I did not begin with Buddha, or with any desire to belong to a tradition. I began here, in the modern world, surrounded by noise, science, technology and unanswered questions. But at some point, the question of where I truly came from — not culturally, but geographically, biologically, consciously — began to form as a quiet pull toward origin.

It was not history books that led me back. It was a genetic test. A simple sequence of markers that pointed to a place on the Earth. My Y-DNA lineage — Haplogroup L1a — traced itself to the Terai region of the northern plains of India and southern Nepal. A land of river mist, forests and fertile fields. The land where Siddhartha Gautama — the Buddha — was born and walked. The land of the Shakya people. I am not claiming divinity or lineage to a saint. I am simply saying: this is where my paternal line likely came from.

Only then did I realise the strangeness of it. That I, who spend my days writing about consciousness, silence, suffering and the structure of the mind, may come from the same soil where these questions first broke open in a human being 2,500 years ago. I am not saying I am a continuation of Buddha. I am saying that my body, my blood, carries the memory of a landscape where such a question once became a path.

But I did not arrive here by tradition. I did not inherit rituals or temples. I came here through the modern mind — through doubt, through science, through wanting to understand how the brain works, how thought creates conflict, how silence reveals meaning. I did not seek Buddha. I sought understanding. And somewhere on that path, where the ending is the beginning again, ended. The search dissolved.

Buddha explained the nature of suffering with extraordinary clarity, but he did not describe the brain. Krishnamurti spoke of thought as a material process in the brain, but he did not map its mechanism. I am not above them. I simply find myself in a time where we can speak of neurons, memory circuits, perception and self-image. And I cannot turn away from the fact that to end illusion, one must see not only the movement of thought but the structure of the brain that produces it.

So is it all a coincidence? That my ancestors may have stood in the villages of the Terai when Buddha walked? That centuries later, I write about the ending of suffering, not from scripture, but from the workings of the brain and mind? I cannot prove any of it. Science does not yet measure how consciousness unfolds through geography, ancestry or time.

But here I am — a human being with genetic traces pointing to the land of Buddha, and a mind that writes of silence, thought and the ending of becoming. I do not claim certainty. I do not claim destiny. I only say: this is the path I have walked. Whether it is chance or unfolding, I cannot say.

But I honour it — that I came from the land of the Buddha and its people 2,500 years ago, and perhaps that is why I write so.

I did not begin with scriptures or temples. I began in the present day, asking why the mind suffers and whether it can be free. I grew up far from the forests and plains of northern India and Nepal, yet something in me kept turning back — not towards belief, but towards origin. Not to claim holiness or bloodline, but to understand how consciousness arises, and where it began in me.

It was through a genetic test that the map quietly shifted. The terminal Y-DNA marker identified in my results is known as M76. This marker defines the subclade L1a. Although population studies for M76 itself are still limited, the ancestral markers in this lineage have been found in their highest concentration in the Terai region of northern India. This does not serve as proof of origin, but it offers a trace — a biological hint that my paternal line may have walked that land. My Y-DNA pointed to haplogroup L1a, a lineage rooted in the Terai — the lowland stretch between the Himalayas and the Indian plains. A place of rivers and monsoon fields. The land where Siddhartha Gautama was born. The land where the Buddha walked. I do not say this to make myself special. I only mean that my body carries traces of that soil. That my ancestors, somehow, belonged to that geography.

And so I began to wonder — not as a conclusion, but as a question. If my blood comes from that land, could my consciousness also be unfolding from the same human field? I am not speaking of reincarnation or destiny. I am speaking of something quieter — that perhaps the questions I ask now are the same questions that once arose there. What is suffering? Can the mind be free of its own noise? What is the truth behind thought?

Buddha answered these questions in his time. Krishnamurti re-asked them in a different language. Yet neither spoke of the brain as I now see it. They saw the movement of thought, the illusion of the self, the ending of becoming. But I see one step further — that unless the brain sees its own process clearly, the illusion remains. Not just psychologically, but as a physical mechanism of memory, time and thought in the neural networks themselves.

This is not to place myself above them. It is only to say that the unfolding continues. Consciousness did not stop with Buddha or Krishnamurti. It moved through centuries of silence, migration, forgetting and remembering. And now, somehow, it speaks through a life like mine — formed in the modern world, shaped by science, yet drawn back to the oldest questions.

So I stand here — between genetics and awareness, between ancient soil and modern thought. I do not know if this is a coincidence or a continuation. I only know that I did not choose the land my ancestors walked, nor the questions that rise in me now. But I honour it — that I came from the land of the Buddha and its people 2,500 years ago, and perhaps that is why I write so.