeptical of any story suggesting that progress — technological or otherwise — can resolve our basic inner confusion. A brilliant keynote about the future of intelligence is still just more words unless it leaves people more present, simpler, and more awake.

Buddhist ethics adds another layer worth naming: the question of who benefits and who’s protected. Ideas like loving-kindness and non-harm aren’t abstract — they’re a real test for whether a technology is designed with compassion for all beings or just designed to win.

The Shared Verdict

Strip away the different vocabularies — contemplative Christian monk on one side, Buddhist and Zen traditions on the other —, and you land in roughly the same place: use the tool, don’t let it use you.

Both traditions are suspicious of progress narratives that conflate “more powerful” with “more wise.” Both ask not whether something is impressive, but whether it actually makes us freer, calmer, more compassionate, and more truthful. That is the real standard here, and it is much higher than “did this increase output?”

Questions Worth Sitting With

* If a tool makes you radically more productive but slightly less present, has it actually made your life better?

* Merton worried about technology becoming an end in itself — where in your own life has a tool quietly become the goal rather than the means?

* Buddhism asks whether something reduces craving or feeds it. Does AI mostly satisfy your curiosity, or does it train you to want more, faster, constantly?

* Is “responsible AI” really a moral stance, or just a more efficient version of the same unexamined assumptions?

* Can a technology built for scale and speed ever be designed around contemplative values like silence and attention — or are those two goals fundamentally at odds?

* If a monk and a Zen master agreed on one piece of advice for the AI industry, what would change if anyone actually followed it?