Chapter 6. Continuity, time, rebirth, and the end of continuity¶

The task of this chapter. Each of the preceding four chapters laid out an inventory of mental dhammas, material dhammas, cognitive processes, or conditions. All four rest on the same supporting beam, continuity. Chapter 1 made it the third of three questions, running through Chapters 4, 5, and 6. Chapter 4 stopped at the junction between lives; Chapter 5 stopped at immediacy condition. Both left the rest to this chapter. It adds no new inventory but puts pressure on that beam from three directions, time, rebirth, and Nibbāna. Where the beam holds, the system shows its strength. Where it does not, this book records the point for Chapter 7.

First, the weight of the word "continuity." Not-self is not an attitude but an engineering constraint. Remove the possessor, and everything that needed a possessor to make sense needs another account. Memory, the consequences of action, whether a person remains the same person, and whether anything follows death are four problems that other systems entrust to one persisting bearer. Here there is no bearer, so each must find its own conditions. Continuity is the system's general answer. Nothing persists; there is only continuation from one moment to the next. The whole of Abhidhamma can be read as an expansion of this statement. A beam that bears weight must be tested under load.

The first direction is time. Begin at the smallest end. A mind-moment divides into three submoments, arising, presence, and dissolution (uppāda, ṭhiti, bhaṅga). Material dhammas last seventeen mind-moments, or fifty-one submoments. The Charts and the manual's explanatory guide write this as one plus forty-nine plus one, with one submoment of arising, forty-nine of presence, and one of dissolution.¹

A question arises at once. How is the arising and ceasing of a citta divided into three phases, and what grounds these divisions and their proportions? A mind-moment can contain submoments. We cannot first define it as an indivisible minimum and then infer a contradiction from its threefold division. What needs examination is the basis of this temporal structure.

The three phases have more than one interpretation. Chapter 4, §6 of the Comprehensive Manual and its guide divide one mind-moment into submoments of arising, presence, and dissolution. The guide also records different commentarial positions on the phase of presence in consciousness: some accept it, some deny it, with corresponding explanations.² The claim that none of the three phases is a temporal part cannot therefore stand as the whole tradition's sole answer. Chapter 3's four material characteristics must also be distinguished from this issue. Declining to posit a process's characteristics as four additional things does not mean that the process has no intervals whose durations can be compared.

The question remains. The phase of presence does real work in this system: postnascence requires the matter it supports not yet to have ceased;³ registration of a five-door object must also occur while that matter remains. In the notation used here, matter's seventeen mind-moments comprise fifty-one submoments, forty-nine of them assigned to presence. This already uses an interval with duration and proportions. What requires explanation is the basis for that division and those proportions; calling them "aspects" cannot replace such an account.

This book records its first point here: the basis for dividing the moment. The manual provides a temporal structure and records disagreements over its interpretation, but these accounts are not independent measurements of the divisions and proportions. Acknowledging that explanations exist does not establish their empirical validity. Chapter 7 will return to this point.

The two ends of seventeen. Chapter 3 ended with a number. Material dhammas last seventeen mind-moments. Chapter 4 supplied the other end. A complete five-door process, from past bhavaṅga to the second registration, occupies exactly seventeen mind-moments. The two seventeens define one another. Neither can be established independently before the other.

The nature of this circle must be clear. It is not an error but a convention. The system needs a common scale on which mentality and matter can be arranged in the same table and assigned conditions in relation to one another. Seventeen fixes that scale. Both sides invoke it together; neither is allowed to define it independently of the other.

This book's judgment is that the number has an observational basis, but neither of the two steps that sustain it comes from such evidence.

Only one part qualifies as observational evidence. Cittas arise and cease one after another, each arising only after its predecessor falls away. The tradition holds that this can be discerned in contemplation. Whether each slot can be distinguished was recorded in Chapter 4 as a point on which two approaches to meditation disagree. This is the sole source of the mind-moment as a unit of counting.

