Why is continuity like "the light of a lamp"?

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To add to Andrei's answer, I quote this passage written by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master who recently passed away:

This body of mine will disintegrate, but my actions will continue me… If you think I am only this body, then you have not truly seen me. When you look at my friends, you see my continuation. When you see someone walking with mindfulness and compassion, you know he is my continuation. I don’t see why we have to say “I will die,” because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations.

Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for the cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end. I will never die. There will be a dissolution of this body, but that does not mean my death.

I will continue, always.

Upvote:2

No. The light of a lamp is a well-known Buddhist metaphor for continuity of information-causation (what Nagarjuna refers to as "the divine"), since at least The Questions of King Milinda:

--“Can there be any rebirth where there is no transmigration?”
--“Yes there can, just as a man can light one oil-lamp from another but nothing moves from one lamp to the other; or as a pupil can learn a verse by heart from a teacher but the verse does not transmigrate from teacher to pupil.”

and

The king said: ‘He who is born, Nāgasena, does he remain the same or become another?’

[Nagasena:] ‘Neither the same nor another.’

[King:] ‘Give me an illustration.’

[N] ‘Now what do you think, O king? You were once a baby, a tender thing, and small in size, lying flat on your back. Was that the same as you who are now grown up?’

[K] ‘No. That child was one, I am another.’

[N] ‘If you are not that child, it will follow that you have had neither mother nor father, no! nor teacher. You cannot have been taught either learning, or behaviour, or wisdom. What, great king! is the mother of the embryo in the first stage different from the mother of the embryo in the second stage, or the third, or the fourth ? Is the mother of the baby a different person from the mother of the grown-up man? Is the person who goes to school one, and the same when he has finished his schooling another? Is it one who commits a crime, another who is punished by having his hands or feet cut off ?’

[K] ‘Certainly not. But what would you, Sir, say to that? ’

The Elder replied: ‘Neither I am what is now the grown up, nor was I what was the tender tiny baby, flat on its back. But all these are tied in one by means of this body.’

[K] ‘Give me an illustration.’

[N] ‘Suppose a man, O king, were to light a lamp, would it burn the night through?’

[K] ‘Yes, it might do so.’

[N] ‘Now, is it the same flame that burns in the first watch of the night, and in the second?’

[K] ‘No.’

[N] ‘Or the same that burns in the second watch and in the third?’

[K] ‘No.’

[N] ‘Then is there one lamp in the first watch, and another in the second, and another in the third?’

[K] ‘No Sir. But thanks to that lamp the light shined all the night through.’

[Nagasena:] ‘Just so, O king, does the continuity of dharmas connect. One emerges, another dissolves, connecting as it were without [a clear boundary between] the previous and the next, thus the former-consciousness and the next-consciousness cannot be categorized as either the same nor as different.’

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