8 Uncomfortable Questions Modern Life Asks Ancient Wisdom: Day 1
Last Paryushan, Tattva Tales began with a simple curiosity: what happens when we take ancient Jain ideas out of textbooks and place them inside the world we actually live in?
We explored karma through coding, Aparigraha through minimalism, Anekantavada through polarisation, and Samayik through neuroscience.
This year, I want harder questions.
For the next eight days, each modern dilemma will be placed in conversation with ancient wisdom. We will explore how different philosophies, texts and stories approach the same question, where their insights meet, where they challenge one another, and what they might teach us today. Not to suggest that ancient thinkers reached identical conclusions, but to understand why human beings across centuries kept returning to the same struggles with desire, ego, suffering, identity and awareness.
Today’s question is one that earlier generations could not have asked in quite the same way:
If AI can think for me, what is left for me to do?
If Intelligence Becomes Cheap, What Becomes Valuable?
For almost nine years, I worked as a scientist in cancer research.
Science taught me early that a beautiful result can come from a badly designed experiment. The graph may look perfect and the conclusion may sound intelligent. But if the original question was wrong, the whole thing may be meaningless.
During my MBA, I saw another version of this. A sophisticated Excel model could make a weak assumption look wonderfully precise. Now, as a founder, I see it again with AI.
AI can make weak thinking sound brilliant.
That concerns me more than its ability to write emails. Fluency is beginning to resemble wisdom, although the two are not the same. AI can produce a polished answer without knowing whether we have asked the right question.
A 2026 US Federal Reserve brief reported that about 41 per cent of the US workforce was using generative AI for work by November 2025. AI is no longer coming. It is already quietly sitting beside us.
So what happens to us when we use it?
When almost anyone can create a good report, strategy or presentation in minutes, the value may no longer lie in producing more. It may lie in knowing what is worth producing. The scarce skill may not be intelligence as output. It may be judgement.
AI can shorten the path from question to answer. But if the question comes from fear, ego or comparison, speed may only take us faster in the wrong direction.
The Jain Lens: Knowledge Was Never Enough
The Tattvartha Sutra opens with the three jewels: Samyak Darshan, Samyak Jnana and Samyak Charitra.
Right perception. Right knowledge. Right conduct.
Together, they form the path to liberation. Knowledge alone does not.
The order matters.
Before asking what we know, Jain thought asks how we are seeing. We never approach a question as a blank page. We carry ambition, fear, attachment, memory and ego into it. These shape the questions we ask and the answers we want to hear.
Ask AI, “How can I grow my company faster?” It may offer a persuasive strategy. But Samyak Darshan asks first: why faster? Is it impact, ambition, fear, ego, pressure, or comparison?
AI can optimise our goal. It cannot guarantee that the goal deserves optimising.
Samyak Jnana asks: is this true? What evidence supports it? Which assumptions and perspectives are missing?
This is where Anekantavada becomes especially relevant. It reminds us that reality is many-sided and that one point of view rarely contains the whole truth. An AI answer may sound complete while still leaving out the experience of a customer, an employee, a minority voice, or the person who will live with the consequences.
There is a deeper point here. In Jain philosophy, consciousness is a key quality of the jiva, the living soul. Knowledge is not treated only as information collected from the outside. The soul has the capacity to know, but that capacity can be clouded by karma.
This changes the question. It is no longer only, “How much information can AI give me?” It becomes, “What is clouding my own ability to see clearly?”
Perhaps I already know that a decision is unfair, but ambition makes it easier not to look. Perhaps the evidence is weak, but the answer supports what I wanted to believe. More information does not automatically remove self-deception. Sometimes it simply gives self-deception better language.
Samyak Charitra then asks the hardest question: now that I know, how will I act?
Knowing Ahimsa is not practising it. An ethical policy means little when ethics cost money. It is easy to ask AI to write a company’s values. It is harder to follow those values when doing so delays growth or reduces profit.
See clearly. Know correctly. Act consciously.
AI can support this process, but it cannot live it for us.
The Gita Lens: Even Arjuna Had to Choose
Arjuna had something far more powerful than ChatGPT. He had Krishna.
On the battlefield, Arjuna was skilled and trained. Yet he collapsed. His problem was not a lack of information. It was a lack of clarity. Every choice carried a cost, and he could no longer see how to act without betraying something he valued.
Krishna guides him through duty, action, attachment and the self. Then, in Bhagavad Gita 18.63, he tells Arjuna to reflect fully and act as he chooses.
Krishna gives him guidance, but he does not take away his choice.
Guidance does not replace your judgement.
The Gita calls this clear intelligence (buddhi). In 18.30, clear buddhi distinguishes what should be done from what should not be done, and what binds us from what frees us.
