[beethyday]

Nothing intrinsically wrong with such a hypothesis, but the Buddha taught something vastly different.

Agreed.

what is the process through which karma cause & effect operates according to your understanding or tradition?

"Karma" is a speculative view-cum-superstition. It is not the same as cause-and-effect. Superstitions and speculative views are irrelevant to the Buddha's liberative teachings.

Could you elaborate on this a little more on this definition of consciousness? I am not understanding why it is an issue to refer to a sequence of perceptive processes as a stream, this does not imply definitive reality.

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The word implies a constant continuity that is not there, and it is a jumping-off place for a reification of that proposed constant, continuous "stream" to take the role of a karma-storing homunculus, an Atta.

I think the basic of what I am trying to communicate is that people tend to react to the world based upon preconceptions and that there is a strong connection between the motivating intent of an action and preconceptions. This can occur in 2 ways: preconceptions guiding actions and actions creating/influencing preconceptions.

I agree.

Well if a murdered did not believe that there will be any karmic results of murder: I am thinking that we can agree that the beliefs referenced above are essentially delusions .So, when the murderer reinforces these erroneous beliefs he is actually strengthening the delusions, not necessarily making his thoughts come true.

When the Buddha spoke of "kamma", he equated it with intention. One intends to commit murder, and follows through on that bodily intention (vipaka).

Reinforcing belief in no karmic results of murder = reinforcing the delusion that there is no karmic cause & effect.

That certainly follows, given the tenets of the speculative view you propose. It is, however, a speculative view.

I am proposing that there is a connection between the way we perceive things and the way we act, although it may be subtle. I also think that more grossly negative actions (non-virtues) will mask this subtle connection by contaminating perception. In contrast refined positive actions will lead to clearer perception and a greater understanding of the effect of one's action on one's own experience. I am proposing that perception contaminated by negative actions is generally experienced as suffering and perception influenced by meritorious actions will be generally experienced as happiness. Over time a person engages in many actions, both positive and negative. This is where I am taking the leap to say that if a person engages in a great degree of negativity (through repeated moderate negative actions or one or more greatly negative actions such as murder) this results in perception of negativity (or suffering) that will be activated when the appropriate conditions present themselves. This can have an effect in this life

I don't see anything I disagree with in that.

...but the majority of an extremely negative perception may also play out as an entire form of existence in a hell realm.

....but that does not follow (assuming you are speaking of a "next life"). You have provided no mechanism for there being a physical "hell realm", and no mechanism of judgment and execution that places that person in that hell realm. Further, any speculation about what those mechanisms might be, would be only just that: speculation.

Thinking that I have to change this to read that the mind is not entirely dependent on the present body for existence but may move from body to body.

-- which turns "the mind" into a homunculus, an Atta. Back to Square One.

As I understand it the Buddha taught no-self...... Meaning that even though "I" do not exist

He taught "not-self"; no "Self" (as proposed by extant philosophers of his day) can be found.

but had no issue with referential self...this does not mean that we cannot use the word I or another's name as a working point of reference for communication.

Agreed.

Why then not refer to a sequence of events of consciousness as a stream?

The problem is that once the various sequences of events are bundled together and labeled as "the mind-stream", or "the stream of consciousness" -- and indeed this is the very reason it has been done in this case -- the next step is to take that bundle and turn it into an Atta that transmigrates from one life to another and reaps the benefits and rewards of actions done in "previous lives", wallowing in speculations about the past and the future, i.e., speculative view-cum-superstition. This is really the only reason one would look at the Buddha's description of vinnana in that way: in order to transform it from a phenomenological, psychological description of the processes by which we ignorantly cling to pleasurable, displeasurable, and neutral sense data, into the metaphysics that it is not.