Romans 7:19 Meaning For the Good Which I Desire

This is the split running through every person, the higher will reaching for one thing while the lower nature carries out another. 2 laws move in one body: the aspiration seated in the mind that intends the good, and the pull of the flesh, the accumulated habit and appetite, that overrides intention and does the opposite. The good willed and left undone is the higher self seeing clearly yet lacking the mastered power to act, while the evil done unwilled is the automatic momentum of the body-mind running on its old grooves. The struggle is not between a person and some outside force but between 2 levels inside the one self, the awakened purpose and the sleeping mechanism. What happens in a person is the plain daily experience of knowing the better and doing the worse, because the higher intention has not yet gained command over the lower machine it lives in.

Five lenses on the divided will, moving from the intention that stalls to the self that was never in charge.

Cetanā: Intention Cetanā is the aim you set before you act. The good that you would is cetanā, a bow drawn and pointed straight at the mark. Drawing the bow is one thing and loosing the arrow another, and the good you do not do is the aim that never leaves the string, a resolve that dies somewhere between the mind and the hand.

Kilesa: Defilements The kilesas are the mind's defilements: greed, hatred, and delusion. The evil which you would not is their work, a fire that flares and shuts your hand around the match before the wish to drop it can move. You can watch the flame the whole time and still be burned, and so the thing you hate, that you do.

Anusaya: Latent tendencies An anusaya is a defilement lying asleep beneath a calm surface. Even in the hour you sincerely mean well, it waits underground beyond the reach of the good you would, like the root of a weed left in the soil. Cut the shoot and the bed looks clear, yet the root pushes up the same growth again, and so the evil you would not comes back, however firmly you meant otherwise.

Saṅkhāra: Conditioned formations Saṅkhāra is the conditioning that repeated action wears into the mind, like ruts worn into a road. Each earlier time the evil got done deepened the groove, so now the deed rolls down its own track before the good you would can grab the reins. The cart goes where the ruts already lead, and habit hands over the act while your intention is still deciding which way to turn.

Anattā: Not-self Anattā means no fixed self sits in command. The "I" that would the good and the "I" that does the evil feel like two owners of one house, since no single self was ever the master to enforce one will over the other. Look for the one in charge and you cannot find him, and the split between what you would and what you do stops being a riddle, because there was never a sole ruler to hold the two together.