To me the examples you give and the conundra you raise regarding them merely highlight the limitations of expounding kamma and its ripening in conventional terms (i.e. in terms of conceptual realities such as "persons"). The conundra evaporate when the subject is expounded in terms of dhammas.christopher::: wrote:Again, I may be alone with this, but there is a logical inconsistancy in mainstream ideas of karma and rebirth that has yet to make sense, for me.
- In Anurādhapura we had discussions about kamma and vipāka. Someone remarked that he found it unjust that a deed commited in a former life can cause suffering in this life. The person who suffers today is not the same person anymore as the being in the past who committed the bad deed which produces an unpleasant result. Why then do we have to suffer today because of deeds we have not done?
Kamma produces vipāka. Each cause produces its appropriate result. This is the law of cause and effect which operates, no matter we like it or not. When we suffer from pain it is the result of kamma. We may be inclined to think: “Why does this have to happen to me?” But why do we think of “me”? There was no being in a former life who committed deeds, neither is there a being in this life who experiences results. There are only realities, nāmas and rūpas, arising and falling away.
In the absolute sense there is not “my present lifespan”, because life exists only in one moment. There are different types of cittas which experience objects and each moment of citta falls away completely. Some cittas are cause: they can motivate good deeds and bad deeds which can produce their appropriate results. Some cittas are the results of good deeds and bad deeds, vipākacittas. Cittas which experience pleasant or unpleasant objects through the senses, such as seeing or hearing, are vipākacittas which arise throughout our life. Vipākacitta arises because of conditions and falls away immediately; there is no self who experiences a pleasant or unpleasant object. When there is pain, it is only a short moment of experiencing an unpleasant object through the body-sense. It is unavoidable, because it arises because of conditions. It falls away immediately. When we think of the pain with aversion, there is not only one citta with aversion, but seven cittas with aversion arising in succession. That is the order of the cittas arising in a process. Thus, when we have aversion about pain we make it seven times worse. Pain is unavoidable. Life is birth, old age, sickness and death.
Nina van Gorkom, Pilgrimage in Sri Lanka