you wrote:And if causes and conditions lead to more causes and cond's, how can something/someone be only in 'response'?


Answer:
For example, before the emergence of Life as we know it, the earth harbored the conditions conducive to the transformation of inorganic matter into organic matter and then into multimolecular compounds and the other evolutionary stages of the growth of LIFE. If this is true of Earth, one must conclude that the entire universe, which incudes earth, must have harbored the power to generate living creatures before the emergence of such creatures.
On a level closer to daily life, animals and plants employ the theoritically lifeless elements of sun,air,water, and minerals in the act of metabolism to produce energy and living tissues. In other words, the environment is the source of material for the generation of individualized life. The environment and the Life form cannot therefore be thought of as two(2) separate things because LIFE is omnipresent throughout the universe and is the Basic substratum of both. Nicheren Daishonin(1222-1282) explanation of the universe as permeated with LIFE predated scientific knowledge by centuries; furthermore, it long ago taught how man ought to live in harmony with his environment which is ultimately a part of the same universal life, he too a manifestation.(HAve i do conflict here with scientific taught??)

youn wrote: 'Nothing can exist in absolute independence of other things or arise of their own accord.' Did you not also say the Buddha/life force always 'was' and 'is'? or do you mean other things?

answer: Life itself has no beginning and it has no end.