[Gem]

Originally Posted by Rain95

What you say is true in one sense, but also we can say in another sense that the urge to make an experience other than it is, is at the heart of right practice. It defines the path or action that leads to enlightenment.

If the "experience" we are referring to is a consciousness recognizing it is not the "noise in the head," the ever running thought stream that creates conflicts, emotions, fear, hate and anger and all the rest, then the urge or volition or intent or "will" to make this experience something other than it is, is a good thing.

That will set up an aversion/resistance paradigm. Mindfulness is objective and if you produce a lot of negativity, the meditation will make you conscious of it. When you know it only generates misery for you, there is no way you will consciously and willingly continue doing that.


At first you don't realise - as Christ put it, 'They know not what they do'. After you meditate for a while you realsie 'OMG, this is what I've been doing all this time'. Once seen, it can no longer pass you unawares. It will still come up as you are habitualised in such reactions, but you will catch it every time, like, 'Oh I'm doing that thing again'. You do not want misery, so you do not consciously and willingly continue to generate it. This is not the willful changing of anything. It is the cessation of it.


To illustrate this: you sit to meditate in the mindful fashion, and you proceed to 'body awareness'. As you feel through your body, you notice you have a tense muscle in your leg. You don't try to change it. You simply stop doing that tensing. The relaxation of it is not an effort to make it otherwise; it the cessation of volition that creates that tension.


As you move attention away to other parts of the body, you lose awareness of the leg, but when you come back to pay attention to the leg, you realise it has tensed up again. The tension still occurs because it's habitualised, but you keep noticing, 'oh there's that leg tension again', and each time you notice you cease doing that tensing. You are only tensing it because you know not what you do.

One can make an experience other than it is by dropping the desire to make it other than what it is (if that desire is present)

Yes. In Taoism it is said, "Free from desire you see the mystery. Full of desire you see the manifestations".

If you are just aware and have no desire for 'something else', there's no volition. The awareness without 'tanha' is 'pure awareness' (which is relevant to the 'purification' I mentioned earlier).


The subtle issue with meditation is there is an intent to observe breath or observe body or observe mind or whatever, but there is no volition to make it other than it happens to be.



Change is inevitable, so you are aware, anica-anica.

So the volition of a seeing aware consciousness can lead to liberation, the volition of a thought dominated consciousness can continue or increase the experience of conflict and duality.

Yes.



Intentional observation is another way of saying paying full attention, and you see it 'as it is. This is different to the will of volitionally making it 'as you want it to be'. It's a subtle difference, but also a big difference



These can't go together. You can't have volition and also no volition. You have to cease the volition 'as you want it to be' to see it 'as it is'. Yet there is deliberate intent to 'see it as is', but not a volition to stop the volition.