Syrinx learns a lesson

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From the Night's Dawn Wikipedia entry:

"Syrinx, a young Edenist, is next introduced, leading life from a young age telepathically attached to a bitek starship called Oenone. As she grows she learns more about the world with her sentient starship, becoming best friends (as is the normal bond between bitek starship and captain). ...

Syrinx travels to the world of Atlantis, a world covered by water, inhabited by floating "islands" which themselves are sentient. But she discovers that the possession has also begun there. In the process she is captured and tortured badly, and suffers a psychotic breakdown. ...

Syrinx is psychologically reconstructed with the help of the founder of the Edenist culture."

In the Edenist habitat, Syrinx is placed into a simulation to undergo psychiatric rehabilitation. This includes therapy with Wing-Tsit Chong's stored persona (Chong was the inventor of affinity and founder of Edenism). He speaks thus (Chapter 11):

"At last, we achieve progress. Where is the only place your personal past can take form?"

"In my mind?"

"Good. And what is the purpose of life?"

"To experience."

"This is so, though from a personal view I would add that life should also be a progression towards truth and purity. But then I remain an intransigent old Buddhist at heart, even after so long. This is why I could not refuse the request from your therapists to talk to you. Apparently I am an icon you respect."

At this point, Wing-Tsit Chong embarks upon a discursion into Buddhism, but this is what I wish he had said.

"Every experience you have, Syrinx, the neural network in your brain encodes by rewiring itself. If we could watch your connectome, it would get a little more uniquely tangled than someone who had not shared that experience."

She shakes her head. This is a commonplace observation. She's not getting it.

"So consider this, Syrinx. You seriously think the purpose of life is some local brain rewiring in your own skull?"

"What else could it be?"

"Existence is arguably better than non-existence. You are here, Syrinx, because your parents created you. If they had not done so, you wouldn't be virtually stood before a simulated elder in a wheelchair expounding superficialities about the meaning of life .."

"That is the standard Darwinian argument, sir. That the purpose of all living things is to survive and reproduce. Yet if the results are merely more mobile neural nets, all accumulating experiences - rinse and repeat - how does this get us any further?"

"My child, I could say that's physics for you but I am a Buddhist. Surely we of all people can unask the question, prizing Nothingness over Being as we do."