  The debate between the Vaibhāṣikas and the  Sautrāntikas concerning the emergence of consciousness from the  attainment of cessation casts further light on the theoretical  positions of these two schools regarding the nature of mind and mental phenomena.  Drawing from the canonical literature, Buddhaghosa describes the  attainment of cessation (Pāli, nirodha-samāpatti)  as “the non-occurrence of consciousness and its concomitants  owing to their progressive cessation” (Path to Purity, 23, 18; Ñānamoli 1956, 824), in which progressive cessation stands for all three types of activities (viz., physical, mental, and verbal). The Vaibhāṣika position is that in the attainment of cessation there are no mental events. Given the  Vaibhāṣika's commitment to the causal account of the  homogeneous and immediately antecedent condition  (samanantarapratyaya), which states that mental events have  as the necessary condition for their occurrence an immediately  preceding mental event within the same mental series, he must answer  the following questions, clearly identified by Griffiths (1986, 61):  Does the last moment of consciousness prior to the attainment of  cessation “posses an immediately antecedent and homogeneous  condition but is not itself one?” And, conversely, does the  first moment of consciousness following the attainment of cessation  occur “without an immediately antecedent and homogeneous  condition while itself being one for the moment that follows  it?”