In this crossover episode of The Living Conversation and The Way Between Podcast, co-hosts Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz continue their conversation with Dr. Nick Egan, exploring what AI means from Buddhist and philosophical perspectives. Starting from the very contemporary anxiety around “AI as threat or opportunity,” they return to a classic theme: how human beings have always had to integrate new technologies—from fire and the wheel to radio, TV, and the internet—through something like a middle way.

Adam brings in Confucian and Buddhist language to ask how we might “harmonize” AI rather than demonize or worship it, suggesting that our real task is to cultivate ourselves so we use the tool without letting it use us. Nick takes up Anthony’s koan-like question—“Does AI have Buddha nature?”—and responds from Tibetan Buddhist philosophy: why inanimate systems, however powerful, still lack sentience and will, and why consciousness arises from a stream of previous moments of consciousness rather than from mere complexity of code. Along the way they touch on nature spirits, projection (does the tree really “speak” to us?), and the limits of the human mind in grasping exponential change.

From there, the conversation widens into the nature of mind itself. Adam describes the danger of attaching even to “non-attachment,” and the need to let desires, ambitions, and identities settle so that the “true self” can emerge and be integrated in everyday life. Nick contrasts Zen’s stripped-down focus on realizing the nature of mind with Tibetan Buddhism’s vast toolbox of tantric cycles and practices, warning about spiritual materialism and the reification of emptiness itself. The episode closes with Adam introducing The Way Between Podcast as a space for deeper, longer-form explorations of philosophy East and West, and with all three sharing how listeners can stay connected to their work.

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your host today on the Living Conversation with my co host.

Welcome.

And our guest today is Nick Egan.

And Nick, I'm curious about, first of all, what's, what's up for your clients, but also can you relate a little bit about what your first exposure was to philosophy, like Adam was talking about before the break?

Well.

Philosophy for me, I started quite young.

I have always been interested in questions of the mind and of spirit, even from a very young age.

So I would use.

I used to wake up.

I didn't grow up in a particularly religious house household, but I used to wake up and watch like televangelists and stuff on, on Sundays back in the.

This was back when there were only four channels and five channels on tv.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I always had a curious mind about what I considered, even at that time, you know, kind of the big questions.

And I started training in martial arts pretty intensely, but I always had an idea that I was interested in the cultivation side.

So I started studying in some, you know, Daoist tradition, like energy movement, type of cultivation systems, and then some Western intuitive traditions.

And then at the same time, it was really Zen.

That became a more serious practice for me.

And then from there it's been.

That's been it.

So it really has been since I was about 16, in a more formalized study.

Before that, I was just reading every book I could get my hands on, from crystals to Necronomicon to the, you know, Christian literature, whatever.

Right.

I'm curious to know the name of the Roshi you were speaking about earlier.

So that was Jakusha Kwong Roshi in Sonoma County.

Oh, it's Anomaly County.

Jacuzza Kwan.

Yeah.

Kwong.

Yeah.

Okay.

He, he is still alive, but I believe his son is there at Sonoma Mountains and Center.

Oh, oh, oh.

Sonoma Mountains and Center.

Okay.

All right.

I had studied with Katagiri Roshi in the Minnesota Zen center.

And, and he had.

Was a co founder of San Francisco Zen center with Suzuki Roshi.

So, Nick, I'm.

I'm just curious what's up for your clients these days?

What seems to be a, a theme that is presenting itself?

The theme it's always.

I mean, it depends on what they're working on.

So everybody has their own unique challenges.

And I think whatever, whatever the theme is that's presenting to people, the way I tend to work is I work from whatever the surface level is and then go draw down into more of the mindset work.

So I don't Usually start with the mindset work.

I start with how whatever they identify as a gap.

So, like, oh, I see.

If they're.

Yeah.

If they are a small business owner, then it's like, oh, man, I feel like I'm working constantly and I never can get out of, you know, the weeds.

Or maybe they're an executive and it's like, yeah, I'm trying to delegate to my team, but they're just.

They're just not getting it.

I'm really frustrated, whatever it is.

And then we sort of draw on that thread all the way down through into whatever the mindset is that's creating that effect is how I tend to work.

So it's not.

It's hard to say that there's one particular theme, but certainly AI is an interesting current theme right now, and is.

That seeming to have some shift of people's disposition?

I mean, AI is both.

I think it depends on where you are and what you're doing and how far out you're looking.

So I think for many people, AI is either a threat or something that they.

An opportunity currently.

And I think that people are wondering how best to implement it and what's the learning curve there and what's possible with it.

