The world is rapidly accelerating and expanding beyond planetary scale — when we move this fast, we must be rooted, grounded, or we just might lose our solid footing. For me, Zen stories provide great tales of compassionate oversight, tales of enduring humanity across thousands of years, echoes of things that never change, even as everything around us does. 

Gather round my dear friends, it’s Zen story time. 

My mother spent her childhood in Japan, Zen perfumed our home in ways I didn’t recognize until later — intentional moments of stillness, tea ceremony, ikebana, calligraphy and bonsai pruning weren’t called practice, it was just my mom being my mom and bringing a sacred touch to ordinary things. I had no idea it was a whole Buddhist thing, or that Zen would become a precious soul marrow to me.

Fast forward to 2013, when I miraculously found myself sitting with a Zen Master at the most unlikely of places — Google. I was at Google X then, and myself along with a gaggle of other product execs sat at a Dr. Strangelove-like corporate table on one side, while across from us ran a chestnut-robed river of monastics emanating major Jedi vibes. At their center was Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) with the presence of a silent thundering mountain. 

Tears streamed inexplicably and immediately, soundlessly down my face . . . my Google colleagues never saw the puddle of awe I’d become.

Thay was a radical Zen Master known for making Zen practice simple, joyful and accessible to the West, and for his revolutionary peace leadership — he had a special soul brotherhood with Dr. Martin Luther King [1]. Thay requested a conversation with Google to discuss technology, mindfulness, intention, attention — and began by inviting the sound of the bell. He struck a blackened brass bowl, sending resonance through the room, and us. We just listened deeply and became one with the sound — it is truly remarkable how deeply a bell can ring inside a person [2]. I asked Thay about its meaning and he explained the invitation of the bell — we usually think it comes from the outside, but truly the sound, the call to awakening, comes to us from the inside [3]. A bell is a bodhisattva, it helps us to wake up. Tears streamed inexplicably and immediately, soundlessly down my face, for the remainder of our time together. To my great relief, I was sitting precisely in a corner where while all the monks and nuns bore witness to my experience, my Google colleagues never saw the puddle of awe I’d become.

A radical endeavor in embracing the messy stack of human-beingness.

Thay watered an inner seed that day, as teachers do, of practice that germinated along with a hopeful intention I had to bring a deeper reverence and care for our human hearts and lives into designing advanced technologies. This grew my courage to found Google’s Empathy Lab a year later. A radical endeavor in embracing the messy stack of human-beingness, the lab wove creativity and enlivening compassion into the process of making things for billions of people, focusing most on wellbeing and relationally intelligent AI. In our experiments I often thought of Thay: What would he see, how can I widen the aperture of my awareness? How might I look or listen more deeply to what is beneath the surface of this experience? How can I consider a wider ecology for this technology [4], where interbeing [5] might include machines? This inquiry led me to train as a Zen Chaplain under Roshi Joan Halifax, an extraordinary matriarchal tower of Zen and multidimensional force of compassionate action in the world. [6] With one foot in each world, I continue to mentor AI leaders towards more whole-hearted, connected models of intelligence by coming alongside them and guiding in new ways, in the spirit of our friend Rumi, who says, work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible.

Now friends, allow me just one more Zen tale from Paul Reps’ Zen Flesh, Zen Bones before we close this moment together today.

There is a story in Zen about Encho, a famously gifted storyteller. It is said that he one day met Tesshu, an everyday person just like us — not a monk, not yet a Zen Master. Upon meeting, Tesshu said to Encho, “I understand, you are the best storyteller in our land and that you make people cry or laugh at will. Tell me my favorite story of the Peach Boy. When I was a little child I used to sleep beside my mother, and she often related this legend. In the middle of the story I would fall asleep. Tell it to me just as my mother did.” Encho dared not attempt to do this. 

He requested time to study. Several months later he went to Yamaoka, “Please give me the opportunity to tell you the story.” “Some other day” answered Yamaoka. Encho was keenly disappointed. He studied further and tried again. Yamaoka rejected him many times. When Encho would start to talk, Yamaoka would stop him, saying: "You are not yet like my mother."

Where are the mothers of AI?

It took Encho five years to be able to tell Yamaoka the legend as his mother had told it to him. In this way, Yamaoka imparted Zen to Encho.

I love this story because with a twinkle in his eye, Yamaoka taught Encho a deep lesson: it’s not about the tale; it’s about the heart that tells it. This is the crux of the tale and our time. To know all the stories ever told, to spew them out in .00001 seconds, to relay them in scholarly ways or over dinner party conversations -- does that transmit the essence or better yet the soul of a story; does it mean we hear the sound inside as it rings the bell of our heart in connection, meaning,  giving us a felt sense of recognition? This brings me to ask a question as we close — where are the mothers of AI? When I say mother I mean this as an idea, a quality of energy independent of gender, a state of heart-mind and being that anyone can embody. They need only be drenched in the tenderness and special magic it takes for Encho to reveal the story of the Peach Boy to Yamaoka in a way his heart recognizes. Much like how my mom transmitted Zen without me realizing it, until decades later I met it again and felt my bones already knew it by heart. Who will take this kind of care with AI, thinking and feeling their way with warmth towards the generations to come? Who will bring this tenderness to us as we begin to live with it in new ways? Who will whisper to us in the night if we become afraid, if we don’t see clearly where we end and it begins in our minds and feelings, who will put a cool cloth on our brow or hold our hand in our confusion about what it is, who will know when to guide us and when to leave us be?

We need relationships to reflect, grow and become ourselves, in short, to flourish. AI built in the absence of this deeper understanding of the fabric of the universe, will continue to feel like it doesn’t quite know how yet to be with us — and in the reality of planetary, social and emotional interbeing — how to be at all.