The Conditionality of Life

  It is not by mere chance that we are born in planes of existence where we can experience objects through the senses and that we are equipped with sense-organs through which we can experience such objects. During previous lives as well we experienced colour, sound and other sense-objects. We were clinging to these objects in the past and we are clinging to them at present again and again, so that attachment has become a deeprooted tendency. Attachment does not arise with each moment of consciousness, citta, but the tendency to attachment is “carried on” from one moment to the next moment, from life to life. Each citta which arises falls away completely, but it is succeeded by the next citta. In the uninterrupted series of cittas which are succeeding one another continuously, inclinations to both good and evil are carried on.