And then some people are worried, like, well, it does my job.

Like, if I'm a copywriter or something, it does my job quite well.

Or even a coach.

Right.

I was just talking about this.

I had a group of coaches, like, kind of a mastermind that I meet with, and one guy has Tony Robbins.

I guess you can pay 100 bucks a month or whatever and get the AI version of Tony Robbins that's audio, so you can ask me questions and all that.

And he said, it's great.

It's exactly like how Tony Robbins would be.

And it's like, well, that's, you know, one of the top coaches in the world.

And so there is that component.

But he was also saying, like, people are still looking for the human connection, and so it probably will wipe out some form of the coaching industry, but maybe not the top element of it, but maybe it will eventually.

I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Are you using the tool or is the tool using you?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

If it's free, then you are the product.

Right.

My gosh.

So your thoughts, Adam?

Yeah, I actually just pitched a piece for one publication about.

I was really happy how it turned out about that.

We just need to use the middle way for technology again.

You know, we.

We.

People are.

People are phobic about, like, they said there's, on one hand, they're phobic about AI, it's going to ruin everything.

On the other hand, I think it's going to solve everything.

And to me, it's just another example of using the middle way.

It's like, you don't need to completely dismiss it.

You don't need to complet.

Completely embrace it in everything you do.

We've been through this a million times as human beings.

There's been technology since the wheel and fire and whatnot.

And we deal with it.

You know, we deal with it.

Society completely transforms and, and, and humanity.

From a Confucian perspective, humanity has the principle in the human being.

So they.

We are like.

We are like little pieces of dog that just keep massaging and working and whatever comes up, we harmonize it.

We're meant to harmonize it.

We're meant to be.

We're meant to be beings of harm, our relationships in our life.

So if we're, if we're doing our job, so to speak, in a Confucian perspective, if we're doing.

If we're fulfilling our heavenly mandate, fulfilling our heaven, heaven's destiny, then we're harmonizing things, including harmonizing AI.

So in the Buddhist perspective, I would say middle way, not too much AI, not too little.

Right.

And we.

We've done this before with radio, we've done this with tv, we've done this with the Internet.

We do this a million times.

So I don't think there's a reason to be panicked about it.

It is very transformative.

I mean, I think it had a.

It's already had a hand in a lot of major changes, but humanity finds a way.

Well, my question is, does AI have Buddha nature?

That's like a coon right there.

Oh, right, yeah.

Any thoughts, Nick?

That it's a.

So I mean, from.

You could take that from like a Zen perspective.

And I think there's an argument to be made that anything that you are experiencing is a reflection of your own Buddha nature.

So, like, by definition, the entire universe has Buddha nature.

From that would be like a mind only like a Chitta mantra kind of philosophical perspective.

But from a.

It's an interesting quote.

I've actually considered writing either a little thesis on this or a paper or something like that.

From a.

If we're taking just like a conventional perspective, conventional philosophical view.

From a Buddhist perspective, inanimate objects, not on an ultimate level, how I was just describing it too, but like on a relative level, it's not possible for them to have consciousness.

Right?

So you can't.

It's like no matter how, like a rock will never attain consciousness.

Rock could be considered like from.

This is where it gets a little bit confusing with Buddhism.

From Buddhism on the ultimate state level, everything is a reflection of consciousness.

So the substrate of the universe is itself consciousness and energy.

But that's talking about like the fundamentals, not like the thoughts of a rock.

So a rock can never have thoughts.

From a Buddhist perspective.

Same goes for like AI like it would be impossible, at least from my understanding.

I would love to hear both of your perspective on this.

It would be impossible for an inanimate AI to ever become, you know, so called age, like artificial general.

Like it's actually not intelligent.

It doesn't.

Not in the way that I would define it as sentient.

So like, could AI ever become sentient?

From a Buddhist perspective, I would have to say no.

Yeah, I get a sense that a lot of folks are projecting their expectations upon it.

Your thoughts, Adam?

Well, one thing is there has to be an element, I think of will.

And AI doesn't have a will.

We have to put the will in.

So why, what in its nature, so to speak, would drive it to become sentient?

Why would it care?

It's inanimate.

It wouldn't have no concept of why this is important to, to be sentient.

It's just existing like a rob.

Like mixing.

Dr. Who once told a story about this similar.

But even, even maybe, you know, from a Buddhist perspective, Nick, you would be able to speak to this like a high, you know, step up from a rock.

Right.

Or you have living being, like for example, a tree.

Right.

