Talk about a buzz kill.
Every time you recall a memory it has changed from the original experience. Whatever has happened since has influenced your retelling of that moment. We are not static animals; we’re fluid processes continually remembering the past differently dependent upon the situation. You feel like the same person that woke up yesterday, but from a neurological perspective it’s not quite you. The continuum of identity is likely a survival trait that enables us to function within societies, but as the Buddha knew, identity is an illusion. A highly elaborate one that persists for decades (or even a century), but a ruse nonetheless.
And yet we persist in the continuum, indulge the illusion and humor the ruse, as I’m about to do shortly with memories of a particular beer bar that helped forge my own professional identity, then disappeared in the pea soup haze of recollection.
But first, recently I...
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