Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s3.26

c10.s3.26

The last member of the chain is obviously popular rather than scientifically conceived; old age and death are not in the Canon causes of the rest of the series, which possibly was omitted in some forms of the chain. Old age was doubtless meant literally, though the Canon³ already has the doctrine that even in youth age, that is change, is setting in, the prototype of the doctrine of death at every moment, which is made clear in the later scholastic. That scholastic makes it also clear that at death the subliminal consciousness (bhavanga), the foundation of life, disappears in a thought of departure (*cyuti-citta*) or of death, to reappear after the thought which heralds the new existence (*pratisandhi-citta*).