Two steps go beyond this evidence. The first is uniformity. The notation counts rebirth-linking consciousness, bhavaṅga, five-door adverting, javana, and registration in mind-moments, each occupying one slot whatever its function. Yet the sources examined here still do not explain why these different kinds of mind-moment should have the same relative duration.² The question is not merely how many milliseconds a moment lasts, but what makes the slots equal in length. Giving a unit of relative duration does not supply a reason for their equality. Succession alone cannot establish equal duration. This book therefore treats uniformity as a premise of the scale that still requires argument, rather than a result already verified through contemplation.

The second step joins the two sides. Matter's lifespan exactly matches the length of a complete five-door process. The two seventeens fit without a gap. If seventeen were a measurement, the agreement would itself need explaining. If it is a definition, it needs no explanation, since this is how the definition is framed. Of the two steps, this one is most clearly a matter of definition.

One function of the number is therefore to align the mental and material lines by relative duration. It does not itself supply a physical duration established by independent measurement. This matters in the next section: at the junction between lives, the notation of relative duration in mind-moments meets the reckoning of lifespans in celestial years and great aeons.

Time is not a container. Book I, Chapter 6 of the Kathāvatthu, "Discussion of All Existing," refutes the claim that past and future are equally real and that dhammas manifest according to their positions in the three times.⁴ Theravāda rejects this claim. The consequence is larger than it seems. If neither past nor future really exists, time cannot be a container holding dhammas. Nor do dhammas move from a future slot into a present one and then into a past one.

What, then, is time? In the account considered here, arising and ceasing from one moment to the next come first; earlier, later, and relative duration can then be spoken of. There is no prior independent time axis on which dhammas subsequently take their places. The account of time depends on continuity, but this does not erase the relations of duration specified by the treatises.

This places the whole burden on continuity. Other systems can say that one citta precedes another because they occupy different positions on a time axis. This system cannot say that, because the axis is read from the sequence. Continuity cannot therefore be explained by time; time must be explained by continuity. The point recorded at the end of Chapter 4, that immediacy presupposes a shared clock, now carries its full weight. The clock is not external. It is continuity itself, precisely what needs explaining.

That is the result of the first round of pressure. Questions about the three submoments, seventeen, and real existence across the three times have not overturned the system. Treatises provide a temporal structure, and commentaries offer different interpretations. Yet the sources used here still do not explain how the divisions and proportions can be independently tested, or why different kinds of mind-moment have equal duration. The beam of continuity has a describable construction, but its scale has not yet been established in a way that can be independently checked.

The second direction is rebirth. Rebirth is continuity across the boundary of a life. The treatises tabulate its destinations.^{5 6}

The four spheres total thirty-one planes. The first two together are called the sense sphere, with eleven planes. The five Pure Abodes are the Durable, Untroubled, Beautiful, Clear-Sighted, and Highest. Only noble ones of the third fruition are born there.

Lifespans. Each plane in the table also has a number attached. Lifespans in the six sense-sphere heavens are counted in celestial years, doubling at each successive level.⁶

The form and immaterial spheres use great aeons instead of celestial years.⁶

The lifespans of humans and beings in the four woeful planes are indefinite.⁵

Two systems of timekeeping coexist. Pause at this table of lifespans. Above, mind-moments specify sequence and relative duration; here the units are celestial years and great aeons. Both ends speak of duration, but on different scales. The sources used in this chapter give no conversion established by independent measurement. That gap does not mean that the finest end has no duration at all.

This book sees different main uses for the two notations. Mind-moments organize relations of continuity in contemplation and specify the relative lifespans of mentality and matter. Celestial years and great aeons organize lifespans in the realms and the teaching of kamma and its fruits. Different uses can explain the employment of different scales, but they do not establish the scales' proportions or conversions. The sources used here have not supplied that independent basis. This book does not expand this limited gap into a claim that no one has ever tried.

The two notations must meet in only one place, the heaven of Nonpercipient Beings. We will reach it at the end of this section.

Four causes of death. A life can end for four reasons: exhaustion of lifespan, exhaustion of kamma, exhaustion of both, or destructive kamma.⁵ Exhaustion of lifespan means reaching the end of the lifespan for that plane. Exhaustion of kamma means that the productive kamma's force runs out first. Exhaustion of both means both occur together. Destructive kamma means another powerful kamma cuts the life short midway. The first three are called timely death; the fourth is untimely death.

