Venerable Bhikkhu Kumara and Piya Tan,
I read your correspondance with interest. I could add a little.
In connection wih this, there was a quotation on our dsg forum from the Visuddhimagga:
Vism (Nanamoli transl)

<"VIII 39: Life, person, pleasure pain--just these alone join in one consciousness moment that flicks by. Ceased aggregates of those dead or alive are all alike, gone never to return. No [world is] born if [consciousness is] not produced; when that is present, then it lives; when consciousness dissolves, the world is dead: the highest sense this concept will allow. (Nd1 42) (11)"

Sarah: Only ever a single moment, this moment, that awareness can be aware!>...

Adam: People will die.

Ajahn Sujin: Seeing dies, hearing dies each moment, so where is people or a person? Where
is a person who dies or what is a person who dies? In reality there is no
person. A moment of seeing cannot be a person. It arises and falls away. Another
moment of hearing is not a person - it arises and falls away.

So actually we think there is a permanent person who sees, who hears, but
actually seeing is conditioned.

Adam: Because we don't see reality.

Ajahn: Like looking for dhamma, but no understanding of dhamma. You never meet or
see dhamma. But when there is understanding, you cannot escape or go away from
dhamma at all because it's not you, it's the arising of dhamma from time to
time.

So life exists only in a moment of an experience of an object.>
(end quote).
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N: We cling so much to the dear person we have lost, but then, we can return to what is really there: only one moment of citta that arises and falls away.
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Nina.




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