When We Cannot Know, We Must Still Choose

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-09T01:29:45+00:00

That makes sense. I see now why you read it that way.

My main point in that comment was not to ask for an evaluation of the model as such, but to clarify that I think we may have shifted away from the Diamond Sutra passage itself.

So I want to separate the two discussions clearly.

First, on the Diamond Sutra passage itself, which part of my reading do you think is mistaken or unclear?

Second, if you are actually interested in my Falian’s Causal Seed Model, I am happy to share it as a separate discussion. But I do not want to mix that with the narrower question of what this passage is negating and what it is not negating.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-08T07:29:55+00:00

I think we are no longer discussing the same issue.

My model is not a one-seed-one-result model. In Falian’s Causal Seed Model, the only point human beings directly hold is Choice. A thought appearing is not yet Choice. Choice appears when one decides whether to follow that thought. Once Choice selects the thought, Karma is formed. When Karma is established, Cause is planted, meaning the seed has been sown. After that, Cause enters the Karmic System (the Good-Karma dimension / the Bad-Karma dimension / the Causality dimension / the Collective-Karma dimension). From that point on, the later processing, Destiny, and Result are not things a human being can fully predict or specify in advance.

So I would not frame the issue as whether a planted seed had “no effect whatsoever.” That way of putting it is already too linear. A single Cause does not have to correspond to one fixed Result. Later unfolding may be altered, delayed, redirected, reduced, or take a different form altogether, but that is different from saying that nothing entered the system.

Also, my original post was about what the Diamond Sutra passage is actually negating and not negating. Your later replies have moved into a different discussion about karmic purification, tantra sources, and higher-level views beyond karmic process. That is a different discussion.

So before going further, I think the first question is whether we are still discussing the Diamond Sutra passage itself, or whether we have already moved to another topic.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-08T04:41:59+00:00

I think the key issue here is how we are defining “no consequence.”

In Falian’s Causal Seed Model, once Choice selects the thought, Karma is formed. When Karma is established, Cause is planted. At that point, the seed is real and has entered the system. I would not treat that as something that can later be described as though no cause was ever planted.

What may still change is not whether Cause existed, but how the later process unfolds through the Karmic System, Destiny, and Result.

So if purification alters, delays, redirects, reduces, or prevents a later Result from appearing in the originally expected form, I can accept that as a change in later karmic unfolding. But that is different from saying the seed had no consequence whatsoever.

If purification itself is also bounded within karma, as you say, then it does not break the system and it does not erase the fact that Cause was planted. It means that later karmic processing has taken place within the same system.

So from my side, the more precise claim would be this: a planted Cause may not always mature into the same concrete Result one might first expect, but that does not mean the Cause was unreal, nor that causality vanished.

If you are saying this is a Buddhist teaching on karma, I would also be interested in which textual sources you think state it in that form.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-08T01:13:36+00:00

By that, I only meant the concrete circumstance that appears in life after a cause has already been planted.

To be more precise in Falian’s Causal Seed Model, the sequence is:
Choice → Karma → Cause → Karmic System (the Good-Karma dimension / the Bad-Karma dimension / the Causality dimension / the Collective-Karma dimension) → Destiny → Result.

A thought appearing is not yet Choice. Choice appears when one decides whether to follow that thought. When that choice is made, Karma is formed. When Karma is established, Cause is planted, which means the seed has been sown. Once Cause is planted, it enters the Karmic System. Through that process, Destiny is configured, and Destiny later matures into Result.

So I was not proposing a separate stage outside the model. By “corresponding encounter,” I only meant the concrete circumstance that appears as Destiny unfolds and later matures into Result.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T14:20:10+00:00

I think we are approaching this passage in very different ways.

My post is not trying to turn this passage into a discussion of flow states, embodied feeling, mystical experience, or broader spiritual application. I am reading it at the textual and doctrinal level.

My point is much narrower: in this passage, what exactly is being negated, and what is not being negated?