The death-proximate cognitive process. Death is not a special kind of consciousness. Death consciousness (cuti-citta) is the same citta as bhavaṅga, performing a different function for the final time. What matters is the sequence before death consciousness.

The death-proximate process has only three kinds of object, kamma, a sign of kamma, or a sign of destiny.⁵ Kamma is the kamma about to mature, itself reappearing at the mind door. A sign of kamma is the object or instrument involved in producing that kamma. A sign of destiny is a scene of the destination to come. One of the three appears and becomes the object of the subsequent javanas. The next life's rebirth-linking consciousness takes that same object.

This sequence has only five javanas, fewer than seven, and they are weak.⁵ Weakness means that they themselves produce no kammic results. Their sole task is to hold the object and pass it to the first citta of the next life.

Signs of kamma and the life review. A resemblance deserves recording here. The second death-proximate object is a sign of kamma, the object or instrument involved in producing that kamma, reappearing at the mind door. Modern accounts of near-death experiences describe what is commonly called a "revolving lantern" in Chinese and a "life review" in the research literature. Past experiences appear together as images within a brief period near death.⁷ The descriptions have a similar form. As a life nears its end, what appears in the mind comes from the past, not the present surroundings.

In citing Bradley in Chapter 5, we said that external material serves this book only as a limited parallel. This resemblance has still less weight. It is no corroboration, only a similarity worth recording. Three differences must be recorded with it. The first concerns the testimony. All accounts of near-death experience come from people who were revived. In Abhidhamma's own account, the death-proximate cognitive process ends in death consciousness. Anyone who completes that sequence is already in the next life. By the system's own rules, no one who can speak has reached that slot. The second concerns form. A life review is a succession of scenes. The death-proximate object is single and, once taken, does not change. It serves to orient, not to review. It determines what the next life's rebirth-linking consciousness will take, rather than summing up this life. The third concerns the direction of explanation. Near-death research seeks to explain a reported experience. Its evidence can grow and its conclusions change. Abhidhamma gives a doctrinal stipulation that, within the system, experience cannot refute.

This book holds that the resemblance cannot testify on Abhidhamma's behalf. It suggests something else. Many entries in this inventory do have observational origins. Chapters 3 and 4 both found it difficult to distinguish items discovered in contemplation from items added afterward. The death-proximate object looks more like the former. A meditation tradition sees something at a dying person's side and gives what it sees a fixed form. That is an intelligible route. What actually happens in the slot once it has been formalized is something no one has returned to tell.

No intervening slot. Death consciousness falls away and rebirth-linking consciousness immediately arises, without a single mind-moment between them.⁵ Chapter 4 used this statement to explain process-free consciousness. Here we ask where it comes from. Theravāda posits no intermediate existence. Book VIII, Chapter 2 of the Kathāvatthu, "Discussion of Intermediate Existence," expressly refutes it.⁴ Sarvāstivāda and most later schools posit an intermediate existence as a transition between two lives. Theravāda removes it on the grounds that, if it contains consciousness and matter, it is already a life. What was to lie between two lives now lies among three, only pushing the question back one slot.

The removal is clean and its cost clear. There is no buffer between lives. At the instant the preceding citta ceases completely, the next must already have arisen in another place, another sphere, another body. There is no distance to speak of because nothing moves, and no time to speak of because no empty slot is allowed. The point recorded in Chapter 4, that immediacy presupposes a shared clock, comes under its greatest pressure here. The two mind-moments belong to different lives and places. What warrants calling them immediately consecutive? Only a clock shared by both sides could do so, and this system has supplied none.

Nineteen rebirth-linking cittas. Nineteen types of consciousness perform rebirth-linking.^{5 1}

Nineteen cittas correspond to thirty planes. The heaven of Nonpercipient Beings is absent because rebirth-linking there occurs through matter, with no rebirth-linking consciousness.

Three types of rebirth-linking. The nine kinds of rebirth-linking consciousness for the happy sense sphere differ in their roots.⁵ Four of the eight great resultant cittas are associated with three roots, nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion. The other four are associated with two, nongreed and nonhatred. Rootless wholesome-resultant investigating consciousness has none. The type of rebirth-linking sets the ceiling for that life. Those reborn with three roots can attain jhāna, paths, and fruitions in this life. Those reborn with two roots or none have no such opportunity in this life.⁸

This is the system's hardest stipulation to accept, and the one it is least willing to conceal. It does not say that someone reborn with two roots should not practice. It says only that this life's configuration of mental dhammas lacks that root, and that the missing root is determined by the previous life's kamma, not by this life's wishes.

