On Accepting Others

  In Line 35 of "The Perfection of Patience", Santideva remarks, "People hurt themselves with thorns and the like out of negligence, with fasting and so on out of anger, and by desiring to obtain inaccessible women and so forth" (Line 35, p.66) This argument is part one of three parts, where Santideva is expressing the self-destructive tendencies of people. He remarks on Line 36 about how people kill themselves: "by hanging, by jumping from cliffs, by eating poison or unknown substances, and by non-virtuous conduct." (ibid) Santideva then asks, given this self-destructive nature in people, "how could they have restraint toward the bodies of others?" (Line 37). Santideva's point is to suggest that those who do harmful things toward others are very likely to be self-destructive. One could then say that what one does to others could be seen as reflecting how they treat themselves.
   I think that this series of lines forces a reader to look at others with compassion. Often times, people really don't know why others are doing the things they do. When a person is angry with someone else, the tendency is to "root" the behavior in the other person rather than seeing that this person is subject to conditions. It often isn't really one person's 'evil plan' to make another person miserable. Rather, people are often subject to very complex forces which cannot be reduced to the intentions or designs of one single person in the universe.
    Is it safe to say that people are all deep down inside good beings? I am not sure, but I think Santideva is arguing that one should at least have compassion for the "deluded" nature of self-destructive or unhealthy tendencies. As I am reading these lines, I have to wonder whether this is compassion or if it is perhaps a kind of condescending pity. If someone stands back and laments at how destructive the habits of those around them are, there is perhaps a tendency there to look down on others. But I think the next line reveals Santideva's true intention, which is to arouse the genuine compassion of his audience, or at the very least a kind of letting go of angry emotions toward others. He remarks, "If you do not even have compassion toward those who, intoxicated by mental afflictions, commit suicide, then why does anger arise?" (Line 38).
   Santideva seems to be saying, even if you can't be compassionate toward those who are "intoxicated by mental afflictions", at least you can drop your anger, since anger isn't even necessary or beneficial in these kinds of situations. If, for instance, a person can be reasoned out of unreasonable behavior, then we can have a conversation with them to see what can be done. If not, then there is simply no sense fretting about it; we do what we can in the situation and carry on without feeling anger at the person.
     I believe this last line is about realizing that a lot of anger simply doesn't accomplish very much. We often see these movies where the hero or heroine is portrayed as someone who, through the force of anger alone, is able to fight off the 'villains' and restore justice to the world. But in a sense, this isn't often how anger is played out. Anger, when used unskilfully, most often leads to a reciprocal effect of resistance, rebellion or retaliation.