[Gem]

Originally Posted by Rain95

I'm not very familiar with the use of the word volition. Does it have a source from some group or teaching or is it a word you decided to use to communicate what you know to be true?

It's an English translation of the Pali "cetana", but it has a range of contextual meanings, and I'm just using volition to mean the urge to make an experience other than it is.

The formal definition online is:



I like the word but then all words have their limits. I wonder if the average person would know what the word means. Besides knowing the formal definition, would they recognize volition in themselves?

Easy to recognise reactivity, which is avoidance, aversion, resistance on one side and craving, clinging, desiring on the other side, and even though this is 'tanha' in Pali, action/reaction are essentially volition because volition is 'cause' regarding kamma.

Could the word "person" be substituted for it in some contexts and retain the same meaning?

Technically yes, as volition, reactivity, is the 'fuel' of ego me my mine I.

Like: just be, without volition

or

just be, without person

Seems like they can communicate the same meaning.

Or the old saying;

Sometimes I sit and think.
Sometimes I just sit.

But then like many teachings on this subject, it is easy for the reader to assume a vegetative like state, a doing nothing, a meaningless state....without merit or purpose.

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to convince people to stop doing and just be, but pure awareness, objective observation is foundational to meditation. It usually takes a while before they understand cessation of volition. Though that is the mindfulness part of it. Metta is more intentional.

A person-less person is mistakenly identified or conceptualized as a vegetable doing nothing type thing because the average person cannot imagine such a state in themselves. If someone has fully identified with the aspects of person, my past, my story, my memories and thoughts...then any reference to such a state not identified with these would mean a person doing nothing, (lazy) or being nothing, wanting nothing, in the full negative concept of that.

Its not as if volition is a bad thing. It's just that volition is the 'cause' in kamma, so in Buddhism they teach 'good-will' = good outcomes and 'ill-will' = bad outcomes, and of course the world is a happy place when people have good-will and it is horrid place when people are malicious. It's plain common sense really, which is the general purpose of metta meditation, but no one is saying people are sensible, right?

But really what is being described is a rising above the norm. The easy lazy path is following thought. Letting it dictate our interpretations and reactions and emotions. To rise above this given takes introspection, self observation, insight into what is within and so more awareness, not usual normal everyday awareness. But then the more one practices these states, the more often and "normal" they can become.

Yes.

I think it was Tolle who said they start out few and short..... with normal thought centered consciousness being the norm, then over time this reverses.... one can stay in the enlightened state most of the time and ego thought centered consciousness comes rarely.

Oh and one more limit with the word volition is it is identified with the "will" in a person. So to be without volition implies to be without "will" when really the will is still there.... it is just the will of the consciousness instead of the "will" of habitual and conditioned thought.

I don't really get that, but what I say is an outpouring of love is endemic to our existential nature, and good-will is really only the absence of the reactive mentalities called 'tahna' in Pali.