How this stipulation is used in practice. What the treatise says is one thing; its use is another. This book observes three uses, each pointing in a different direction.

First, it is often used to explain a type of person who takes no interest in the Dhamma but may fare well, even very successfully, in worldly affairs. Such a person is classified as reborn with two roots. This use points outward. The speaker stands inside and assigns a place to those who do not enter. Drawing the boundary completes the explanation.

Second, someone who practices diligently for a long time without advancing is rarely told to their face that they were reborn with two roots. Yet the account is always waiting nearby, doing its work without being spoken. It is a catch-all. If failure to advance is attributed to method, teaching lineage, or the teaching itself, further questions remain possible. If it is attributed to the rebirth-linking slot, questions stop there. That slot was fixed by past-life kamma and cannot be changed in this life. An explanation that is unfalsifiable and can absorb every failure is convenient. The price is that it also shields from scrutiny what ought to be examined.

Third, the other side must be equally clear. The Theravāda tradition as a whole does not make this diagnosis. It has no ritual or office for determining how many roots someone had at rebirth-linking. Actual instruction encourages everyone, without distinction, to keep the precepts, give, cultivate concentration, and practice insight. The stipulation is written in the treatises and used in explanation, but largely unused in guidance.

This book regards the gap between these three levels as material for analysis in its own right. A doctrine's place in a text can differ greatly from its use among people. Here the distance is especially great. The treatise makes only a technical judgment about a configuration of mental dhammas; its use makes a statement about a person.

The same citta within one life. One verse in the treatise states the whole relation between rebirth-linking, bhavaṅga, and death. The same citta performs all three functions and takes the same object, without change within a life.⁵

This verse is the system's whole answer to the problem of identity. A continuity remains this continuity within a life because that citta and that object are fixed once and for all at the moment of rebirth-linking and do not change along the way.

We must see both what this answers and what it leaves unanswered. It answers for a single life. Another rule governs the passage between lives. The kamma, sign of kamma, or sign of destiny that appeared near the end of the previous life becomes the next life's rebirth-linking object. The object comes from the other side, but the consciousness is newly arisen. The previous life thus leaves this one only the identity of an object and a force of kamma. It leaves no dhamma behind.

Continuity is unbroken, yet nothing crosses over. This is Abhidhamma's most strenuous and most important statement about rebirth. Chapter 4 stated it once; here its full meaning can be added. No self crosses over, nor does consciousness itself. Only the identity of an object and one conditioning relation continue to the other side.

Four sets of four kinds of kamma. In this system, kamma is a condition that will act in the future, not stock in a storehouse. The treatise classifies it four ways, into four kinds each.^{5 1}

The time-of-maturation column shows most clearly what this notation does. Kamma to be experienced in the present life matures here; kamma to be experienced in the next life matures there; kamma to be experienced in later lives matures in any subsequent life. Ineffective kamma never encounters the conditions it awaits, until no opportunity remains. This last slot matters because it admits that kammic force can become completely void. Kamma that never meets the conditions for maturation ceases to be anything at all. This is the reverse of a storehouse model. Stock does not disappear from a storehouse because no one takes it out for use.

The point of greatest pressure. In the heaven of Nonpercipient Beings, a life lasts five hundred great aeons. There are no mental dhammas there. Not a single citta arises.⁵ Rebirth-linking occurs through matter, and the whole life consists of material continuity alone. After five hundred great aeons, that material continuity ends, death occurs, and rebirth-linking follows elsewhere according to kamma.

Bring the two systems of timekeeping together here. Five hundred great aeons is a duration, during which the number of mind-moments is zero. The two notations meet directly, and one becomes wholly inoperative. If time is only an order read from the continuity of consciousness, from what are those five hundred great aeons read? They can only be read from material continuity. Yet matter's lifespan is itself defined in mind-moments, those seventeen mind-moments. How can matter's seventeen mind-moments be counted where there is no consciousness at all?

