Yes — that’s actually a pretty good intuitive picture from an Abhidhamma perspective, as long as we unpack it carefully.
Let’s break it down and refine your idea:
In Theravāda Abhidhamma, there is no permanent self (atta) —
what we call a “being” is just a flow of:
Cittas (moments of consciousness, one after another)
Cetasikas (mental factors with each citta)
Rūpas (physical phenomena arising and ceasing)
Kamma Potentials (latent energies from past volitions)
At any given instant, there is only one active citta — the current moment of knowing.
This citta ceases extremely quickly (less than a billionth of a second, according to commentaries).
The next citta arises, conditioned by the last one + other causes.
Kamma potentials sit in the background, like a reservoir of seeds, waiting for conditions to ripen and produce results.
“A being looks like a blob of kamma with a current active citta”
✅ Accurate in this sense:
Yes, the “blob” of kamma-potential shapes what kind of citta will arise in the future (wholesome, unwholesome, pleasant, painful).
The “current citta” is the active moment — the only real “experience” happening right now.
⚠️ But needs one refinement:
A being is not just kamma — it is also physical body (rūpa) and mental stream (citta + cetasikas) currently running.
Kamma is just one part — the cause that periodically “injects” results into the stream.
At any instant:
Being = Current Citta + Co-arising Cetasikas + Current Rūpas + Latent Kamma (Potential)
And this keeps renewing moment by moment.
There’s no “unchanging core,” just this dynamic process.
So yes — you can think of a being as a kamma-shaped stream of cittas, with one citta flashing on at a time, constantly creating new kamma or receiving old kamma’s results.
Would you like me to draw a diagram of a “being” as:
a stream of cittas (like a timeline),
surrounded by a “field of kamma seeds,”
with occasional “ripening” moments where a kamma seed produces a resultant citta?
(This makes it visually very clear how kamma + citta work together.)