“After what fashion is one to picture to oneself the passing over of
Kamma from one existence to another?”
To us in the West who have been reared in the mechanistic views of
science and admit of the inductive method alone in argument, this
seems the point most obscure among all the obscurities we find in the
Buddha-thought. In the Buddha’s days, however, this point seems to have
been so completely free from anything savouring of the problematical
that the Buddha himself would seem never to have found it necessary to
express himself categorically upon it.
If to-day one asks the Theras in Ceylon or Burma how one ought to think
of this passing over, one receives the unfailing reply, “It is not the
case that ‘something’ passes over.”
Here one must fall back upon the works of the commentators for fuller
information.
In the _Milinda Pañha_ (the _Questions of King Milinda_), a work that
in Ceylon is held in the highest esteem, there occurs the following
passage:--
(The King says): “Bhante (Reverend Sir) Nagasena, does the connection
(with the next existence) take place without anything passing over?”
(The Monk Nagasena replies): “Yes, great King, the connection takes
place without anything passing over.” “Give me an example of connection
taking place without anything passing over!” “Suppose a man to light
one lamp at another, does one light here pass over to the other?” “No,
bhante.” “In just the same way the connection takes place without
anything passing over.”[9]