The treatises do not answer this question directly. This book sees only one possible answer. Material continuity there is still counted on the mind-moment scale, but the scale no longer corresponds to any actual consciousness. It is purely a conventional unit. This confirms the earlier judgment. What makes seventeen seventeen is the convention, not the observational basis. Precisely for this reason, it can still be used where no consciousness occurs.

Before the third direction, a look at bhavaṅga. Within a life, cognitive processes arise one after another, but there are intervals when no object appears, during dreamless sleep, and between the end of one process and the beginning of the next. These intervals cannot remain empty. A single vacant mind-moment would break continuity. Bhavaṅga consciousness fills them. Its name literally means "factor of existence," the factor that makes a life a life.

Chapter 4 gave its three functions, rebirth-linking, bhavaṅga, and death. Within a life, the same citta performs all three and takes the same object. Bhavaṅga therefore adds no new kind of consciousness. It names nineteen kinds of resultant consciousness in the performance of a particular function.

Three boundaries distinguish it from ālayavijñāna. Part I of this book has already judged bhavaṅga consciousness and ālayavijñāna to be different, although both address continuity and latency. This chapter draws the boundary more precisely.

First, bhavaṅga adds no entry to the inventory. Ālayavijñāna is the eighth consciousness, a new category that adds a level beyond the original six consciousnesses. Bhavaṅga adds no dhamma. It is one of nineteen resultant cittas already listed among the eighty-nine, and bhavaṅga is merely one of its functions. A function is not a dhamma. Chapter 4 made this clear in discussing the fourteen functions. A function is a position, not a new existent.

Second, bhavaṅga receives nothing. Ālayavijñāna receives the perfuming of all manifest activities and holds their seeds. This is its central task. Bhavaṅga is not perfumed. Its object is fixed at rebirth-linking, drawn from the kamma, sign of kamma, or sign of destiny that appeared in the previous life's death-proximate process. It remains unchanged throughout the life. Bhavaṅga records nothing that happens in this life and has nowhere to record it.

Third, bhavaṅga does not have to explain kamma and its fruits. Conditions explain them. This division of labor is decisive. Ālayavijñāna is both a vehicle of continuity and a repository of kammic force, combining the two tasks. Bhavaṅga performs only the first. Different-moment kamma condition takes the second.

The benefit of these boundaries and their cost. The benefit is clear. Bhavaṅga has not been made into an underlying substance. It is a series of cittas of the same kind, arising and ceasing one after another and taking the same object, rather than a persisting thing. Chapter 7 will include this in its inventory of restraint.

The cost is equally clear. If there is no storehouse, in what way does kamma exist between the citta that produces it and the citta that experiences its fruit?

The treatises answer with a condition from Chapter 5, different-moment kamma condition (nānākkhaṇika-kamma-paccaya). The citta that produced the kamma ceased completely long ago, yet it remains a condition for a resultant citta several lives later.³

This replaces a question of existence with one of relation. There is no need to ask where kamma exists in the interval, only to say that a conditioning relation connects it to the later resultant citta. The substitution is elegant, but Chapter 5 has recorded a difficulty. Conditions have no place among the eighty-two ultimate dhammas. Conditioning force is inherent in the conditioning dhamma and cannot exist apart from it. How, then, does this condition spanning several lives itself exist during the interval?

The question returns unchanged except for one word. This book records a second point here. Without a storehouse, what guarantees the identity of a continuity? This point and the preceding one are left together for Chapter 7.

One more statement is needed. This is not an omission. Replacing existence with relation is the system's consistent practice and what lets it hold to not-self. Wherever it would need to posit a persisting bearer, it posits a condition instead. The method is consistent, and so is its cost. Chapter 7 will consider these costs together, since they are ultimately one cost.

Are the intervals really gaps? Another question deserves to be asked. Do the intervals filled by bhavaṅga really count as gaps?

The treatises answer that there are no actual gaps, because bhavaṅga cittas arise one after another without interruption. But does bhavaṅga itself have content? It has an object, the scene near the end of the previous life. This does not appear to current awareness, because bhavaṅga lies outside cognitive processes. A person in dreamless sleep thus still has mental continuity and an object. That object is simply neither drawn from the present nor known.

