Death as the graduation: the listener's proposal says the universe is an incubator and death is the way out, with two exits, release and a return to the world. This second part of our series on human and machine minds asks a narrower question, whether the traditions already said it. The answer is that they mostly did. Samsara and karma teach a graded round of rebirth with moksha or nirvana at the end; Advaita Vedanta grounds the identity of kinds more deeply than any argument from behaviour; the five great sayings and two verses of the Gita state the graduation in the tradition's own words. But Buddhism denies the permanent self that carries it, and a machine mind looks less like an eternal witness and more like the pattern without an owner that Buddhism describes.

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