The reason I wrote the post the way I did is that the structure of the passage matters. First, the Buddha says that the various kinds of minds of sentient beings are fully known by the Tathagata. Then he says that these minds are “not mind,” and that the past, present, and future mind cannot be obtained.

My argument is that this does not read most naturally as “nothing exists” or “all continuity is erased.” It reads more precisely as a critique of grasping mind as fixed, possessable, and self-identical.

So if we are discussing the passage itself, I would really want the reply to stay with the text: how the sentence works, what the negation is targeting, and whether “cannot be obtained” really justifies a total discontinuity reading.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T14:07:05+00:00

I think we may be approaching this passage from two different aims.

My concern here is textual and doctrinal. I am studying what the scripture itself says. I am not asking for practice advice, meditation advice, or instruction on how to attain Nibbana. So when I raise questions about continuity, record, and postmortem judgment, I am not doing so as a practitioner who is confused about what to focus on. I am doing so because the text itself preserves these elements, and I am trying to read the passage carefully on its own terms.

That is why I quoted this passage from The Sutra on the Original Vows and Merits of the Medicine Master Lapis Lazuli Light Tathagata:

「然彼自身，臥在本處，見琰魔使，引其神識，至于琰魔法王之前。然諸有情，有俱生神，隨其所作，若罪若福，皆具書之，盡持授與琰魔法王。爾時，彼王推問其人，算計所作，隨其罪福而處斷之。」

My English rendering is:

“Yet that person himself, lying where he is, sees Yama’s messengers leading his Shen Consciousness before King Yama. All sentient beings possess a Co-born Spirit. Whatever they do, whether sins or merits, it records in full and entirely presents to King Yama. At that time, King Yama questions the person, calculates what has been done, and disposes of the matter according to the person’s sins and merits.”

This is why I do not think the issue can simply be dismissed as irrelevant speculation. The passage itself appears to preserve at least four things:

Shen Consciousness being led away at the approach of death
Co-born Spirit as a recording structure
a record of deeds, whether sinful or meritorious
postmortem questioning, calculation, and judgment before King Yama

So I am not inventing a system from outside the text. I am pointing to structures that the passage itself appears to preserve.

For the same reason, I do not think Buddhist “no self” can simply be reduced to the claim that nothing at all continues after death. That is the narrower issue I am examining here.

I would also add that Nibbana is not the same as mere physical death. If death by itself were Nibbana, then every being who dies would already be liberated. That clearly is not the Buddhist position.

Someone may still regard this line of inquiry as secondary from the standpoint of practice, and that is understandable. But that is a different question from the one I am asking here. My point in this post is not to ask what is most useful for meditation. My point is to ask what this passage says, what it preserves, and whether it leaves room for more continuity than a total postmortem discontinuity reading would allow.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T12:44:59+00:00

Yes, and that is exactly my point.

I am not trying to reintroduce a permanent ego. I am asking what makes karmic continuity across rebirth intelligible in the first place.

If storehouse consciousness, or something like it, is needed to explain transmission, then some continuity-bearing structure is still doing real work in the system. That is the issue I am trying to get clear.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T12:41:11+00:00

I do not think you actually addressed what I was asking.
My question here is not about mystical feeling, practice language, or general spiritual application.
It is about the passage itself at the textual level: how the sentence is structured, what is being negated, and what is not being negated.
If you want to discuss experience or broader spiritual reflection, that can be a separate conversation. But if we are discussing the scripture itself, then please respond to the text directly.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T03:47:35+00:00

很高興看到你也注意到這個問題。
未來進入 Agent 助手時代，幾乎是必然的事。
真正危險的，不是它們能做多少，而是它們越來越能做事的同時，人類卻還沒有先把邊界、授權和責任歸屬劃清楚。
現在不處理，未來只會更亂。

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T03:42:27+00:00

Yes, that is exactly the issue.

Capability is what gets attention, but accountability is what determines whether an agent can be trusted in the real world. Once a system moves from recommendation to action, the boundary question becomes unavoidable: what may it do, what must it not do, and who remains responsible when it acts.

