Slightly off-topic (but it sets up my post), Ajahn Brahmali explored the meaning of paccaya in this essay.
I commented on the etymology of the word “condition” as noted in the American Heritage dictionary, which Miriam Webster seems to confirm. The word derives:
How the English and related languages evolved to its use as a verb is less clear. Regardless, that’s how we end up with the adjective “conditioned” (from the past participle) – as in something is conditioned although we can also say one thing conditions another.
An example from the Cambridge English Language Corpus:
All probabilities are appropriately conditioned on the observed data, and users can find any probabilities of interest.
Also from the Cambridge Dictionary:
trained or influenced mentally so that you do or expect a particular thing without thinking about it
Here’s an example they offer:
If a bear is very conditioned to raiding dustbins, you can yell and bang pots as much as you like and it won’t scare it away.
Which is another way of saying If a bear keeps experiencing the delight of raiding dustbins, it will keep raiding dustbins no matter what you do.
In light of Ajahn Brahmali’s comment here:
For our bear, this would mean:
If a bear is free from this experience of delight every time it raids a dustbin, it will stop raiding dustbins.
This makes more sense to me than “unconditioned” when reading asaṅkhata. Is there any other context outside of the Pali canon where we have a sense of “unconditioned”? It is grammatically correct but not intuitively clear?
However in reading visaṅkhāra in Dhp 154, I see Bhahte Sujato’s point. I note the French translator Fernand Hû chooses a similar concept to demolition:
En même temps qu’à la désagrégation définitive, ma pensée est arrivée à la totale extinction du désir.
that is, according to LaRousse Dictionary la désagrégation =
Séparation des parties qui composent un tout
or the separation of a whole into its parts. Which is wholly different than what our bear is experiencing.