Brief Discussion on Material Elements (Draft)

XI. Can Information Be Temporarily Retained in the Brain?

Information is formless and without marks—a non-thing—while the brain is material form (rūpa). How can the two merge together? Consider this: can a room temporarily retain a piece of news? Can something that has happened be preserved for a little while in a room or in space? Absolutely not; likewise, the brain cannot preserve even a tiny bit of information.

If the brain could store information, then by slicing open the brain of a living or dead person piece by piece, one would be able to find that information, and even understand and study it. Then all of a person's secrets could be revealed, and people in the world would have no secrets left; it would be far too easy for criminal detectives to solve cases, there would be no century-old unsolved mysteries or wrongful convictions, and no riddle would remain unsolved. If a computer could store information, would you find the information by taking the computer apart? If a mobile phone could store information, would you find the information by dismantling the phone?

If information belonged to material form (rūpa), it would be composed of the seeds of the four great elements. Only the tathāgatagarbha contains the seeds of the four great elements; the brain does not contain the seeds of the four great elements and cannot store information. Moreover, the brain's capacity could not hold it all. Therefore, information should be stored in the tathāgatagarbha and comes from the tathāgatagarbha. If information does not belong to material form (rūpa) and is not composed of the four great elements, then it is a seed-state that is formless and without marks, and it must be stored in the tathāgatagarbha; the brain cannot store seeds. Footprints on a wall or on the ground belong to the material form of the four great elements; they are not information, and of course the eyes can see them.