Two successive fields of the same order are mutually exclusive, since each is the opposite of the other. They cannot co-exist, therefore. And this is why intention, in keeping a field in being, cannot admit the possibility of an alternative field; for to envisage an alternative field is, precisely, to bring in into being. There is no delay at all. No sooner do I seriously propose to be doing something than I find (if I look) that I am doing it, whether it is to be imagining a bath or to be taking one (in the second case I find myself already engaged in picking up my soap and towel and so on). Now, the relationship between a given field and its more general background field is that of a means to an end (and that end is itself a means to an end of still higher order, and so on[8] until the field 'having-to-do with existence' is reached; but this is the limit, since existence is not a means to anything). Thus intention, in preserving a field, is keeping in being a means to an end. And is this not the definition of action? Action, as it actually takes place, is precisely the continued existence of one particular means to an end, and of one only: if a means to an end is kept in existence, then action is taking place (whatever the resistances may be), and the necessary condition for this is that no contrary action should also be taking place. Two fields of the same order are mutually exclusive: two different means to the same end cannot co-exist. It is inherently impossible for me to be going from A to B by two routes at the same time. I can only be raising my arm if I am intending to be raising it (we are not speaking of volition, which is essentially of a more complex order), that is to say if I am not in the least suspecting that there is any other possibility -- that, in any one of a multitude of different ways, I am not raising it.
When I act there is resistance; action, that is to say, is not distinct from temporalization: a resistant (or material) world and a temporal world are the same thing. But conversely there is no resistance unless I act: only if I have some end in view can there be any obstacle to overcome. If[9] I am intending to be lifting a bucket of water there is a resistance, and this resistance appears as heaviness. Similarly, but more subtly, all the qualities or distinctive features that make up the variety of my world (colours, shapes, timbres, flavours, textures, temperatures, to give some of the simplest; as well as those, more complex, that appear only when my attitude is more evidently emotional -- beauty, ugliness, hatefulness, fearfulness, and the like --; but the list is endless) are simply the various modes of existence of the resistances involved in all action or intention, of the inevitable delays while lower fields arbitrarily change sign. A tiger is terrible because I am fearing; a bucket is heavy because I am lifting; a leaf is visible (i.e. coloured and spatial) because I am looking. These qualities fall into five main groups, and it is thus we can speak of having five senses; and since qualities from different groups freely combine in mixed fields we can speak of having a mind (the whole of my nature is involved in the least of my actions).
Action, as we have described it, appears to be essentially conservative; yet we normally think of it as just the opposite -- to act is to change something. But there is no contradiction. Action changes the present world by withdrawing its protection from unpleasant fields: it ceases not to doubt, when the gradient of feeling at some level arbitrarily changes sign, that the present world at that level completely changes. SEE APPENDIX VII. (Volition or voluntary action -- essentially a reflexive intention to be intending -- here, as elsewhere, complicates the situation but does not alter the principle. Any description of memory must involve at least this order of complexity.) Thus the continued existence of an oriented (significant) and variegated temporal world is nothing else than the consequence of the progressive encounter of the present orientation of the world -- our senses and mind -- with adventitious changes of feeling. Our world is always a hierarchy of fields, whose present orientation is the sum total of all past reorientations, that is to say, of past action; for action, in changing the present world by restricting the level of its change, is ceaselessly reorienting it. And since an orientation only exists when a subordinate orientation is changing (the orientation, for example of a particular verse to other verses or to a poem as a whole, only exists so long as the orientation of the present word to the verse is changing, that is, by the fact of my hearing a poem recited -- Appendix VII will make this clearer), it is action that keeps an oriented world in being; and were action to cease so would the world. The price of our world is perpetual action.[10] 'Which, monks, is old action? The eye is old action..., the ear...the nose...the tongue...the body...the mind is old action.... And which, monks, is new action? It is the action that is done at present by body, speech, or mind.... And which, monks, is cessation of action? It is the attaining of release by cessation of body-action, speech-action, and mind-action.... And which, monks, is the practice leading to the cessation of action? It is just this noble eightfold path....' (Saláyatanasamyutta xv,1) [The expressions 'old action', puránakamma, (as used in this Sutta) and 'ripening of action', kammavipáka, do not appear to mean at all the same thing, and should not be confused. The latter is one of the four acinteyyáni or 'untheorizables'. (Cf. Anguttaran. IV,viii,7)]
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[8] [Remainder of this sentence is crossed out, partly in pencil and partly in pen, apparently on three separate occasions. Over 'until' is penned:] indefinitely; though reflexively [Back to text]
[9] [From here to end of paragraph:] Needs Revision [Back to text]
[10] [Remainder of this Appendix crossed out in pencil.] [Back to text]