Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s3.3

c15.s3.3

This idea of continuity (saṃtati) is to be found occasionally in the Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, and in the Nettipakaraṇa;¹ it is freely found in the Sanskrit texts, the Śikṣāsamuccaya has svasaṃtāna and parasaṃtāna as equivalent to the self, and the self of others. Things in the Sautrāntika are reduced to mere moments (kṣaṇa), a refinement on the earlier conception of impermanence (anitya), and these moments are denied activity in the true sense of the term, though they are regarded as caused and causes, results and antecedents. ‘How can there be action on the part of that which is not enduring? The action and activity of the moments, that is their mere existence.’² The continuity involved is real; not only does it take place throughout life, which is easy to recognize, but it continues on death; the consciousness which appears at birth (aupapattyaṅcika) and the consciousness on death (māraṇantika) are in essential relation;³ the one is in a sense contemporaneous with the other, the idea being illumined by the comparison of the two with the movement of the scales of a balance. Hence we see at once how the last thought on death has an essential influence on the form of rebirth.¹ Moreover, the idea of the series of cause and effect presents a great advantage from the point of view of the explanation of the effect of the act (*karman*). Each moment is to be regarded as impressing itself on all that follows, perfuming it, as the phrase (*vāsanā*) specially affected indicates, just as the jasmine flower assumes various hues if it has, when in seed form, been imbued with a dye. Man, therefore, carries with him at every moment his future; his death and his fate are implicit within him; the fruit of some good deed done long ages ago may come to action, and reward even with the Tuṣita heaven the man whose sins have previously condemned him to the agonies of the peculiarly horrid hells imagined by Buddhist piety; or his sins may even carry him to hell in his life.² The theory affords, moreover, an easy explanation of memory;³ when any object has been experienced a seed of memory is implanted in the consciousness continuum, and in the course of time on the ripening of the seed memory comes causally into being without the intervention of any needless entity like a thinker, and so we can explain recognition. It is easy also to understand how such a series may be continued in a life even in the world without form.⁴ Nor is it difficult to appreciate that it is possible to bring this stream of consciousness to an end; or at any rate, if it is perhaps difficult, it does not require too great a strain on the faith of the believer. But the possibility is also open, to become of importance in the Mahāyāna, that the saint may impress on his series the determination to save all creatures, to be a Bodhisattva rather than become an Arhant. The theory has, moreover, the obvious benefit that it avoids the difficulties either of permanence or destruction; it follows a mean, for the series is in constant change and therefore there is no permanence, but it is a series, a line which is without beginning, though it may come to an end through liberation, and there is not, therefore, the fatal possibility of destruction by any other cause than liberation.