The _I_-process as being the form of an _in-force_, at every moment of
its existence represents a certain value in potential energy, a certain
unique state of tension, an individual tendency. This tendency it is
which at the breaking up of the old form immediately establishes itself
in the new location.
But where? Is this new location always ready waiting to take up the new
Kamma?
A universe that consists of nothing but a huge summation of combustion
processes, finds itself, so to speak, in a perpetual _status nascens_.
Here every fresh moment represents a new, unique, biological, Kammic
value, which as such never before has been and never again will be.
Now all actual happenings come to pass in virtue of peculiar
attunements--in the language of chemistry, specific affinities. A
body, a process, acts upon another because in virtue of its peculiar
attunement it can and must act on that other. But where the entire
universe is a something existing in a perpetual _status nascens_, there
is, strictly speaking, no such thing as a _being attuned_, but only
an _each-after-other self-attuning_, taking place anew with each new
moment. The entire actual happenings of a world from this point of view
become something that does not _have laws_, but _is law itself_; a
thought as sublime as it is terrible. The significance of Buddhism for
a morality is completely dominated by it.
Hence, where the actual play of world-events alone is in question,
the same is indicated by the word “Dhamma” (law or norm). All beings,
even as they are Sankhāra, are also Dhamma.[10] Kamma, the individual
_in-force_, at the break up of the form, will “take hold” anew there
where in the beginningless each-after-other self-attunement of the
play of world-events, it can take hold--indeed, _must_ take hold. This
“taking hold” anew is not something that _has_ law, that runs its
appointed course according to definite laws, but it _is_ law itself.
Now Kamma, as individual _in-force_, is a something unique. It is
_itself_ and nothing else besides, as it manifests itself in me the
individual; for my consciousness tells me that I am a something unique,
that I am myself and nothing else besides.
As a something unique, it must also be uniquely attuned to its
new location. There will be one single location which, out of the
endless host of world-events, will correspond to the Kamma of the
disintegrating existence, will answer to it. _We all eat out of the one
dish--every one eater for himself._
_This unique attunement, however, implies immediate passing over as
a logical necessity._ If Kamma passed over in space and time, this
passing over would be a new self-attunement at innumerable points.
Immediate passing over and unique attunement are two different
expressions for one and the same event.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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