Building a Tensor-Based Model of Mental State Dynamics Based on Buddhist Sources

Towards a New Model of Mind: A Clear Summary

We are building a model of mental states inspired by Buddhist teachings—not as a belief system, but as a practical map of how the mind shifts and transforms, especially during significant moments such as meditation, dreaming, dying, and emotional change.

Rather than treating thoughts and feelings as isolated events, we understand them as patterns within a dynamic mental field—much like how modern physics describes particles as emergent behaviors within underlying quantum fields. In this view, mental states arise when awareness interacts with constraints. Some of these constraints are physical (like the body), others are emotional, habitual, energetic, or volitional—described in Buddhist traditions using concepts like winds, channels, and chakras.

To represent these mind-states and transitions, we use a flexible structured format (called JSON), not to reduce experience to code, but to give it a symbolic and queryable form. Each JSON entry offers a snapshot: the clarity of awareness, emotional tone, prevailing constraints, appearances, and the potential for freedom or further entanglement. These are not fixed categories, but signposts—resonant markers in the landscape of mind.

We’re beginning training this model with the Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), which offers a rich, symbolic map of how awareness may move through death and rebirth. Later, we plan to incorporate complementary models from texts like the Abhidharma, the Sutra of Golden Light, and Vajrayāna systems of subtle energy and perception.

The model will be used in a conversational AI system (using Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG). This system doesn’t provide fixed answers, but helps people ask better questions—questions that resonate with their current state and its dynamics. It’s like a wise companion: not telling you what to believe, but helping you see where you are, and sense where you might go next.

In essence, we are creating:

  • A map of how awareness flows, shifts, and stabilizes
  • A symbolic grammar for encoding these states and transitions
  • A system that can converse meaningfully about the mind, supporting growth, insight, and release

This is not just a technical project. It’s a living inquiry—bringing deep Buddhist insight into new forms of expression and care through modern tools.

If successful, this approach could be applied in diverse areas: spiritual practice, end-of-life care, mental health, trauma recovery, education, the arts—any domain where the nature of experience and transformation matters.

We warmly invite others to walk with us: open-hearted, open-minded, and curious about the great unfolding terrain of mind.

(Optional Technical Addendum: For Those Interested in the Structure)

  1. Behind the scenes, the model uses flexible data structures (JSON descriptors) to represent each mental state or transition. Each entry encodes:
  • The current configuration of the mental field (clarity, constraints, emotions, tendencies)
  • Symbolic or perceptual appearances
  • Potential transition vectors (toward freedom or entanglement)
  • Degree of coherence or fragmentation
  • Key features: e.g. is this a dissolution phase? a formation? an archetypal appearance? an energetic inflection point?

These entries function more like tensors than static objects—meaning they don’t just describe something, but exist in tension between elements: this and that, fear and clarity, habit and release. The JSONs can be chained, queried, and explored across a modeled phase space—like “Indra’s Net” for evolving awareness.

Rather than modelling “facts,” we are modelling states, transitions, and resonances in a way that speaks meaningfully to human experience.

Over time, these structures will inform the RAG-based mentor AI, allowing it to respond not just with surface information, but with grounded reflections tied to how mind actually feels and moves.

2. Inspirations and Sources

  • The Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) as a phenomenological map of transitions in awareness, especially around death and rebirth.
  • Abhidharma as a descriptive taxonomy of mind-states and their conditions.
  • Vajrayāna teachings on winds, drops, channels, and chakras as embodied dynamics of consciousness.
  • Quantum field theory as a simile: mental appearances as field collapses under constraint.
  • Tensors and fluxes as the mathematical language of change, coherence, and resonance in meaning-space.

3. Key Concepts

  • Mental Field: A structured substrate in which awareness can localize. Examples include form field, volitional field, emotional field, karmic field.
  • Constraint: Any condition that restricts or shapes the flow of awareness (e.g. sensory input, body structure, belief, trauma).
  • Appearance: A mental event (thought, image, emotion) arising when awareness engages with a constrained field.
  • Effector: A force or condition that changes the state of a field (e.g. fear, loss of form, archetypal vision, meditation).
  • Transition: The dynamic movement from one configuration to another, modeled not just as before/after but as a flux with emotional, perceptual, and volitional components.
  • Volition: The momentum or directionality of awareness; its tendency to cling, release, resist, or open.

4. JSON Structure as Resonance Encodings Each mental state or transition is encoded as a JSON tensor-like object. These are not facts but resonances—field traces that an LLM can use to offer appropriate, compassionate, and open-ended responses.

Example:

{
  "mental_field": "identity structure",
  "constraint_profile": {
    "sensory_input": "withdrawn",
    "ego_patterning": "dissolving",
    "emotional_tone": "uncertain compassion"
  },
  "appearance_event": {
    "form": "archetypal mother figure",
    "valence": "tender/fearful"
  },
  "effector": "loss of bodily form",
  "transition_vector": {
    "field_shift": "from form to light",
    "resonance": "mild dissonance",
    "volition": "grasping for self",
    "liberation_potential": "moderate"
  }
}

5. Use in RAG Systems The model will be stored and queried via RAG, allowing users to:

  • Reflect on their own experience with metaphor and symbolism drawn from Buddhist texts
  • Explore the dynamics of transitions (e.g., grief, awakening, fear)
  • Be offered questions, perspectives, or stories that resonate with their current state

The LLM acts not as a guru, but as a fellow walker in the field, gently helping attention orient toward recognition, not resolution.

6. Approach to Source Texts We will begin with close reading of the Bardo Thödol, identifying:

  • Each described transition or phase
  • The changes in constraint and appearance
  • Volitional and emotional fluxes

From there, we will extend the analysis to:

  • Abhidharma (e.g. mental factors, modes of cognition)
  • Dhammapada (as poetic distillations of field movements)
  • Sutra of Golden Light and other visionary texts

Each will contribute fragments of the universal grammar of mind-field dynamics.

7. Axioms of the Model

  • Mental states are structured, not random
  • Appearances are not facts but resonant expressions
  • Awareness can rest in or release from field tension
  • Liberation arises through recognition of field nature, not control of content
  • Meaning is not absolute but tensorial—it arises from the tension between conditions

8. Role of the LLM The LLM is not an authority, but a resonance engine. Given a well-structured set of mental-field JSONs, it can:

  • Match user states to meaningful descriptions
  • Offer reflective questions, not conclusions
  • Simulate a kind of wise friend or mentor
  • Guide practitioners toward experiences of clarity and compassion

9. What This Is Not

  • A diagnostic tool
  • A replacement for spiritual teachers or direct experience
  • A metaphysical claim about the ultimate nature of mind

10. What This Might Become

  • A mirror for transitions in life, death, meditation, and dream
  • A way of preserving and enacting Buddhist wisdom without dogma
  • A language of resonance across traditions, disciplines, and beings

Next Steps:

  • Finalize schema for the first Bardo phase: Earth dissolving
  • Begin generating JSON entries from Bardo Thödol passages
  • Refine the typology of effectors and mental fields
  • Train RAG system to surface relevant entries based on inquiry
  • Reflect, iterate, and adjust based on lived experience and feedback

May this model serve as a door, not a doctrine; as a mirror, not a map; as a gesture toward freedom, not a structure of control.