[/quote]retrofuturist wrote:Greetings Alex,
A couple of points in relation to this.Alex123 wrote:The D.O. is not just momentary ....Even in sutta-pitaka it is defined within 2-3 lives.
1. I was only talking about the link between avijja and sankhara, so even if one is inclined to partition dependent origination over multiple lives ala Buddhaghosa, these two segments (and the link between them) remain in the same temporal region.
The D.O. spread over multiple lifetimes is found in the sutta-pitaka.
The events that appear now may be due to causes done many lives back, or before ignorance ceased. For example Ven. MahaMoggallana died a very painful death. As the story goes (was it in commentary?) he killed his parents in a forest and last bits of that heineous kamma was giving its results in his last life.
Also the Arahant Angulimala felt great pains before his death, these pains were ripening of the bad kamma that he did prior to Awakening. So becoming awakened doesn't prevent results of past kamma to happen in some form prior to Parinibbana.
The kamma left will have to work itself out within the remainder of Arahats death, and the rest will become defunct kamma (ahosikamma).2. If you really do believe it to require "2-3 lives", are you then claiming that even after the complete cessation of ignorance, the results still take 2-3 lifetimes to peter out? This would certainly be at odds with what the Buddha said about arahants.
Kamma is not a totally linear process. It can be greatly attenuated and in some cases completely abandoned (ahosikamma).
Ven. Angulimala would suffer greatly (for murdering 999 people) if he didn't become an Aryan. But because he became an Arahant he really cut off most of potential bad kamma results and severely weakened the rest.
With metta,
Alex