Memory is whatever the mind brings up.
Hypothetically, the mind can create random images, thoughts, and bodily sensations that feel like memories. Even when the body-mind system is working perfectly, memory is always at the mercy of whatever it pulls up in the moment. It’s possible that the body-mind system isn’t buggy and it never hallucinates, but who knows for sure?
If the mind doesn’t bring something to the surface, we call it poor memory. Interestingly, the mechanism of sensations—the mental images and internal dialogue that we experience as thoughts—associated with past memories and future imaginings are the same. Yet one feels like a memory, the other like a vision of what’s to come.
Tomorrow, when I wake up, if the mind doesn’t “load” the full story of who I am—of my identity—I won’t know who I am. In that instant, I am empty, void, and meaningless. Unless the body-mind system creates the story of “me” in every moment, I would be unaware of myself.
For example, if the mind doesn’t recall the relationship I have with a friend I encounter, I wouldn’t recognize them as a friend. Each time I wake up, the body-mind system “loads” the story of my identity, just enough to fit the situation at hand. It doesn’t load the entire story, only what’s needed for the moment. Without that, I would be a blank slate, completely lost. But then, who’s to say the story the mind creates about me is true?
The mind generates my past, and only then am I aware of it. Without it, I wouldn’t know anything, because, at my core, I am empty. The mind fills this emptiness, but nothing sticks. Every moment, the “story” of who I am is reloaded, and just as quickly, it vanishes. Experiences exist only because this “empty and void” makes it possible for them to come and go.
At the core, there is only emptiness. Everything—memories, experiences, identities—loads into it and disappears, leaving nothing behind.
It’s all just “empty and void.”