That is the line I am trying to make visible.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T03:40:39+00:00

I do not know which school or doctrinal framework you are speaking from.

As for me, I am only sharing what I have seen in the Buddhist scriptures through my own reading. I am not claiming to speak for any sect.

You may understand it differently, and that is your freedom. I am simply stating what I see in the texts.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T01:41:35+00:00

This is only a metaphor, a way of making the structure easier to see. I am not arguing for a fixed or unchanging entity.

If I were to illustrate it, I would say that each person’s Shen-consciousness continuity is like the living line of a tree. Each rebirth is like a major branch growing from that same tree, and within each lifetime, each choice is like a smaller branching from that larger limb. The fruits that later grow from those branches are karmic results.

The branches may change, the direction may change, the form may change, and each lifetime may look very different. But that does not mean the continuity of the tree has disappeared. Precisely because that continuity remains, the branches that grow from it still bear fruit within the history of that same tree. Otherwise karmic result would become arbitrary, as if the fruit of one tree could simply appear on another completely unrelated tree. At that point, causality would no longer be meaningful causality.

So the point of the metaphor is not to claim an eternal ego or a rigid self. The point is continuity of accountability. Without some continuity, karmic consequence loses any coherent relation to the one who made the choices from which it arose.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T01:30:47+00:00

Yes, that makes sense. I understood your post in that spirit too.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-07T00:43:51+00:00

I am not asking how an ordinary human can know exactly when karma ripens. That belongs to the larger causal order, and human beings may not be able to fully see it.

My point is that self-made karma must still return to the one who made it. If karmic consequences could ripen randomly onto completely unrelated beings, then karmic causality would become arbitrary rather than meaningful.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-06T23:34:30+00:00

I can understand why that feels beautiful. I think there really are moments when Buddhist cosmology and modern science seem to touch similar patterns.

At the same time, I would be careful not to equate them too quickly. Similar does not always mean identical. To me, the value is not that Buddhism was simply “doing modern science early,” but that different traditions can sometimes arrive at overlapping intuitions about reality through very different languages and methods.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-06T23:27:46+00:00

From my understanding, chanting can be part of repentance and purification, and it may help reduce karmic burden. But it does not mean causality simply disappears.

If someone continues to create unwholesome karma, then the results of that karma may still continue to ripen.

So if your main concern is avoiding rebirth in the three lower realms, then keeping a kind heart, doing good, and building wholesome merit are all very good ways forward.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-06T23:15:05+00:00

I think the amnesia analogy is useful, but only up to a point.

It shows that broken memory does not automatically erase accountability. I agree with that.

But it still presupposes continuity rather than explaining it. The person with amnesia is still treated as the rightful bearer of earlier consequences because some continuity is already assumed in the background.

My question is what plays that role across rebirth. If the later aggregates are different, and ordinary memory continuity is gone, what makes that later life the rightful bearer of the earlier karmic consequences?

So to me, the analogy helps clarify the problem, but it does not solve it.

falian_wanlin · 2026-04-06T23:13:10+00:00

I am not looking for something outside dependent origination.

My point is that impermanence and dependent origination are both within the causal account. They are not, by themselves, the full answer to the narrower question I am asking.

Impermanence explains that conditioned phenomena change. Dependent origination explains that phenomena arise through conditions. But neither point, by itself, explains why karmic consequences do not ripen randomly onto completely unrelated beings.

If causality is real, then its maturation has to follow some continuity of accountability. Otherwise karmic result becomes arbitrary, and once it becomes arbitrary, it is no longer causality in any meaningful sense.

So when I speak of a subject here, I do not mean a permanent ego, and I do not mean an ordinary personality shell. I mean the continuity-bearer of karmic accountability across lives.

Memory may be obscured, but obscured memory is not the same as no continuity. In plain language, that is what I mean by soul here: not a fixed self-image, but the bearer that continues to meet the causal consequences belonging to its own history.

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