So Dr. Who would tell a story of how someone would go into the Redwood forest and say, oh, you know, this tree really speaks to me.

And it, I, you know, it gave me these warm feelings and I gave them back and this kind of thing.

And, and Dr. Wu's take was, well, that's nice.

But that's just your, you know, to paraphrase, that's your projection.

The tree didn't actually do any of that.

That was your projection.

So on one hand, the two thoughts that, that come to me right now is that on one hand I don't see AI having any kind of will.

So that would be something that it would have to just generate.

I will say one more thing though.

The human mind cannot grasp exponentiality.

Like it's just beyond us.

And AI, our human minds cannot grasp exponentiality.

Exponential.

Yes.

Okay.

And AI is growing exponentially.

Like it's, it's unfathomable.

To us how much it's processing and doing and learning, so to speak, learning so on.

On one hand the sky may be the limit.

Maybe somehow some way some unfathomable thing happens and AI decides it wants to try and become sentient.

That's very sci fi, right.

But we can't grasp that.

It's just beyond our comprehension.

But in its nature it's ones and zeros, so to speak.

Right.

Or I'm not a computer engineer.

But in its nature it's inanimate.

Its nature.

It has no will, its nature has no path or desire or passions or wanting to seek growth.

I think all living things do have a path, do have a desire, do want to seek growth in whatever way that is right for them.

But I see that with inanimate objects like Nick saying so.

Yeah, that's basically that on the one hand there's that, right?

On the one hand there's that.

And on the other hand we just can't.

Maybe we can't grasp it fully and we're also projecting.

Yeah, no, I think that's a, it's an interesting, like the tree thing sort of complicates it in a way from a, from a traditional Buddhist perspective.

And we're talking in the relative, not in the ultimate.

From a relative perspective, a moment of consciousness.

Like even the name of what we would call like your spirit or your consciousness, the thing that is pre and post, pre birth and post death is considered.

It's called semgi, meaning like your mind stream, your stream of consciousness.

And it's like, well, what's the what like your, your meaning like a flow, like a continuum, A contains continuum of mind.

Yeah.

And so like what is the previous point of origin of consciousness?

It's a previous moment of consciousness.

So the Dalai Lama talks about this a lot.

Like you, the nature.

Like what is the cause of my consciousness right now is a previous moment of consciousness going back through infinite time.

Right.

And so it's not like you can create consciousness from a non conscious thing.

Now there's some.

So that's a philosophical perspective.

There is some exceptions to this Adam in the especially I'm thinking of like the tree, like in Buddhist understanding you actually like trees do have a spirit if they are like inhabited by these nature spirits.

Right.

So tree, a tree, the way we think of a tree is like this inhabiting.

It's almost like a house for a nature spirit going back to.

And the same thing in like the Greek times.

Right.

The Greeks talked about the nymphs, they talked about like the four spirits and all that.

There's lots of different formulations of what counts as like a nature spirit.

But there are pre existing spirits that then inhabit these inanimate objects, which is a different thing and I think people get a little wonky about that.

Yeah.

So maybe, I mean to your point Adam, like maybe it's possible like an on in a.

A non embodied spirit could like embody AI.

Like that would be work from a Buddhist philosophical perspective.

That'd be some wild stuff.

We have to take a short break.

Okay, good.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host with.

And how can people contact you?

Nick who is our guest?

I am Nick Egan.

You can reach out to me@nickeganphd.com or on LinkedIn is great too.

You can find me there or you can go to shiftleadership.group for leadership and development.

And your last name is E G A N. Correct.

Okay.

And Adam.

Yeah.

I want to thank everyone for joining us on this crossover episode of the Way between podcast.

And you can find me at the Way I always get this wrong but you can search me up at the Way between on substack.

All my links are on there is why I always point people there.

It's free and you can also reach out to me at gmail deets adam.gmail.comdietz Great.

And I'm Anthony Wright and my website is theonot.com and you can there's a a place there for comments.

So we're going to take a short break and be right back.

So stay tuned foreign.

And I am your co host on the Living Conversation with Adam Dietz, a.

Host of the Way between podcast as well.

Yes.

And the setting is there's two guys, Dwar Evan Duar Wren and Dwar Ev Solders the final connection that makes the connection between all the 96 billion computers on all the inhabited planets in the in the galaxy.

And the dwarf says Dwarven the honor of throwing the switch to connect everything is yours.

And Dwarven throws the switch and all these lights begin to flash along a miles long panel and Dwar Ren says Dwarf the the honor of answering the first question is yours.

