Content with Conditions

 One theme I encounter several times throughout Santideva's chapter on "Perfection of Patience" is 'conditioning' and its relation to the human condition. At one point, Santideva remarks on Line 31, "everything is dependent on something else, and even that on which something is dependent is not autonomous. Hence, why would one get angry at things which are inactive, like apparitions?" (p.65) It's quite interesting to reflect on this, because I believe that many people cherish the idea of an autonomous self that underlies conditions. But in a way, looking for that single, active, autonomous self seems to be a bit like peeling an onion. The more I look for some root underlying cause that is located in a single self, the more it evades me.
     How do we apply this idea to daily life? Well, Santideva remarks on line 33, "Therefore, upon seeing a friend or an enemy committing a wrong deed, one should reflect, 'Such are his conditions' and be at ease." (ibid). This is to say, we never see the person in front of us as a single agent who is completely or utterly 'in control' of what she or he is doing. Well, think of it this way: even if you take the very things that you feel in charge of, such as your favorite ice cream flavor, is that the result of choice? A person might argue that they have a choice to go to an ice cream store and order chocolate ice cream, but does one have a choice to see that as her favorite flavor? The more I try to stretch back to see the original inspiration behind what I prefer or dislike, the more the notion of "I chose to be this way" starts to become blurry. Can one really be the sole agent of one's outlooks, one's attitudes and one's ways of being in the world? Even for a person who is convinced that she or he is really making their own decisions, there are a lot of things that we do that are not really within our control. Even the subtle or unconscious ways we behave or treat others can fall far below the radar of seeing and recognition. So in a sense, one needn't worry about whether an action was done intentionally or not, but should see it as the result of specific conditions coming together at the moment.
     Does this argument absolve a person from responsibility for their actions? It doesn't, because there are still consequences to how I behave in the world, regardless of what triggers that behavior. If I recognize the habitual patterns of thinking that have made me how I behave today, then I do have the capacity to generate new conditions, even if not simply in clearly knowing how I behave today. In other words, conditions are constantly changing based on new information and inputs. It makes no sense to say that because I am conditioned, I would therefore have no ability to add new conditions or generate different states of mind. All these things are possible, but of course it takes a long time to change what are often considered deeply entrenched aspects of our habitual ways of being.
S
antideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva (selected chapters only). Translated by V. Wallace and A. Wallace. Snow Lion, 1997.  .