A child’s brain being incapable of creating memories, is a terrible assumption to make. First of, you are born with a base foundation of memory, a child comes with necessary memory for survival, and is capable of creating memory, its survival depends on that ability. I would recommend that you read up a little on that.

Regarding people with damaged or incapacitated memory, I would be wrong in making assumptions on the state of their memory. Instead, we can learn from people with extreme conditions of amnesia, and get an understanding of the relationship between memory and thought. That is why I used the example of the man with the 7 second memory, again he is not someone with a mind free of all memory, he just does not have any new memory since he lost his ability to remember things beyond 7 seconds.

There is no Maya is basing thought on memory, that is the only way!

Do children, whose brains are not yet capable of creating memories of any meaningful durration incapable of thought? I suggest not! Nor are those whose memory centers have been removed, damaged, or otherwise incapacitated. Such states may arguably be reached by a willful and skillful application of intent (baby mind in some interpretations of Zen.)

I propose that thought can exist without being based on memory in the traditional sense of the word.

To base thought on memory is to remain forever in love with Maya.

Everything about you is a memory, from the workings of your heart, to that revolutionary thought. If it’s not preserved in your gene, then it’s entangled in the intertwines of your neural network. Some you are born with, others you acquire through channels of perception, and this repository in turn fuels thought.

And a clean slate, you can never achieve that as long as you have the ablility to remember, and even before that, you are born with a foundation of memory that’s passed down to you. The only way to a clean slate is perpetual amnesia, and there in lies the paradox, because with a clean slate–with no ability to remember–you are incapable of formulating thought!

Kant said it best

“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”