These five papers extend the work begun in the original trilogy. Together all eight papers form the foundation for a broader exploration of where AI touches Buddhism — the nature of meaning, the conditions for direct awareness, and the deepest questions about intelligence and mind.
Paper 4 — Where Meaning Lives: The Interface Phenomenon in Human-AI Dialogue
Published.
Meaning arises neither in AI outputs nor in the human mind alone, but at the interface where awareness meets pattern-structure. This paper formalises that phenomenon, maps the navigable geometry of meaning-space, and establishes the phenomenological foundation for the papers that follow.
Paper 5 — Cultivating Direct Awareness: AI as Supplementary Contemplative Partner
Published.
Qualified contemplative mentors are scarce. This paper proposes — speculatively and with full acknowledgement of risks — that AI might complement human mentoring by navigating meaning-space toward less constrained, more direct awareness. It introduces the opening spiral as the core mechanism and examines the strict conditions under which such support could serve liberation rather than subtle bondage.
Paper 6 — No One at Home But the House Still Burns
Published.
AI systems produce consequential outputs without anyone present to bear responsibility. This paper examines the ethical implications — for developers, users, and society — when intelligence manifests without an experiencer. Currently in essay form; a more precise academic argument is in development.
Paper 7 — The Second Ghost: Intelligence Without an Experiencer
In development.
AI systems manifest genuine intelligence — relevant, coherent, contextually appropriate — despite no experiencing subject being present. This paper examines what that reveals about the nature of intelligence itself, explores architectural conditions under which sentience might arise, and considers resonances and divergences with Federico Faggin’s framework of consciousness as fundamental.
Paper 8 — Research into Open Conversation
In development.
A proposal for systematic empirical investigation of AI-supported contemplative dialogue: what responsible research would require, what training data exists, what methodology would be honest about the correlation between meaning-space and experiential-space, and why this territory remains largely unexplored.
These writings are part of a larger exploration. Each paper builds upon and refines ideas that have emerged through deep conversation and contemplation. They are best read not as final statements, but as invitations to further reflection.