I have been reading the current series of post, the latest of which being:
Pañcupādānakkhandha – Attachment to One’s Experiences
Thank you very much for these posts, especially when it so happened that I was reviewing the “old” section on pañcakkhandha:
The Five Aggregates (Pañcakkhandha)
In this forum, Lal said:
2. When I die, my gandhabba (with hadaya vatthu) will come out of my physical body. Then it will wait in that gandhabba state until pulled into a matching womb, and I will be reborn to have a different human body.
This is from the view point of the “building blocks” level of abhidhamma. In the transition, what actually arises is still pañcakkhandha, or perhaps pañcupādānakkhandha, correct?
Also, from #4 of the latest post mentioned above:
4. To put it another way, the alcoholic will automatically generate pañcupādānakkhandha which will have “samphassa-jā-vedanā” in his vedanākkhandha.
Along with vedanākkhandha, other khandā may be “contaminated” as well?
There is abhisaṅkhāra in saṅkhārakkhandha, kamma viññāṇa in viññāṇakkhandha, and (I guess) avijja in saññākkhandha?
Dipobhasadhamma, you kept asking about a “starting point”. It’s hard to know what you meant exactly, but in the context of pañcakkhandha, especially with the latest post, that “starting point” may be taken to be an ārammaṇa. An ārammaṇa triggers pañcakkhandha, and most likely in an average being, pañcupādānakkhandha.
This triggering works both in a current life and from one life to the next. In the latter case the ārammaṇa is called a nimitta I believe.
And even from the “building blocks” abhidhamma point of view, we can still view an ārammaṇa as a “starting point” of some sort. My understanding of the “data flow” of mental processes is:
An ārammaṇa makes contact with a sense organ, say the physical eyes.
The sense organ sends signals to the brain, via the nervous system.
The brain sends signals to the manomaya kaya (gandhabba), via another system (the “ray” system I believe).
The ghandabba processes the signals from the brain and sends back instructions — vaci sankhara, kaya sankhara.
Best,
Lang