The Tree of Enlightenment

set out to return to her father’s house. When she came upon
the Elder Tissa, being of an irreverent nature, she let out a loud
laugh. Seeing her teeth, Tissa reacted in terms of the perception
of the foulness of the body, and by the strength of that perception
won through to Arhatship on the spot. When the woman’s
husband came along and asked whether Tissa had seen a woman
going that way, the Arhat replied that he was not aware whether
it had been a man or woman but knew that he had seen a heap
of bones walking along the road.
is story indicates that no matter what the nature of the
determining consciousness, the seven moments of impulse consciousness
can be an occasion for either winning through to the
stage of Arhatship or for the further accumulation of moments
of consciousness that have an unwholesome karmic value. To a
man other than Tissa, the sight of the woman laughing might
have given rise to impulses rooted in lust rather than ones leading
to the realization of Arhatship. Since wise attention or the lack
of it determines the karmic value of the impulse moments that
follow, we need to apply wise attention to decrease the chances
of unwholesome impulses arising and increase the chances of
wholesome moments of impulse consciousness.
I would like to conclude by referring to a simile popularized
by Buddhaghosa in his Path of Purification (Visuddhi Magga) to
illustrate the seventeen moments of consciousness in a thoughtprocess.
Suppose a man has gone to sleep at the foot of a mango
tree full of ripened fruit. A ripened mango is loosened from a
branch and falls to the ground. e sound of the mango falling
to the ground stimulates the ears of the sleeping man, who
awakes, opens his eyes, and sees the fruit lying not far from
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