 Vasubandhu points out that in fact, there are predictable patterns to the causal fluctuations of thoughts, so it is a mistake to call them unpredictable. Seeing a woman, he says, causes you to think thoughts that you tend to think when you look at women. (If we needed it, here’s confirmation that the implied reader is a heterosexual male—though probably a celibate one.) If you practice leaving a woman alone in your thoughts (for instance, by practicing thinking of the woman’s overprotective father, as monks are taught to do), then when you see a woman you’ll reject her in your thoughts. If you do not practice this, other thoughts arise: “…then those [thoughts] which are most frequent [or clearest], or most proximate arise, because they have been most forcefully cultivated, except when there are simultaneous special conditions external to the body.” (Kapstein 2001a: 370) This is an argument that undermines a naïve trust in the independence of the will. But of course, Vasubandhu adds, just because the mind is subject to conditions does not mean that it will always be the same. On the contrary, it is fundamental to the definition of conditioned things that they are always changing.