This book regards this as the system's closest approach to a psychological hypothesis. It is not a finding of contemplation, which cannot reach it. It is inferred from the requirement that continuity have no gap. Chapter 4 said that the fifteen forms are shown to be exhaustive by calculation, not contemplation. Bhavaṅga is likewise inferred. Whether the inference is reasonable is a separate question; its origin must be recognized.

The third direction is Nibbāna. Chapter 1 left a question open. Of the four ultimate realities, consciousness, mental factors, and matter are conditioned, while Nibbāna is unconditioned. To list the unconditioned alongside the conditioned declares the table an inventory of everything that really exists, as well as of phenomena. Why should a catalog prepared for contemplation reserve a slot for something that belongs to no aggregate, neither arises nor ceases, and is associated with no consciousness? We can now answer directly.

First consider its place in the table. At the end of Chapter 6, the treatise defines Nibbāna as supramundane, realized by knowledge of the four paths, and the object of path and fruition consciousness. It is called Nibbāna because it has escaped the entanglement called craving.⁹ It is divided into two according to the remaining aggregates that serve as its basis, with residue remaining and without residue remaining. Its three aspects are emptiness, signlessness, and desirelessness.⁹

The three aspects are not three kinds of Nibbāna. They are three doors onto the same thing. Those who enter through contemplation of not-self see it as empty; those who enter through contemplation of impermanence see it as signless; those who enter through contemplation of suffering see it as desireless. There are three names but one referent.

Only three columns for the four defining aspects are filled. Chapter 1 said that defining a dhamma requires entries for characteristic, function, manifestation, and proximate cause. Applying this machine to Nibbāna gives the following result.¹⁰

The fourth column is empty for a straightforward reason. A proximate cause is the nearest condition necessary for arising. Anything for which this column can be filled arises through conditions. Nibbāna is unconditioned and does not arise, so it has no proximate cause to enter.

This book regards this blank cell as the most notable point in the essay. The four defining aspects form a machine built for conditioned dhammas, with at least one column that presupposes causality. Put an unconditioned dhamma into it, and the machine stops on its own at the fourth column. It forces no entry and makes no change to itself to accommodate the exception. It leaves the blank in the table.

Does putting Nibbāna in the table cross the boundary? In addressing the four alternatives concerning the Tathāgata after death, Chapter 2 of Essay 13 reached a judgment. The four alternatives are logically exhaustive. What fails is their conditions of application, not their arrangement. For predication to work, there must first be relations among worldly dhammas to which it can attach. Process vocabulary runs out where the process ends. The boundary lies in the working of language, not inside logic. Applying that judgment to this cell, this book answers in two parts.

One half stays within the boundary. To say that Nibbāna is the object of path and fruition consciousness, is unconditioned, does not belong to conceptual dhammas, or divides into two according to the remaining aggregates is to make relational statements from the conditioned side. They describe its relation to path and fruition consciousness and its differences from other dhammas. Chapter 2 of Essay 13 seeks to bar predication of Nibbāna itself, especially in process vocabulary. None of these statements does that. The empty proximate-cause column is further evidence of staying within the boundary. It is precisely the column that would say how Nibbāna arises, and there the machine stops.

The other half crosses the boundary. "Characteristic" is a term with content. Chapter 1 defined it as what distinguishes a dhamma from all others. This requires Nibbāna to stand in the same table as other dhammas for comparison. To give it "peace" is to give it a quality that can be compared. The same holds for function and manifestation. This book judges that this half does exceed the scope set in Chapter 2 of Essay 13.

But the manner of crossing matters. The table does not call Nibbāna a state, say whether one who has entered final cessation exists or does not exist, or apply any process vocabulary to it. It does not say where it is, how long it lasts, or what it consists of. The terms in all three columns are negative or privative. Peace is cessation; deathlessness is the absence of further death; signlessness is the absence of a sign that can be grasped. This is the least that can be done to put an item in the table without describing it. This book's position is that the cell crosses half the boundary and crosses with restraint. It does so because the table's format requires each item to be defined through the four defining aspects. Here uniformity of format overrides the prohibition set in Chapter 2 of Essay 13.

