Memory

In the Lankvatara Sutra ("The Sermon of the Sri Lanka Avatar"), the Buddha teaches that the world we think of as real is nothing but the perceptions of our own mind.  By this, he does not mean that something is seen by the mind, for any such object would be a projection of the mind.  As writer Red Pine explains, he simply means that whatever we see or feel is nothing more than our own mind "which is, of course, a tautology.  A = A."

But the Buddha takes it one step further and asks us to experience the tautology for ourselves.  One way we can directly experience reality as a manifestation of the mind is to examine how even our own ego-self is merely a manifestation of the mind. Not only is any object yet another perception of the mind, but the subject perceiving the object is also a manifestation of the mind (as is the act of perception itself).

As recently explained by writer Kristen Weir in The New Scientist,our autobiographical memories define us; they are who we are.  But although autobiographical memories are, by definition, personal, that doesn't mean they are all our own.  Amanda Barnier, a cognitive scientist at Macquarie University in Australia, interviewed couples that had been married for decades. Not surprisingly, couples who remembered together, rather than independently, were able to recall significantly more than those who took a solo approach. The downside of this process includes the risk of false memories - it is not uncommon for people to absorb their siblings' or spouses' recollections into their own life stories, for example. So our self-defining autobiographical memories are not all our own, pointing to the inter-connectedness of "self" and "others."

Our autobiographical memories are also far from complete, with some periods of our lives producing significantly more recollections than others. What forces lead us to remember one event but forget another?

Neurological research shows that both memory and foresight share the same machinery in the brain. A child's ability to imagine the future seems to develop in tandem with his or her autobiographical memory.  Our brains certainly start remembering at a young age, even learning simple associations before we are born. Newborns have been observed to stop crying when they hear the theme song of a TV show their mother often watched while pregnant, perhaps because it reminds them of the comfort of the womb. But we cannot consciously remember specific events from before the age of 2 or 3, when our autobiographical memory begins to develop. Even then, we are hard-pressed to remember much from before our sixth birthday. 

Kristin Weir describes three different factors that might explain this hazy recall.

1. One possibility is that the neural pathways are not mature enough between the hippocampus - where memories are consolidated - and the rest of the brain, so our experiences from this period may never be cemented into long-term storage.


2. Our burgeoning language skills also play a key role, because words provide a kind of scaffold on which we hang our memories for future retrieval. Experiments have shown that children don't tend to remember an event until they have learned the words to describe it.


3. A sense of identity is crucial for our memory of particular experiences. In a series of experiments, Mark Howe at Lancaster University in the UK showed toddlers a toy lion, which he then placed in a drawer. A week later, those who could recognize themselves in a mirror - a sign that they had developed a sense of self - were able to recall where he had placed the stuffed toy, while toddlers who failed the mirror test drew a blank. 

As we get older, our identities and recollections develop together in an intimate dance. While the events in your life shape your opinion of yourself, your personality also determines what you remember.  For example, someone who thinks they are courageous might fail to remember a time when they acted cowardly. "Your sense of who you are and how you enact your personality traits is very tied up in autobiographical memory," says Robyn Fivush at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  

Guiding all of this are our parents, who form our identities and cement our memories with their storytelling. When families discuss personal events in an elaborate way, children develop more detailed narratives of their own by the time they reach school age than those whose parents weave less intricate stories.

"The story of our life is not our life," observed author John Barth in his novel The Tidewater Tales.  "It is our story."

Psychologist Qi Wang at Cornell University has found that cultural differences can also shape our personal narratives. For instance, Chinese parents tend to focus less on individual experiences and emotions when discussing the past, and with fewer details, than Americans. As a result, Wang has found that Chinese people's memories, even during adulthood, tend to be less personal, focusing instead on events of social or historical significance.  Wang has also found that cultural differences can also influence our planning abilities, showing that Chinese people are less likely to give specific, personal details than Americans when they talk about events to come.

What all of this research is pointing to is that our identities, our ego-self, are manufactured out of stories that are stored in our memories, and those memories are far from absolute records of past events but highly malleable products of our maturity, our language, and our culture.  Our life may not be our story, as Barth observed, but we ourselves are our story, and like the work of Mr. Barth, that story is more fictive than not.