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I have been thinking about this and here are some thoughts…
I think there is no straightforward answer as to whether a person will absolutely find a delicious meal (as commonly agreed by most people), to be well, delicious. Whatever we experienced is influenced by 3 factors: the vipaka of past kamma that takes place in present life; present volitions (body, verbal, mental); our external environment (people, things, event). Any effect experienced by the person is never coming solely from one factor alone for no one single factor has the absolute determining power to dictate the result. It’s somewhat like a vector summation of the 3 factors that gives a resultant effect that is to be experienced. The Kāma Guṇa of a food happens to be our external environment, which is just a physical attribute. One can taste the flavour of the food but whether the flavour is palatable to the person is highly subjective. We find certain food delicious not because we want to think it that way. Thinking that the food is delicious is really just concluding the net result of what is experienced through the causal relationship among the 3 factors mentioned above. I would also think if an Arahant has some issues with spicy food (maybe his stomach cannot take spicy food), he might not find spicy food particularly tasty even when his fellow monks have a different opinion from his.
Hi Lal,
When an Arahant tastes a delicious meal, will he/she feel that a delicious meal has been eaten? Do words like beautiful, melodious, fragrant, delicious, soothing etc. even exist in an Arahant’s mind? You mentioned the sweetness of honey is a Kāma Guṇa. What about one’s opinion on honey? It is a subjective thing. Another example would be the acquired smell and taste of durian.
Thanks.
Hi Lal,
Under point #8,
“In this analysis, the whole world is divided into just five categories. One is the rupa aggregate, the “collection of all rupa” or the rūpakkhandha. That includes all “material objects,” including our physical bodies and all external objects.”
I think you have mentioned before rūpakkhandha is different from rūpa, as in the former is sense impressions. But it seems like rūpakkhandha is now somewhat the same as rūpa. Did I understand the concepts wrongly?
Is there any reason why during NDE, the Gandhabba doesn’t talk to other entities? Communication appears to be exchange of emotions without spoken words. Something like what happens in a dream. A person who dreamt of a deceased relative often recalls the deceased person not speaking to him or her in the dream.
If one adamantly insists on an existence of an entity or experiencer to experience a vipaka and a doer to execute a kamma, can it be thought of as the vedanakkhandha being the experiencer of vipaka and sankharakkhandha being the doer at any one citta moment?
Does sannakkhandha perform the function of valuation apart from memory retrieval, labelling and identification? For instance, a man spotted what appears to be an attractive lady walking towards his direction. Does his sannakkhandha cause him to assign a value to this attractive sense object so that he might take subsequent glances at the lady when she is nearing him?
I’d like to think of the five khandhas as a Windows registry. Anyone out there apart from an Arahant has a corrupt registry – Pancaupadanakkhandha, that needs fixing.
Under “What is a Khandha?”, point #2.2…
“We experience a rupa (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, dhamma) with a citta AND based on that generate mental qualities of vedana, saññā, saṅkhāra, and viññāna. In each citta, the mind analyzes all these, and that citta is gone in a fraction of a second.”
Understand sōmanassa vēdanā and dōmanassa vēdanā are mental feelings. So, are they part of Vedanakkhandha?
Hi Lal,
I have an impression that when something is quantized, it tends to have a fleeting nature. Not sure whether my understanding is correct. So, when you mention “matter” is also quantized, how should it be understood? Particularly physical objects around us.
Thanks.
Something came to mind. If I understand correctly, even citta is quantized. So, can I safely assume that there is nothing in this world that is truly analog in nature? What appears to be analog is due to our brain being the bottleneck in information processing. Unless there is something out there that is at least the speed of a citta rising and passing away, we can never know for sure the existence of such analog nature. For instance, an audio signal. What appears to be a continuous audio sound wave is only as analog as our citta arising and passing away speed.
Maybe it’s obvious to some, but I think it is worth mentioning that people who experienced NDE are not clinically dead when they saw themselves hovering above their physical bodies. There are buddhists who do not accept the concept of a Gandhabba, claiming that once a person dies, the next arising consciousness will effect a rebirth elsewhere. Let’s not forget, to be reborn as say, a preta, one’s life vitality has to cease first. So, what is this thing that is capable of revealing vivid details after the person has woken up from comatose? I think the implicit evidence is enough to deduce that it must be a Gandhabba rather than a preta.
‘But some with punna iddhi can do that.’
Is it done by accessing the nama gotta of the being of interest? Can someone who cultivates very high meditative states be able to access the nama gotta back in the Buddha’s time and validate the data against the sutta?
Hi Lal,
Is ‘sankhara paccaya vinnana’ essentially a ‘upadana paccaya bhava’ in the akusala-mula pavutti PS cycle? If that is the case, what the man has done by taking several subsequent glances at the attractive lady is that he kickstarted a process to fabricate renewed existences unbeknown to him. Can we view this renewed existence as kamma bija since it is a natural byproduct of the above defiled process?