Chapter 13 offers another useful idea. It speaks of kshetra, the field, and kshetrajna, the knower of the field. In simple terms, there is everything we can observe, and there is the one who observes, understands and chooses.
AI can help us organise the field. It can compare facts, find patterns and suggest options. But more information in the field does not automatically make the knower wiser.
Putting the Bhagavad Gita beside artificial intelligence leads to an uncomfortable thought: perhaps the human role was never simply to produce answers. Perhaps it was to judge them, choose between them and take responsibility for what follows.
AI answers: what can be done?
Wisdom asks: what should be done?
Character asks one more question: who am I becoming through this choice?
Arjuna could not say, “Krishna told me to,” and escape all responsibility. He still had to understand, choose and act. In the same way, “AI suggested it” cannot become our modern way of avoiding moral responsibility.
Where These Perspectives Meet, and Where They Differ
Jainism and Hindu thought are not interchangeable. Jainism understands souls as eternal and individual and does not posit a creator God. Hindu traditions vary in their understanding of Atman, Brahman, God and liberation.
Those differences matter. We should not erase them simply to create a neat comparison.
Yet both perspectives refuse to reduce a human being to mental output. Both ask whether our view is clear, whether desire is affecting our judgement, and whether our actions move us towards greater freedom or deeper attachment.
Both also place responsibility on the conscious person, not simply on the knowledge available to that person.
That matters when machines can produce increasingly impressive mental output.
Seen together, Jain philosophy and AI raise one question, while the Gita and AI raise another. Jain thought asks whether the knower’s vision is clouded. The Gita asks whether the person can choose the right action without being controlled by fear or attachment.
Neither tells us to reject tools or knowledge. They ask us not to confuse having an answer with becoming wise.
What Modern Research Suggests About AI and Critical Thinking
Does AI reduce critical thinking?
A 2025 study by researchers at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University examined 319 knowledge workers and 936 real-world uses of generative AI. Greater confidence in AI was linked with less self-reported critical thinking. AI also shifted effort away from producing material and towards checking information, combining responses and supervising the task.
The study does not prove that AI causes weaker thinking. It suggests something more useful: AI changes where human thought is needed. The danger is not simply using AI. It is trusting its fluency before using our own judgement.
A 2026 review from the American Psychological Association described a similar pattern. Passive use may weaken some skills, while careful and structured use can support critical thinking. In other words, the effect depends not only on the tool, but also on how we use it.
Our job may move one level higher: from producing to judging, from recalling to questioning, from executing to choosing.
But only if we make that move.
If we ask AI for the answer before thinking about the problem, its first response can shape everything that follows. We may stop searching too early. We may mistake confidence for truth. We may begin checking only whether the answer works, not whether it is right.
The future of human intelligence may therefore depend less on competing with AI and more on protecting the abilities we should not hand over: curiosity, judgement, moral courage, self-awareness and responsibility.
How to Use AI Without Losing Critical Thinking: A Three-Question Pause
Before using an AI response, ask:
- Darshan: What am I not seeing?
What shaped my question? Which person, consequence or point of view is missing? - Jnana and buddhi: Is this true, or merely convincing?
What evidence supports it? What would challenge it? What should be done, not merely what can be done? - Charitra: Am I willing to own what happens next?
If this decision fails or harms someone, can I still explain why I chose it without hiding behind the technology?
“AI suggested it” may explain a decision. It cannot make the decision morally neutral.
The deepest risk may not be that AI begins thinking like us. It may be that we slowly stop noticing which parts of being human should never be automated.
Perhaps AI will not make ancient wisdom irrelevant. Perhaps it will reveal why we needed it.
When answers become cheap, good questions become valuable. When execution becomes easy, intention matters more. When intelligence becomes abundant, discernment becomes scarce.
AI is reducing the distance between a question and an answer. Ancient wisdom asks us to protect the distance between an answer and an action.
References
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Monitoring AI Adoption in the US Economy,” 3 April 2026: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/monitoring-ai-adoption-in-the-u-s-economy-20260403.html
- Lee et al., “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking,” CHI 2025: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713778
- American Psychological Association, “How AI Is Reshaping Human Skills and Thinking,” July 2026: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/07-08/ai-job-skills-thinking
- Tattvartha Sutra 1.1, on right perception, right knowledge and right conduct: https://www.wisdomlib.org/jainism/book/tattvartha-sutra-with-commentary/d/doc1084584.html
- Bhagavad Gita 18.63, 18.30 and 13.3, translations available through IIT Kanpur’s Gita Supersite: https://www.gitasupersite.iitk.ac.in/
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