By Malini Goyal

Tenzin Priyadarshiintrigues you at many levels. As a 10-year-old, he sought monkhood, joining a Buddhist monastery at Rajgir in Bihar (where he was born), and was ready to live in the caves in the Himalayas. In his formative years, he spent time training and learning under Mother Teresa in Kolkata. He has also been ordained and mentored by the Dalai Lama. Priyadarshi ended up studying physics, philosophy and international relations at Harvard University. Today, as the director-ethics initiative at MIT Media Lab, the monk weighs in on some of the most important contemporary issues that the world is grappling with—artificial intelligence, digital social media platforms like Facebook, the future of democracy and capitalism and the art of happiness. Over coffee on a Saturday evening in Delhi, Priyadarshi talks to Malini Goyal on a broad range of issues.