... Is there another kind of action which is not derived from choice or will? Don't say, "How am I to act without will? How am I to live in this world without choice? Everything I do is based on choice, whether it is choosing the colour for my trousers, or something else. If there is to be no choice, and therefore no exercise of will, then I shall just float; there will be no stability, no anchor".

That is your natural reaction, isn't it? You say, "If I don't exercise will, what shall I do?" You put that question only when you don't see the implications of the whole activity of will. Will is essentially based on pleasure and resistance, and whatever order it may bring about is actually disorder; and when once you understand this whole process of will, then you won't touch it, you won't go near it, because fundamentally you want order...

You can't just say, "Well, I won't live in that way" - it has no meaning. Whereas, if you understand what is implied in the whole pattern of the old, which is thought and action derived from will and choice, then it naturally drops away...

This whole process, then what is action without will? And what then is change? When you change consciously by saying, "I will not smoke", "I will not drink", "I will not do this", "I will not do that", when you deliberately set out to bring about a change in yourself, don't you find that in this deliberate change there is a great deal of resistance and waste of energy? You are resisting, battling with the old habits, the old patterns of thought, hoping thereby to find a new way of life. This is quite a familiar pattern, isn't it? Where there is a deliberate choice, a deliberate intention to bring about a change, there is not only resistance but a waste of energy, and therefore there is no change at all...

So, I see that where there is deliberate action to bring about a change in myself, there is no real change at all, but only a waste of energy. Therefore change can take place only when there is no conscious effort to change. Change must happen without your deliberately wanting to change. Change comes when you understand the whole pattern of the image, and how it has been created - the image based on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of psychological pain, from which there is choosing, exercising the will in action.

This pattern repeats over and over again, and within the field of this pattern we want change; but any such change is still a resistance, a waste of energy, and therefore it is no change at all. Change in the real sense of the word means an explosion, and to explode you need energy, and to have energy there must be no resistance. It is a change into which thought as will has not entered at all. Change is like virtue. Virtue that is cultivated ceases to be virtue. Being full of vanity, when I deliberately set about being humble and practice the virtue of humility every day, it has no meaning. But to explode vanity without the exercise of will, unconsciously, is to have complete energy with which to look at the quality called vanity; and in that there is humility.

So, virtue is order brought about without a deliberate thought or intention - and in that there is great beauty...