“As I stared at FRQ 3, the futility of answering became apparent to me. The words on the page were impossible to grasp and resoundingly empty. In my contemplation, it dawned on me that I too was as empty as the white sheet in front of me. My eyes were then opened to the true nature of things. Answer form is emptiness, emptiness is answer form. That is the story of my enlightenment.”
That’s what John Limbotomy (HMC 28′) relayed through glowing streams of light when interviewed by the Golden Antlers.
Limbotomy, an engineering major, was taking his E101 take-home midterm in his forced triple when he suddenly achieved complete liberation from suffering and ignorance. Flowers began blooming underneath his feet, animals gathered around him, and the common room fridge began to smell tolerable again.
Experts say that fifteen minutes of exposure to FRQ3 raised Limbotomy’s DharmaCoin balance from –73 to 62,831,853,071,795,864,769,252,867,665,590,057,683,943 DharmaCoins. Normally, such a jump is only possible through supremely meritorious deeds such as curing cancer, wearing the magical bead bracelet your mom bought you, and throwing a hissy fit when your friend steps on an ant. It appears that the sheer mental challenge of contemplating the midterm was comparable to decades’ worth of meditation.
Stories of this miracle have spread throughout the nation, and many are hoping to follow Limbotomy’s footsteps. HMC’s office of admissions expects an unprecedented number of freshman and transfer applications this year.
Jia Xichun, an aspiring nun, says “I thought that immersing myself in the Buddhist way of life would give me the highest ROI on my spiritual income. I was wrong. I am immediately applying to transfer into the Harvey Mudd Class of 2029. In the 21st century, the surest way to realize the futility of earthly attachments is by studying engineering at Harvey Mudd.”
Here are more select quotes from our interview with Limbotomy.
GA: “Many students are inspired by your story. Are there any words of encouragement or guidance you’d like to share with them?”
Limbotomy: “When taking the E101 midterm, I first relied on Claude, but all of its responses were so horrifically wrong that even I could tell it was hopeless. I then tried Gemini, which also failed, and as my last resort I purchased ChatGPT Pro in the middle of my midterm. All models failed. The situation seemed hopeless. AI, which had been like a seeing-eye dog for me, a blind man, had reached a gate it could not cross. The dog was hopelessly barking and whimpering at a door it could not open. But was I trapped? No. In truth, I was wearing a blindfold the whole time. I was only blind because I had relied on the dog for so long that I had forgotten I could take the blindfold off and open my eyes. So I did. I freed myself from self-imposed darkness, and used my hands and eyes to open the gate. This enlightenment can be yours too! I highly recommend that everyone enroll in upper-division classes that they are woefully underqualified for, and rely entirely on LLMs to solve everything… until they can’t. The existential suffering one will face is sure to spark a spiritual awakening.”
GA: “Uhm… do you have any other advice?”
Limbotomy: “Yes! AI is relevant in every step of your spiritual journey, not just the end! LLM agents are a great model of our own ignorance. One will come to see that AIs hallucinate: they are convinced of the truth of their self-created, false knowledge. One will come to see that AI models lack comprehensive sight: their minds are deeply, terribly intoxicated by what data they’ve been selectively trained on, and they are not aware of how limiting this is. One will see that AI models spread ignorance like a disease: the more one uses AI, the more one learns to ignore their own insights in favor of borrowed knowledge. These are just a few of the millions of ways one can use AI as a topic of meditation, and why using AI at every possible opportunity is a very good practice in Buddhism!
GA: “My friend Dorothy is ethically opposed to using AI, do you have any alternative advice for people like her?”
Limbotomy: “Being ‘ethically opposed to AI’ is stupid because the almond industry in just California uses 20x more water than what AI datacenters consume worldwide. If you really care about the environment, protest almonds, not AI! This is coming from a living bodhisattva btw. The Buddha is pro-AI! And Jesus is too! (Yes I’ve talked to Him, He’s not interested in meeting you tho.) But if you really insist on avoiding AI, then repeatedly hitting yourself on the head with a hammer is a good way to achieve a similar effect. After all, you can’t be enslaved by your thoughts if you don’t have any in the first place!”
GA: “Is Charlie Kirk in the room with us right now?”
Limbotomy: “Thich Nhat Hanh, when asked about mortality, said ‘Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for a cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end.’ At no point did Charlie ever have an independent, separate self. His body came from his parents, his flesh and bones came from food, his knowledge came from internet forums, and his opinions came from rich friends. If you removed all of these external elements, Charlie would cease to exist. Even ‘Charlie Kirk’ the internet personality is merely the visible tip of a massive iceberg of podcast staff, AV technicians, microphone product marketers, electrical engineers, frontend developers, backend developers, Instagram A/B testers, furniture store retail employees, drug dealers, child sweatshop workers, Turkish people, the pilot who flew people to Epstein’s Island, and everything that every one of these people interacted with with, not to mention everything that those objects came to influence. The list of all these elements would stretch infinitely in scope until it contained the entire world. Inside Charlie is every non-Charlie element in existence. And inside every part of the universe is Charlie. Charlie’s mind and ideas entered all the people who listened to him. When Charlie ate, some of that food became his body, other parts became his piss and shit. Which we all have probably eaten at some point. Yes, Charlie Kirk is not only with us, but inside us, and we are all composed of him. We are Charlie Kirk.”