[Gem]

I think I just forge ahead here, become a little more specific, as I really only said that truthfulness is a foundation, which alludes more generally to the ethics practice is based on. I wonder if people have a sense of goodness, purity and freedom that underpins the discourse on ethics, and gives rise to such things as 'precepts'. The formality of the sila vow is meant only in allusion to the deeper virtue - and is not meant as a promise of obedience.

This has nothing to do with conformity to religious tenets or to adherence to religious rules, as when I speak of truthfulness we are conscious of the implicit in utter disregard of the explicit, so though we might take the ethical vows, we do so not in obedience, but in the wisdom of the virtue which can not be taught, learned or reduced to knowledge - but is already in essence of our wisdom.

Nothing in my discourse can be taught to anyone. There is no knowledge here to be learned, remembered and recounted later on. The whole dynamic of the known with its right and wrong, agreement and disagreement, question and answer is never going to approach the actuality of mindfulness, because, quite simply, you are consciously aware, and no one can deny the presence of mind or the fact that 'this' is the experience. I state the obvious, yet I don't know why, how, what it is, or anything at all about it. Only that 'this' is 'as it is'.

From truthfulness the truth is implied, and I don't need a philosophical expose, as the whole school of reason pertains to a 'truth statement', and the merit of propositions is the conclusions of thoughts, but mindfulness is 'to be aware' and awareness is prior to the thought, so thought, be it a true proposition or a false statement, is 'observable'. The truth I allude to, then, is not the factuality of anything said, but the nature of thought itself - and I don't know anything about thought apart from its noticeable occurance. I 'see it as it is'.

Mindfulness, not in regard to thought per-se, but in regard to all experience, in the sense that 'this' is happening regardless of anything I care to say about it. Mindfulness is 'awareness of this'.

This means there is nothing to do, and not-doing is the art of the practice, the exploratory inquiry, the discovery of what is true - as one may inquire of themselves if they have any ability at all to do anything to make 'this' other than 'it is' in this moment of conscious recognition. Is it true that when you stop to notice 'this' 'as it is', did you cease all volitional efforts in order to realise what 'this is like' in the way it is experienced?

If we are led by this inquiry to discover in ourselves the nature which is alluded to, we may realise the way practice is.