Pain is Unintentional

 In Lines 23-25 of "The Perfection of Patience" (p.64), Santideva is remarking about the unintended nature of pain, particularly when he remarks:

23. Just as sharp pain arises although one does not desire it, so anger forcibly arises although one does not desire it.

Why is Santideva pointing to what seems to be very obvious? Most people don't desire to bring about their own pain, so why would Santideva want to make this point? The next line elaborates on this point when Santideva continues:

24. A person does not intentionally become angry, thinking, 'I shall get angry', nor does anger originate, thinking, 'I shall arise'.

Line 24 seems to more clearly indicate where Santideva is going with this, because it describes how both people and emotions themselves don't have a core agency. I never get up in the morning and intend to have a certain mood, a certain kind of thought, or a certain plan of action. All these things are conditioned by what has happened before, as well as a myriad number of tiny factors that make the present what it is. To imagine a single being who is 'behind' these machinations amounts to a kind of superstition, according to Santideva. Nobody ever chooses to be angry, and there really isn't a self-originating anger either. To try to point to anything as a true origin is to fall away from the fact that things are deeply conditioned. Hence, Santideva's next argument:

25. All offences and vices of various kinds arise under the influence of conditions, and they do not arise independently.

The point of this discussion is to shift away from the notion that selves have definite characters, with distinct, self-originating intentions. What it hints at is that a person's outlook and behavior are often intermeshed with many environmental and mental factors in the present, in addition to past habits. Not only that, but the views are continually changing or are subject to change over time.

What all this relates to is how we can start adopting a more forgiving attitude, by seeing that people are often acting from conditions that are beyond their control or agency. There really isn't even a core self there which is 'behind' all these things arising. So one can relax a bit, and stop demanding that one perform according to a preconceived thought, much less demand it from others. After all, life is much more complex and multilayered than any single human being could ever possibly imagine. At best, one can plant good seeds by cultivating good intentions and planning as much as one can for unforeseeable situations. But this is only meant to help enhance alertness and concentration when one has to execute an action. It is never a way to guarantee that things will turn out a certain way as desired.

Santideva's chapter addresses 'patience', and I think one key point is that one is best not to mistaken condition for something that is aware and has a distinct, separate agency. It's more often than not that a person will narrate sentience and intentionality to a scene where there may be neither arising. Just as a person feels silly after getting mad at an empty boat that crashed into theirs, so it seems less important to be annoyed when we realize how conditioned people are, as well as their states of being.