  Detailed accounts of causality such as this are usually followed by lengthy debates about the precise nature and role of these patterns of conditioning. For instance, on the model of the homogeneous and immediately antecedent condition (no. 2 above) a particular dharma conditions that arising of a dharma of a similar type: a moment of joy, therefore, may only give rise to another moment of joy. What this model cannot explain is how karmic maturation can arise from causes that are different, especially when the fruit of karmic activity is not the result of immediately preceding causes but of a heterogeneous and temporally distant causal chain (see Waldron 2003, 65 and passim). It is precisely this sort of issues that precipitated the development of notions such as the mind-continuum (citta-santana) and receptacle consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna). More to the point, Abhidharma philosophers were pressed to counter the possibility that latent dispositions could persist in an unexplained way in the mental stream so that even skillful thoughts, for instance of generosity or loving-kindness, could not be free of them. The alternative scenario, in which the causal chain might be interrupted by a single thought, for instance of enlightenment, is no less puzzling: such an interruption could bring about sudden enlightenment.