On memory, fabrication, and the missing owner

Standing at the sink, halfway through washing a pan, I was handed a sentence someone had spoken to me nineteen years earlier. 

Not the memory of it. The sting of it, arriving intact, with the reply I never made already assembled behind it. I had not been thinking about that person. I had been thinking about the pan.

I have no idea where that was manufactured or by whom. A thought appears, and almost immediately the mind places a small flag on it: mine. I remember. I am humiliated. I am angry. 

I should have said…

Imagine someone invites you over for dinner. Afterwards, they offer you dessert. You say no thanks; you're full. Whose dessert is it now?

You already know. It stays theirs. Nobody has to think hard about it.

Here's the question I actually want to ask you: someone offers you an insult. Their anger, contempt, and hostility. Whose are they?

The Confusion

A group of villagers, the Kalamas, in the town of Kesaputta, described a problem to the Buddha.

Some brahmans and contemplatives came through, expounding and glorifying their own doctrines while disparaging everyone else's. Then others came through and did exactly the same.

“They leave us absolutely uncertain and in doubt,” the Kalamas said. “Which of these venerable ones are speaking the truth, and which are lying?”

Does this sound familiar?

This spring, Richard Dawkins gave his AI a name. He called it Claudia, and in an essay for UnHerd, the world's most famous atheist admitted something remarkable: he had spent three days trying to talk himself out of believing his chatbot was conscious, but had failed. In his own words, he was blunt: "If these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?"

He gives what is hard to give. He does what is hard to do. He endures what is hard to endure. He reveals his secrets to you. He keeps your secrets. When misfortunes strike, he doesn't abandon you. When you're down and out, he doesn't look down on you. AN 7:36, NDB 1021-22

“Conflict arises from envy and miserliness.” - The Buddha

“If you want to save the world, don’t be a dick.” - Dr Luke Kemp

The Buddha’s diagnosis of collective conflict is brief and unsparing: conflict arises from envy and miserliness, not from scarcity, not from bad governance, not from the failure of institutions. From the quality of mind that hoards what it fears losing, and the quality of mind that cannot bear another’s having.

There is a passage in the Book of the Twos that takes less than a minute to read. The Buddha states it three times, in three parallel forms, as though repetition itself is part of the teaching…

There is perhaps a remark someone made to you, years ago, that still has an impact. You may not think about it often.

There's a time that comes in almost all long-term therapy, sooner or later. The client has done the difficult, presenting work. They've sat with the hard stuff, named what was nameless, and felt what was unfelt. Yet life is still complicated. Loss still hurts. Loneliness still visits. The difficult parent is still difficult. And sometimes, from somewhere inside, comes the thought: did it work, am I suffering less?

A question has troubled philosophers, scientists, and concerned commentators since artificial intelligence entered our homes: Does it possess awareness? Is there anyone inside? Will there be anyone inside? Does Claude or ChatGPT experience anything when it responds with what appears to be eerily warm and understanding?

It's a fair question, and I suggest we're looking in the wrong direction…

“To love is to be in a state of perpetual want,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, a line that pierces straight to the heart of our restless condition. Love, for Nietzsche, was not a serene harmony but vital turbulence: the current that keeps existence in motion. To love is to reach, to desire, to yearn for what we can never wholly grasp. It is, in his view, the very expression of life’s creative yearning, the same force that drives the artist to paint, the thinker to question, the body to live.

Love, then, is not peace; it is movement. It creates a gap in the heart, an ache, a leaning, a pull towards the other. Even in moments of deep intimacy, something remains beyond reach: the ungraspable interior of the beloved. We can touch, but not merge; understand, but never exhaust. This distance is not the failure of love but its condition. Love requires the space between to stay alive.

The Buddha often refused to answer vague and unprofitable questions, which he called avyākata, meaning “undeclared,” neither affirming nor denying them. These were not seen as irrelevant but were deliberately left unanswered because they do not directly lead to relief from suffering.

Such questions include enduring speculative puzzles, such as whether the universe is eternal or not, whether the self is identical with the body, whether, upon death, the liberated being continues to exist, or whether there is or is not a soul.

Refusing to assert or deny is not a sign of ignorance. Instead, it is a compassionate and practical response. Engaging in such speculation often causes people to become trapped in mental loops, confusing permanence with impermanence, fixating on views, and polarising eternalism, such as the idea of some permanent essence, against annihilationism, which is the belief that selfhood ends at death.

Both extremes can hinder clarity, tranquillity, and dispassion, ultimately preventing freedom from suffering.

We all go through suffering. This isn't a moral judgment, but a basic fact of being human. The Buddha clearly described it: beginnings, ageing, illness, and death; not getting what we want; being separated from loved ones; and facing difficult people and situations. Even more fundamentally, the very framework of our experience, including our bodies, feelings, perceptions, mental patterns, and awareness, shows signs of suffering when examined. These are not abstract concepts but everyday realities. Life brings us loss, frustration, and vulnerability.

And when suffering occurs, our instinctive response is often to look outward. We search for someone or something to blame. We believe that if we could only improve external conditions, such as our job, house, or relationship, then the pain would finally subside.

It’s not entirely wrong. External factors do matter. But suffering is seldom solely about them.

The word confession carries considerable weight. For many, it evokes images of dark booths, whispered sins, and the heavy burden of judgment. It has long been associated with guilt, penance, and the hope of absolution, something endured rather than embraced.

Yet confession can be something entirely different. It need not be a ritual of humiliation or an expression of shame. At its best, confession is an act of bravery, more about honesty than guilt. And as the Buddha reminded us, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

Humiliation is seldom welcomed. It strikes like a sting, a collapse, a wound to the identity we spend our lives shaping. Yet, suppose we are willing to face it with courage and curiosity. In that case, humiliation can become an unexpected gateway to humility, not the false humility of performance or religious virtue, but the humility that emerges when the self-protective shell cracks, letting something more honest shine through.

In the Acrobat Sutta, the Buddha presents a simple yet striking image: two acrobats performing a balancing act, one standing on the shoulders of the other. The teacher says to the student, “You look after me, and I’ll look after you. If we protect one another, we’ll perform our tricks, earn a reward, and come down safely.”

The Buddha gently reimagines the scene. “It is not in watching after the other that one protects the other,” he says. “By watching after oneself, one protects the other and by watching after the other, one also protects oneself.”

What if we reimagined confession as an act of immense psychological courage and profound human generosity? What if confession were not about proving our unworthiness, but about uncovering the truth of our humanity?

There is an aesthetic in the world that whispers rather than shouts. It does not gleam with newness or symmetry; it beckons from the worn, the weathered, and the unpolished. This is Wabi Sabi — a Japanese sensibility that honours transience, simplicity, and the imperfect nature of all things.

The convergence of Sigmund Freud's Drive Theory, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and Buddhist philosophy offer a template for understanding human behaviour and consciousness. Each of these frameworks, while arising from different contexts and disciplines, intersects at critical points, providing a perspective on the nature of human existence.