འཕགས་པ་སྲད་པ་འཕ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.17

intro.17

A particularly interesting feature of the prose is that it makes this doctrinal assumption that the karma of a single action arises in the mind at the moment of death and is instrumental in determining a being’s next state of existence. While the Buddha accepts this principle implicit in King Bimbisāra’s question, he does not explain the reasoning behind it, which could be interpreted in different ways according to various Buddhist views. It is worth noting that this sūtra does not implicate an intermediate state between lives and seems to imply that the first moment of consciousness of the next life arises immediately following the cessation of the final moment of consciousness in the previous one.¹⁹ In light of this, without forcing a specific interpretation of how this causality functions, we can say that the arising of the karma in the mind in the final moment of death provides an explanation for how the continuum of consciousness transmigrating from one existence to the next occurs in lieu of a self or any perpetuating phenomena to be carried through that transmigration. This explanation also maintains the ethical principle of the law of karma, indispensable to Buddhism, that one’s ethical conduct determines one’s next existence and that pleasure and suffering arise from one’s past actions.