 Śāntarakṣita clearly believes that there is something fundamental about the feelings of love and hatred. They are so fundamental that even babies feel them. At the same time, they require experience. So the question is how was the first feeling of love (or hatred) acquired? There might have been a time when humans did not have the feeling of love and they only acquired it at some point in their lives through experience and subsequent repetition of the experience. This sounds like a strange idea precisely because love and hatred are so fundamental to our unenlightened lives that the existence of a time when they did not exist seems impossible. Yet, Śāntarakṣita’s view implies either that there must have been such a time or that there is an infinite chain of these feelings stretching backwards. In TS 1872, Śāntarakṣita makes it clear that he believes in the latter option: