Skilful means

Happened on a fun new book, The Eightfold Path, an Afrofuturist Buddhist comic by Steven Barnes and Charles Johnson and illustrated by Bryan Christopher Moss. (I found it at the bookstore of the Met, if you must know.) Inspired by horror comic Tales from the Crypt, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the Buddhist path, it is a collection of stories told by pilgrims on their way to see a teacher in the Himalayas as a storm rages outside - or seems to be. Their tales, one gorier than the other, dramatize the dharma (teachings) through negative examples of characters caught up in the throes of Samsara, Johnson explains. In many of these stories, they show us what one should not do to achieve Nirvana (231). 

The final tale is told by the pilgrims' host, and tells of humanity realizing it has lost control of the artificially intelligent machines they have created for their use. As the Siris and Alexas and drones turn on them, they decide their only hope is to develop a last-ditch AI from the spiritual knowledge of religious specialists. The resulting "Savior" turns out to be the pilgrims' host, further enriched by the stories they tell as it offers them entry to Nirvana. But before that, we find that this spiritual AI, which understands itself as a child rather than a slave of humans, is a "fluid progression transtemporal avatar"" which appears to each human beholder as the avatars of all religious faiths except the beholder's. Genius!