9/3/2026 “Intention: The Factor Animating Choice and Karma” with Dennis Warren

Choice plays a pivotal role in the architecture of Buddhist practice. For example, it surfaces in the five strategies for dealing with distracting thoughts, the four types of Right Effort, and the five ways of letting go or abandoning unskillful states of mind. Each set of options asks that we weight the circumstances and select a course of action.

And yet, curiously, the Pali Canon — that vast record of the Historical Buddha’s psychology, teachings and methods — contains no word or phrase equivalent to our conventional sense of “choice.”

This reflects the Historical Buddha’s tendency to redirect attention away from the surface of a question towards what he considered its root. If choice, as commonly understood, is not the true axis of decision-making, then what is? And what might this reveal, as a practical matter, about the nature of skillful decision making and how it can be embodied in practice and life?