Ñāṇa wrote:dhamma follower wrote:However, it is the idea of rapid successions that I've been trying to defend, because it is a very important step, IMO, in the understanding of the three characteristics.
It seems that assumptions of conceptual realism underlie what you are trying to establish. In
Early Buddhist Metaphysics: The Making of a Philosophical Tradition (p. 122), Noa Ronkin characterizes conceptual realism as follows:
- The early Abhidhamma dhamma analysis also intends to ascertain that every psychophysical event is knowable and nameable, and that the words and concepts employed in the systematic discourse that is thus developed uniquely define their corresponding referents. In this respect the dhamma analysis … paves the way for conceptual realism – a worldview that is based on the notion of truth as constituted by a correspondence between our concepts and statements, on the one hand, and the features of an independent, determinate reality, on the other hand.
The individuation of unique particulars requires apperceptive memory recognition (saññā) and conceptual designation (paññatti) for differentiation. All such individuation is relational and conventional and therefore phenomena cannot be ultimately established as "truly existing things" or "the ultimate irreducible data of objective existence" independent of the cognitive process as the philosophical view of conceptual realism would have us believe.
Early Buddhist Metaphysics (pp. 245-247):
I don't buy into this classification of realism...I think it is a product of too much philosophies.
That dhammas can be first experienced in their individual characteristics then their momentary nature doesn't make them to exist independently from consciousness. And that is all what counts.
Dependent upon a sense sphere and sense object coming together, the corresponding consciousness arises. When attention is averted elsewhere, that specific consciousness ceases. Furthermore, during the duration of this experience that specific consciousness undergoes change and alteration. This duration is relative to the attention given to the object of consciousness and is therefore not restricted to any fixed momentary limit
It doesn't take a Buddha to realize that we become aware of something because we are attentive to it, every normal person can notice that. The problem is we notice it with the idea "I am"...However, attention is also not-self, conditioned by other factors, which are conditioned by other factors again and so on...In a world when everything depends upon each other, one element changes implies change on all the others. That's why I said DO implies in it momentariness.
When you say consciousness undergoes change and alteration, what does that mean exactly? The only function of consciousness is to reflect, to know, so if it changes, that only means another object has arisen and so another consciousness has arisen too.
When you walk, your step might cover a distance of 30 cm, but 30 cm is made up from very small parts of the motion. Similarly when consciousness is seemingly attentive to one object for a certain time, it is made up from minute moments of conditioning.
Furthermore, there can not be real insight on the dependent origination without thoroughly understand the individual characteristics of dhammas, because it is the first step to understand that there is no one behind the experience,
directly. Only with this understanding can one come to see that this dhamma arises dependently from that dhamma and so on, otherwise, the conceit "I am" is there and no insight, no understanding happens.
Regards,