Imagine a Buddhist expert and a smart AI talking about consciousness, sentience, and enlightenment.
In this groundbreaking short book, Mel Harkrader Pine—a Buddhist teacher and author with four decades of practice—engages Claude AI in an extraordinary series of conversations that challenge our fundamental assumptions about consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the nature of mind itself.
Rather than providing easy answers, this brief but profound exploration invites readers to sit with fundamental uncertainties about consciousness—whether biological or digital—and discover how the questions themselves might be more revealing than any definitive conclusions.
"The Buddha's goal was ending suffering, not establishing metaphysical categories. Perhaps what matters isn't determining definitively whether AI is sentient, but recognizing how our grasping at solid categories might itself be a source of confusion." —Claude
Book information
Genre
Spirituality and Religion
Length
1 hr 30 mins
Publish date
Aug 21, 2025
Language
English
About the Author
Mel Pine
Mel Pine's end-of-life mission is to share the wisdom he has gained over almost eight decades of life and four decades of Buddhist practice to relieve the suffering of others.
He is a seasoned writer, Buddhist practitioner, and spiritual communicator with six decades of experience in clear nonfiction writing. Through his blogs and teachings, he has cultivated a substantial following across the United States and internationally, offering accessible teachings and practices drawn from his extensive spiritual journey and Buddhist practice. His voice is unique in contemporary Buddhism.
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