By Zeenat Potia
We are living in a time when artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool—it’s becoming a companion, available 24/7 in the convenience of our homes, at very little cost. From work to relationships to therapy, AI is shaping how we learn, connect, and even soothe ourselves. A recent Harvard Business Review article by Marc Zao-Sanders noted that the number one use of generative AI today is therapy. Seeking validation, comfort, and healing, people now pour their hearts out to chatbots. These large language models typically respond with acknowledgement and a synthesis of feelings. And yet, for all the ways AI reflects us back to ourselves, something essential is missing. We may be affirmed, but are we truly seen? Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom asserts that “AI does a good job at feeling relational, but it will never actually be a relationship. It will never be human.”
I want to state that I am not an AI expert and while I wish to avoid simple binaries between AI and meditation, given the overwhelming attention on AI as the answer to all of our problems, this piece attempts to redirect that imbalance and offers my admittedly ‘biased’ perspective.
Writer Samantha Rose Hill has called AI companions part of a “loneliness loop.” Unlike human connection, AI never asks us to apologize, sit through an awkward silence, or navigate disagreement. It’s frictionless and subsequently not fully real. Like Narcissus transfixed by his own reflection, we can get caught gazing endlessly into a digital dopamine pool, mistaking affirmation for intimacy. Tibetan Buddhist monk and teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, has described the conceptual mind as a prison cell: narrow, fixed, unyielding. AI can reinforce that cell. It mirrors our words, but not our trembling voices; it reflects our thoughts, but not the silence between them. In this hall of mirrors, we risk losing the very thing we most long for—genuine relationships and a sense of belonging.
The real danger is that we begin to outsource vulnerability to machines instead of turning to friends, family, or community—the very places where healing and resilience grow. The risks are clear: over-validation, one-sided perspectives, isolation disguised as connection. In this landscape, the Dharma offers us an antidote—a reminder that real relationships involve risk, vulnerability, and sometimes messiness. But they also carry the possibility of transformation.
This is where metta practice comes in. The Buddha taught metta as one of the four brahmaviharas, the “divine abodes” of the heart. Metta is not simply a warm feeling, but a commitment to relate with friendliness, goodwill, and care in the midst of whatever might be arising, including challenging circumstances. Metta is inherently relational.
Metta asks us to turn toward ourselves and others with compassion—even toward the parts of us that feel afraid, ashamed, or in pain. For example, in traditional metta practice, we are invited to begin by learning to love ourselves, including our shadow side, the hard to love parts. This requires a willingness to reckon with the truth of our conditioning and how it might perpetuate suffering. When we silently offer phrases such as “May I be safe. May I be peaceful. May I live with kindness and ease,” we are not consuming comfort from an outside source. We are generating it from within. Unlike AI’s risk-free simulations, metta is an embodied practice—rooted in breath, voice, and presence. As we progress to offering metta to the difficult person (ourselves included!), we learn how to address the natural friction between humans. And this brings us to deeper understanding and compassion towards others.
Meditation gives us what AI cannot: presence. It teaches us to sit with impermanence instead of escaping it, to notice without editing, to soften instead of control. Metta, in particular, is a training in radical acceptance and creating a container for our struggles and the humanity of others.
AI is not going away, and indeed, it may provide useful mental health support, especially in terms of accessibility. However true revolution is not technological but spiritual: the long, slow process of conscious awareness. Metta is the answer to the false intimacy of AI, because it asks us to know and love the imperfect, living, breathing beings right in front of us—including ourselves.