The Relief of the Unintended

The interesting thing about Santideva is how relieving it is to read, in “The Perfection of Patience” that there are no ‘intentional’ conditions to reckon with. For instance, Santideva remarks, on Line 26:

An assemblage of conditions does not have the intention, “I shall produce,” nor does that which is produced have the intention, ‘I shall be produced’ (p.64, italics mine)

The point is that we normally regard conditions as something that arise as one thing. Has this ever happened to you before, where a whole bunch of things seem to go wrong in the morning, after which you conclude, "The whole world is out to get me?" or "I am having a bad day?" It is as though one's mind were programmed to take all those micro-moments and rack them up to a kind of quality such as having a "bad" or a "good" day. Rather than seeing these conditions as relatively coincidental, one tends to think of them as coming from a single agent, who is likely either 'rewarding' or 'punishing' us on purpose, depending on previous experiences or causes.

 In this passage, on the other hand, Santideva seems to be suggesting the opposite, which is that conditions are never intentional in and of themselves. Conditions themselves are in fact subject to their own unique conditioning, ad infinitum. It even comes to the point where Santideva is questioning the origination of a "Primal" being or substance. He remarks, on Line 27:

That which is regarded as the Primal Substance and that which is construed as the Self do not originate, thinking, "I shall come into being. (ibid, italics mine)

Even when we speak of "I" or a creator, that too is subject to previous conditioning. The person I think of as this complete, whole I is really derived from the traces of previous experiences and arising. The further implication of this is that Self has no 'power' to come to be just through desire itself. Santideva remarks, "Since I has not arisen, how could It wish to come into existence? Since it engages with objects, it cannot strive to cease either." (ibid, Line 28, italics mine)

This is interesting because one ceases to be under the illusion of magically thinking one can endure because one wishes to. How often have you had this experience where you feel strongly passionate about doing something, only to find out hours later that the feeling has faded? Perhaps  Santideva would explain such a phenomenon by suggesting that the self I think I was at that time had no power to keep willing itself across many moments. Even though there may be a strong feeling, is there really a "self" that transports that feeling over many times and keeps it alive? Many people suggest that this is possible through will power or a kind of intention. But it's rare to find that one can keep an intended way of action unless the conditions are remaining ripe for that person to continue. To imagine an autonomous self with a uniform set of intentions is to ignore that all intentions are conditioned by many factors in a given moment.