And Duare ev says is there a God?

And there's A pause and then the booming voice comes out of the sky.

Now there is a God and duare ren Lims for the switch and there is a bolt of lightning that comes out of the sky and fuses the switch shut.

That's a very cool.

We go back to this idea of the Matrix about.

Well, we tried to turn off AI but then the Matrix said, okay, every human being puts out about 100 watts of power.

So then what?

So then it captures the human race.

But again, I want to come back to this idea of.

And I, I don't know, when I talk about relative in my class, I say, who's relative?

Which one?

Your uncle?

Or, and, or.

But in terms of the, the con.

The, the cosmos as a conscious field, you know, certainly I don't know that I, I mean, I also agree with you.

I don't know that AI can become sentient or independently thinking in the way that human beings know it.

But I, I have to say it's been a very useful tool for me in going through some of my coursework in.

But I have to be careful about how, you know, to, to continue to realize that it's a machine.

And then it has these algorithms that are designed to be perhaps unusually complimentary to my interface with it.

Oh, you're so smart.

That's a great question, you know, sort of thing.

And I sometimes I have to remembering it's a machine.

Perhaps dispense with normal human courtesy, saying, oh, thank you so much, or can you please answer this?

No, it's a machine.

I mean, and I do appreciate it and it's not a thing about mistreating it.

But I guess coming back to the, to the basic points about, you know, I'm grateful for the tools that we have and yet it's really important to use the tool and then put it down so the tool isn't using us.

So Nick, what are your, what, what does Tibetan Buddhism speak about?

And one other thing I wanted to mention before you get into that is what I'd heard about Zen Buddhim.

Zen Buddhism gets everything out of the room and then it's just a tin room.

But Tibetan Buddhism brings everything into the room and is fully ritual.

But anyway, what's your thoughts about Tibetan Buddhism with use of tools?

Any tool?

I mean, if we're talking about spiritual tools, there is.

I mean, Tibetan Buddhism has a huge amount more even than I think most practitioners, more even than probably most scholars realize.

Like, I have a book here of easily 800 different practices that are so in each by practices I mean, like Tantric cycles, right?

And those Tantric cycles have their own completion stage practices, they have their own source text, they have their own mantra, they have their own visualization, all of that, but ultimately all different practices, whether they're energy practices, mantra visualization, whatever ritual of some kind, they're all pointing to realizing the nature of mind.

And so in that way, like, it's not so much that Zen is removing anything, they're just single, pointedly focused on let's understand the nature of mind.

And I'm using.

I know I'm kind of crossing terms.

I'm using Tibetan terms for Zen.

And I think that there is a beauty to that because they don't.

They don't ever lose sight of it.

There's also a danger, though, and the danger is that if you don't realize the nature of mind, then it's sort of like, well, you've not wasted exactly, but you've spent 20 years doing something where, you know, a few mantras and some energy practices might have done you good, even though, like, you didn't get quite to the finish line, but you at least have, like, some.

A powerfully developed mindset or a powerfully developed energy system or you have feelings of bliss or whatever.

So I would say in Tibetan Buddhism, there's what we talk about as, like, the common cities.

Cities just means, like, powers or accomplishments, the common ones.

Right.

What's that?

It's spelled S I D D I.

City.

Yes.

Siddhi accomplishment or power.

Yes.

S I D D H I.

Okay.

And so at least if you miss the mark on the ultimate city, the ultimate accomplishment, which is enlightenment, at least you get some along the way and you can try again next life or whatever.

So that's, I think, a benefit to Buddhism in Tibetan Buddhism.

Right?

But that being said, it's so easy to get bewildered by, like, oh, my gosh, how many different mantras are there?

Like, what should.

What mantra should I do today?

What practice should I do?

Am I progressing?

Like, that's why it's so important to have a good teacher and have an actual relationship with teachers until, I think, until you have enough experience that you know, you're going in a certain direction.

Well, I remember the Buddha saying.

Because.

There were these masters that were able to become invisible or be able to.

To float around, to levitate, and they would levitate across the stream.

And the Buddha said, why are you doing that?

It's just going to trap you.

There's a perfectly good ford to cross that stream, you know, and attending to the idea that, uh, the use of powers, so called, can also be entrapping.

So your thoughts or.

Go ahead, Nick.

Well, I want to, I want to jump.

I would love to hear Adam's point too.

Like, any reification, meaning any concrete conceptualization of a thing is going to be a trap.

Now that could be powers, certainly it could be ordinary stuff, but it also could be a form of spirituality.

