What is happening when this goes on? Is the bhavanga being viewed?
bhavanga is not the storehouse of memories; the object is the previous life death consciousness object. So same object for one’s whole life. One has to view the causation chain of mind back further and further, and it’s the active mind/ other sense door cognitive series which are the wakeful moments of the life.
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Thank you, Venerable. How is this viewed? For example when one is reborn they take the rebirth linking consciousness in the present as object. But for viewing past lives what is the object? How can one see past objects if they are not present? What is the process?
Hmmm? The rebirth relinking consciousness is ready past right? Even for this life.
Present moment is a snap, moment by moment, not the whole present life is present.
If we can recall memories of this life when it’s gone, why not past lives?
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Fair. How does memory work per abhidhamma?
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When one’s mind is malleable and trained one can direct thier mind to recall thier previous existences. It works differently than how people remember things in thier current life because that is depenedent on your current set of aggregates. In your past life you had a completely different set of aggregates and so no mechanism to store memories in the same way you do in your current life. I can literally hit you in your head and you could lose all memories stored in your brain cells from your current life.
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When we refer to memory, we often think of some kind of storage place where past moments are filed away and can be retrieved later. From the perspective of the Abhidhamma, that isn’t how things work. There is no enduring “container” which holds memories at all. Memory is a function, mostly of saññā (perception), which arises along with many other factors to condition it, and not an independent entity. It arises from cittas and cetasikas operating in succession, moment to moment. The illusion of a continuous memory comes from the relentless flow of cittas, each one conditioning the next, carrying along traces of previous experience, but there is no fixed repository within them.
The primary mental factor responsible for memory is saññā (perception). Saññā marks and recognizes an object. It is said to be like a carpenter marking a piece of wood before cutting. It doesn’t just note the present, but it kind of tags the object, allowing it to be recognized later on. When you remember where you live, for example, it isn’t that you’re reaching into a memory bank; rather, a presently arisen citta, which is accompanied by saññā, re-identifies the object based on a past marking of a previous object, which was based on citta which arose with saññā in the past. Along with saññā, other mental factors like cetanā (intention) and manasikāra (attention) shape how strongly an experience is “marked." Intense emotions, for instance, strengthen the saññā, which is why trauma or deep joy can seem so vivid long after the fact.
Interestingly, our “memories” are also largely about the present. Even if you recollect something from your childhood, and the citta in this moment takes as its object a previous object such as a paññatti (concept) from your childhood, the actual memory function is happening now, and it is influenced by situations and conditions that have happened since the original occurence, and by ones that are happening now. That’s why memory can be distorted, forgotten, or even edited. It is simply a present construction that is dependent upon conditions, not a perfect replay of the past. If memories were “stored” somewhere, they would never change, although the initial experiences seem to usually be primary. They would, in fact, always be the exact same replay of the past. We would also be able to retreive and recall all of them, presumably. We know that is not the case.
It’s all a very complex process involving many, many cittas, cetasikas, objects, and conditions, saññā being the primary cetasika to understand here.
R
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Memories stored in brain cells? Actually as explained well by Renaldo memory , sanna, is entirely mentality.
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Memory as humans typically access it are stored in brain cells. which is why you dont remember things as a little kid and why you may forget things due to a head injury or stroke. obviously theres mentality to it in the actual process of memories forming.
and where is this storage place in arupa Brahma realms?
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There’s a claim that real past life recollection via deep meditation produces super clear memory, not just a normal kind of recollection, and there’s certainty that it happened.
There’s also the divine eye, which can see the past of many beings coming and going (rebirth and death) from life to life. So it does seem to point to a universal record somewhere for people with the divine eye to be able to see the same record of the past. Maybe the record is the mind-stream of other beings?
Many philosophers are more of using the model of radio, even though the radio outputs sound, the source of the sound is not stored in the radio. Even though the radio, when spoiled, cannot produce sound, the sound is not destroyed; if there’s another radio, it can be reproduced. So the brain is more of a conduit for the mind, whereas the mind is where the memories are carried on. If memories are stored in the brain, then there cannot be cases of past life recall of children who can spontaneously recall their past lives. It’s because it’s the mind which carries the memories that this is possible.
I am using carrying as in like seeing red in the river of the mind, one can discern that it was poured into the mind sometime ago.
Nama , citta and cetasika have no shape no color; so very, very different from rupa. Thus citta doesn’t take up space, sanna doesn’t have dimensions, hence there are no limits like there would be in a “storage place” .
its stored in the human brain of that lifetime. some people, depending on thier karma have good memories, some bad memories based on the neurons in the brain that life. but of course, recollection of past lives thru abhinna powers and such does not rely on the physical limitations of that particular beings brain chemistry. and when that being’s body breaks up upon death the memories stored in that aggregate’s brain die with it.
this explains the process of remembering happening now.
Perception, Saññā, and “the Making of Marks” from, Abhidhamma Studies: Buddhist Explorations of Consciousness and Time
Ven. Nyanaponika Thera
What really happens in a simple act of perception is that some features of the object (sometimes only a single striking one) are selected. The mental note made of that perception is closely associated with those selected features, that is, we attach, as it were, a tag to the object, or make a mark on it as woodcutters do on trees. So far every perception is “a making of marks” (nimitta-karaṇa).
In order to understand how “remembering” or “recognizing”, too, is implied in every act of perception we should mention that according to the deeply penetrative analysis of the Abhidhamma the apparently simple act, for example, of seeing a rose, is in reality a very complex process composed of different phases, each consisting of numerous smaller combinations of conscious processes (citta-vīthi) which again are made up of several single moments of consciousness (citta-kkhaṇa) following each other in a definite sequence of diverse functions.
Among these phases there is one that connects the present perception of a rose with a previous one, and there is another that attaches to the present perception the name “rose”, remembered from previous experience.
Not only in relation to similar experiences in a relatively distant past, but also between those infinitesimally brief single phases and successive processes the connecting function of rudimentary “memory” must be assumed to operate, because each phase and each lesser successive state has to “remember” the previous one — a process called by the later Abhidhammikas “grasping the past” (atīta-ggahana).
Finally, the individual contributions of all those different perceptual processes have to be remembered and co-ordinated in order to form the final and complete perception of a rose.
How could there be any memory of past lives if they are stored in the brain and die with it?