Aug 9, 2026 · 47 min · 10 segments
In this talk, we explore the spectre of AI with the help of Nanquan Puyuan (748-835), who popularised the saying, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” There’s no question that AI is extraordinary. But can it…
Kynan SutherlandHost
So to look at these questions, which I think are not so new as we might think.
I think there have been all sorts of forms of technology that have promised a kind of easy way out, perhaps.
But to look at this in more detail, I want to spend the afternoon with Nan Chuan, the old teacher, Nan Chuan.
who, if anybody was here in the last term of practice will remember, was a student of Great Master Ma's Matsus.
Great Master Ma was the one who encouraged his students to look in the direction of ordinary mind.
And it was Nachuan who took this teaching and made it famous in his encounter with Zhao Zhou, sharing this ordinary mind is the way.
to cut through the temptation to get caught in the extraordinary, as if only the extraordinary could reveal the deepest truths of our lives.
Let's realize the ordinary and see what we are then, see what all of this is then.
The fellow students or the monks in his assembly recognized there was something intrinsically realized about this character Wang.
And we can ask ourselves, isn't there something intrinsically realized about all of us? Aren't we all old teacher Wang before any kind of formal label might be put upon us? Our very presence here with each other is a great teaching We're revealing ourselves to each other, whether we know it or not.
And one of the great journeys of Zen is to begin to walk the path in such a way that this is realized beyond doubt, not in a conventional sense of knowing, but in an open and generous and unbounded sense of yes, yes, all beings, one body, everything revealing itself to everything, each creature revealing itself to each creature.
So to look at these questions, which I think are not so new as we might think.
I think there have been all sorts of forms of technology that have promised a kind of easy way out, perhaps.
But to look at this in more detail, I want to spend the afternoon with Nan Chuan, the old teacher, Nan Chuan.
who, if anybody was here in the last term of practice will remember, was a student of Great Master Ma's Matsus.
Great Master Ma was the one who encouraged his students to look in the direction of ordinary mind.
And it was Nachuan who took this teaching and made it famous in his encounter with Zhao Zhou, sharing this ordinary mind is the way.
to cut through the temptation to get caught in the extraordinary, as if only the extraordinary could reveal the deepest truths of our lives.
Let's realize the ordinary and see what we are then, see what all of this is then.
The fellow students or the monks in his assembly recognized there was something intrinsically realized about this character Wang.
And we can ask ourselves, isn't there something intrinsically realized about all of us? Aren't we all old teacher Wang before any kind of formal label might be put upon us? Our very presence here with each other is a great teaching We're revealing ourselves to each other, whether we know it or not.
And one of the great journeys of Zen is to begin to walk the path in such a way that this is realized beyond doubt, not in a conventional sense of knowing, but in an open and generous and unbounded sense of yes, yes, all beings, one body, everything revealing itself to everything, each creature revealing itself to each creature.
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