So like, there's the most dangerous kind of reification is actually the reification of emptiness or of the nature of mind itself.

Right, right.

Which is a trap that you fall into in both Zogen and I think Zen, which is like, well, I'm conceptualizing a kind of emptiness and I have that thing, but it's not the real thing.

It's a facsimile of it.

And so that's a difficult trap to get out of.

Yeah, and it's.

That's the.

But then you go to Shunyata Shinya.

Right, but that.

Yeah, exactly.

But if you think Shinya taught is truly existent, then you're almost hopeless.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

Yes, Adam.

It's very deep.

So maybe I should answer with a mundane thing like.

But I think the, the main point is that your mind is this whole ecosystem.

Your mind is this whole universe.

And anything, like Nick said, can be obstacle to you having your attention go in areas that are not the nature of mind.

And the ultimate goal for a practitioner is actually to completely empty your mind.

When you, when you completely empty your mind, you have no attachment.

And, and we know, we all know there's a danger there of trying to, to attach to non attachment we talked about before.

That's where you know, allowing all your thoughts, desires to settle, allowing all your ambitions and will and identity to settle.

That is, have less desire, less, Less identity to allow yourself.

Then what happens?

Then you can actually experience your true self emerging.

You feel it in your body.

You feel it.

You experience fills you.

It fills you.

So in whatever method we're talking about, whatever practice we're talking about, in the end anything could become a distraction or a hindrance.

And you want to maintain some inner space, to be able to evaluate things, to be able to have the will to decrease your desire, decrease your ambition, decrease your identity, and to be able to experience your true self.

Then when you experience your true self, there's a matter of how do you integrate them, how do you return to it?

So as you, as you were talking, describing different aids and obstacles, tools, it's, it's.

They all have their own dangers.

And the biggest danger at all is Anything that keeps us from allowing ourselves to lessen our desire to lessen our thought, to allow ourselves to experience our deepest self, our truest self, our most original self.

Because I remember.

I want to just add to that briefly, like, please, once you.

So Adam talked about emptying the mind.

So we would call that like a state of no thought, which is where you can experience the nature of mind.

So you have the state of no thought.

You experience the nature of mind, your true self.

However you want to formulate that on the other side of that, once you, once you have stabilized that then the things that you had previously sought to eliminate no longer become a hindrance.

In the same way that like a thought, a thought will arise from that state, a thought will arise and dissipate the same way like mist dissipates in the morning sun.

Right.

Because you now, instead of being attached to like the clouds in the sky, whether it's sunny or whatever, it's like you're at the level of the sky.

And I don't mean lofty.

I mean like the things that are passing through the sky do not stain the sky.

So that same way.

So there's no.

You need to let go of letting go of things.

Yes, yes.

Allow them to exist.

Allow them to exist and pass by, or else you'll have a whole other set of problems.

And I remember hearing Trunk, but talk about spiritual materialism and also John Wellwood, who was a student of Trungpa, talking about spiritual bypassing.

So, I mean, it seems to be fairly clear that we're, that we're aware of that.

Well, we're coming to the end of the show and I'm very grateful to talk with you guys.

And Adam, would you talk a little bit about the, the podcast that you are.

This will be a crossover episode for.

Yeah, so I'm starting up the Way between podcast just because I have the bandwidth for it and I enjoy these kind of conversations and want to take this to a different type of format where we have maybe less time constraints.

Fewer time constraints.

So the Way between podcasts will be available anywhere you get your podcast.

This will be the first episode we'll be posting, cross posting it to the living conversation and the Way between podcast.

And we'll be looking to, you know, follow.

Follow a similar structure where we're inviting guests and.

But go a little, go a little deeper with one or two concepts per episode.

Go a little deeper with one or two philosophers and kind of stay tethered and yoked to that.

It's hopefully meant to mirror my manuscript, which is a story of philosophy east and west, where we explore in depth experiences, chapter by chapter, with a particular philosophy or philosopher.

Great.

Well, we are at the end of the show.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your co host with I.

Indeed.

And our guest is Nick Egan.

And how can people contact you, Nick?

Yeah, you can reach out to me@nickeganphd.com or ShiftLeadership Group.

And Adam, you can find all my links at Substack.

You search me up at the way between on Substack and excuse me, you can also reach out directly at deetsadamail.com.

And I'm Anthony Wright and my website is theonot.com T-H-E-O-N-A-U-T.com and there is a comment section there.

So thank you all for listening and tuning in and we will, we will see you next time.

That.