[Gaxiciverfere]

Seems to me the Atman problem also exists in the passage which Ajahn Buddhadhasa quoted. What is this "individuality" in which kamma ripens, and within which one experiences the fruit?

That would be the person: the Buddha says "within the aggregates" right there in the sentence you highlight. You and Namdrol are grasping at straws.


(Buddhadasa): ...within the aggregates that are the basis for ones individuality The clause "that are the basis for ones individuality" describes "the aggregates".

Aside from rebirth/reincarnation, my understanding is that the alaya model was put forward (by Vasubandhu, actually, not his brother Asanga).... Asanga:

Alaya Vijnana
Store Consciousness
By Ven. Dr. Walpola Rahula

In the Yogacara (Vijnanavada) School of Buddhism, alaya Vijnana is one of the most important doctrines developed by Asanga (fourth century C.E.). ....not that it matters that much who of the two Brahmins made up their own version of "dharma" to stuff in the Buddha's mouth a thousand years after he kicked it.



...in order to address a more fundamental issue: how, in the absence of an atman, can kamma produce a vipaka? And more generally, how can a thought-moment at one time affect a thought moment at a later time? In other words, how to support a karma-and-reincarnation scheme by circumventing the Buddha's explicit teaching of six and only six forms of vinnana, all of which he explicitly defined and delineated as acute sense awareness of a specific sort of stimulus.


We see from the passage above that kamma arises in connection with mental behaviors: greed, hatred and delusion. That is decidedly not what is said above:

Any action that one has carried out with greed, arising with greed as its cause, and having greed as its origin; that action bears fruit within the aggregates.... The Buddha teaches:

'After doing an intentional kamma by way of body, speech and mind (whose result is) to be felt as pleasure, he feels pleasure;
after doing an intentional kamma by way of body, speech and mind (whose result is) to be felt as pain, he feels pain;
after doing an intentional kamma by way of body, speech and mind (whose result is) to be felt as neither-pain-nor-pleasure, he feels neither-pain-nor-pleasure' — Claiming that either the Buddha or Buddhadasa limited intention, action, and result to just greed, hatred, and delusion is rather simplistic.

So it is essentially something that happens within the conscious mind. And the conscious mind is where vipaka is experienced as well. That is not what is being said there.



But without an atman, what connects the two experiences? The khandhas.

The problem comes up regardless of whether we are speculating about multiple lives or limiting the discussion to continuity across a present life. It is only a "problem" for one who is attempting to get around the Buddha's liberative teachings in order cobble together a karma-and-reincarnation scheme that doesn't belong in the Dhamma. Or grasping at straws in an attempt to drag the Buddha into the same cesspool of speculative view as the superstitions one is trying to prop up...