I heard a really interesting news piece on NPR. It was about how plants have agency; they use information from their environment, mixed with past experiences, to shape their behavior for the future. They seem to have an active stake in the outcome of their life and they have the tendency to, and the means for, shaping that future. They are able to change how their bodies look, they can change conditions that they create for their offspring, change the direction they grow or the way they allocate nutrients.

As I listened to the article, it dawned on me that I have held a mistaken view: I have been mistaking agency for control. Afterall, even if you buy that plants have agency, no one would believe a plant, tethered to the ground on which it grows, fully dependent on the elements for its ultimate survival, is in charge of its fate, no matter how invested in it the plant may be. And I have a strong level of suspicion that self, without self-determination, is utterly meaningless. I mean really –arising, existing, continually changing, dying, buffeted by circumstances outside of my control, if that is reality, then what do I think ‘I’ am?

But me, I assume my ability to make educated plans for the future, and then act on those, is part of who I am. I build pride, ego, based on the degree to which I am successful in achieving the outcomes I plan for and desire. Here’s the thing though, even plants can do this, so how special is it? Is this really the grounds upon which to build an identity. This is who I am, and the animals, and the plants, and the viruses…

A few weeks later I was talking to another practitioner about a problem she was having. The details aren’t critical; the main point of the problem is that over and over again she felt hurt when her kid did something she didn’t like and proud when he did something she liked. She was stuck in a loop of identifying herself with, building her identity off of, her child.

 As I thought about it, I saw that this is really the plant problem. Just because she is invested in the kid’s future, she can, and has, acted in ways that have impacted his future, it doesn’t mean she controls her son. Even more subtly though, it doesn’t mean her son reflects who she is as a mother, or as a cause: It just means that like so much else in this world, she can want an outcome and in so far as situations allow ( i.e. sometimes) be a factor, or even a cause, of temporarily achieving that outcome. Her and me and the viruses and the trees…This is what is natural. Or, in terms that resonate with me even more, this is what is conditional. How do I know?

An effect can die and/or change independently of the cause and a cause independently of an effect. This is pretty obvious: My friend’s kid could die and she live on. Or going the other way: A tree can thrive after its seed is gone. Even if a tree, or a child, is dependent on a cause for arising, after inception, it continues rolling along based on its own causes and conditions. Its own karma.

This is proof an effect doesn’t belong to the cause. Can not define the cause. Proves nothing at all other than that at one point, the causes (and conditions) for achieving that effect were met. A tree proves there was once a seed. A child proves there was once a mother. The shape these things twist and grow into, or if they grow at all, is due to countless new arisings of circumstance –causes and conditions—some of which may, or may not be, due to the continued influences of what birthed it.

Being a cause is normal, everything in this world is both a cause and an effect. It’s not special at all. I love to ignore all the shit I cause that I don’t like – my own shit is in fact a literal example: I don’t look in the toilet after every bowel movement taking pride it that poop. I don’t believe it defines who I am. Why not? I’m the cause. If I want to claim the fit body I think I caused by the workouts, the A+ I caused by my studying, don’t I need to claim everything I cause as who I am?  

I claim what I am proud of, use it to boost atta, just by being a cause to effects I adore. But it’s arbitrary. Back when I lived in San Fran, I took so much pride in knowing the city like the back of my hand. I was an SFer, how did I know? I could point to every secret staircase, each hidden gem restaurant, all the public bathrooms, and feel pride, proof of ownership. But isn’t that all just an effect of walking the city, of time spent there, of priding myself in getting to know the city because I am already inclined to identify with places? This is not identity, this is just my tendency to build atta, on the causes and effect I am already drawn to claiming.

Conditionality shows why being a cause doesn’t equate to ownership.  Why It can’t prove self. Because everything that is conditional arises based on conditions, and as those shift, so too does the effect. When those dictate the effect ends, it ends. Even I  cause something, that cause itself, and the effect, are continually subject to conditions. Conditions always shifting, not under my control.

When I lived in SF, I had agency in relation to the city: I was able to work towards a future living there, to work towards knowing it, to adjust myself to the environment, to plan and react and try to shape my fate vis-a-vie this place. The only difference between me and the plant, however, is that I  was foolish enough to begin to take prided in that agency. To begin to believe that happens naturally, based on causes and conditions, could somehow be WHO I AM. With agency I stoke atta and yet the nature of agency, and its limitations, are the proof that it can’t be who I am