This book records the point for Chapter 7. An unconditioned dhamma has been handed to a machine built for conditioned dhammas.

Consciousness can stop; continuity does not. Two further cases stretch the concept of continuity furthest.

In fruition attainment (phalasamāpatti), noble ones of each of the four fruitions enter their own fruition consciousness. It arises many times in succession until they emerge.¹¹ The stream of consciousness continues throughout, but its content is single.

Cessation attainment (nirodhasamāpatti) is open only to noble ones of the third and fourth fruitions who have attained all eight form-sphere and immaterial-sphere attainments.¹¹ According to the treatise, they enter the attainments successively, emerging from each to contemplate, up to the base of nothingness. They emerge from nothingness, make four preparations, and then enter neither-perception-nor-non-perception. After two absorption javanas, the stream of consciousness is interrupted. The interruption can last at most seven days. On emerging, one moment of nonreturner fruition consciousness or arahant fruition consciousness first arises. Bhavaṅga follows immediately, then a mind-door process of reviewing.

During those seven days, there is not a single citta.

What distinguishes someone in cessation attainment from someone who is dead? The discourses ask this question directly. The Chinese Madhyama Āgama 211 and the Pāli Mahāvedalla Sutta (MN 43) give the same answer. In the dead person, life is exhausted, warmth has departed, and the faculties have deteriorated. In a bhikkhu who has entered cessation attainment, life is not exhausted, warmth has not departed, and the faculties have not deteriorated.¹²

The answer lies entirely on the material side. Mental dhammas are equally absent in both cases. Neither the dead person nor the person in cessation attainment has consciousness. Three things distinguish them, life (the material life faculty), warmth (kamma-produced fire element), and faculties (the five kinds of sensitive matter). All are material dhammas.

This brings together the preceding sections. Here continuity reveals itself as two lines, mental continuity and material continuity, rather than one thing. Within a life, they run in parallel and condition one another. When mental continuity is interrupted, whether continuity remains is determined by material continuity. The five hundred great aeons in the heaven of Nonpercipient Beings have the same structure, over a vastly longer period.

This book draws one conclusion from this. Continuity is not a property of mental dhammas. However detailed the inventory of eighty-nine cittas, it cannot determine continuity. There is more than one case in which mental dhammas are wholly absent and continuity remains.

What sustains identity? Take the previous statement one step further. When seven days of cessation attainment end, why is the bhavaṅga that resumes this person's bhavaṅga? Why does it still take the object fixed at rebirth-linking in this life?

The treatises can only answer that it depends on kamma and the material life faculty.¹¹ Kamma acts through different-moment kamma condition, while the material life faculty keeps material continuity from dispersing. Yet these are precisely the two blanks left earlier. Conditions have no place in the table of ultimate dhammas, and the material life faculty serves to maintain, which is itself a condition.

The point recorded in the bhavaṅga section now appears most clearly. Without a storehouse, what guarantees the identity of a continuity? It needs no separate entry here, since it is the same point.

Continuing no more. At the final step, an arahant's death consciousness falls away and no rebirth-linking consciousness follows. Continuity ends here.

The whole system describes continuity. Consciousness follows moment by moment, matter episode by episode, and conditions are assigned one by one. The only place it points to without describing is where continuity stops. The cell reserved for Nibbāna in the table is ultimately a marker of that place.

At the start of this chapter, we said that the system's strength lies where it withstands pressure, and that the places where it cannot would be recorded. Pressure from three directions has yielded these results. On time, it holds by redescribing structure as aspect, but leaves the boundary of the moment unclear. On rebirth, it holds by removing intermediate existence and a persisting bearer, but must presuppose a shared clock and count mind-moments where there is no consciousness. On Nibbāna, relational statements keep it largely within the boundary, at the cost of the characteristic column. These three costs amount to one. Wherever a persisting bearer is needed, it posits a condition instead, without giving the condition itself a place.

Passing the discussion to Chapter 7. The three points above concern where the system cracks under pressure. The next chapter looks at the same points from the other direction. The system could have taken a further step but did not. It did not posit intermediate existence, accept real existence across the three times, make bhavaṅga into a storehouse, or describe Nibbāna. These untaken steps form an inventory of its restraint, worth examining in its own right.

References¶