Rosemary and I don't use the term "choiceless awareness." But from what we understand there are many teachers, especially in the West, who are using this term, "choiceless awareness." And we understand it a bit similar to this: you're sitting in front of a TV, it's on, with programs arising without our conscious choice, like horror programs, romances, dramas, whatever, and you just keep watching. It doesn't get you anywhere. A person starts enjoying just watching things arise, exist, pass, arise, exist, pass, change. That's just watching impermanence. Choiceless awareness practiced in that way brings little wisdom if any of the Law of Cause and Effect, or Dukkha and it's cause. A person just sits and watches.
A person could feel very peaceful, because they're not trying to do anything. But still they see the programs that just keep changing and changing, and sometimes the thoughts are not beneficial and sometimes they are beneficial, and it just keeps changing by itself and there's no active work to purify.
In the practice here we have the Four Great Efforts. We don't want to sit and watch a TV channel that's got a bad show on it. You make an effort to turn it off, you make an effort to turn on a good station. The Four Great Efforts are: the effort to Prevent, which means working to prevent the unbeneficial thoughts from arising. Then there's the effort to Let Go, which means that if the hindrances have already arisen, we apply methods to let them go can. Then there's the effort to Develop the beneficial qualities. And there's the effort to Maintain them.
The practice here is very active, extremely active. Even though we're sitting still, standing still, walking back and forth, we're very active with the Four Great Efforts. From what we understand, with many people who practice choiceless awareness, there's really no efforts going on at all, and then of course, purification can't be done so easily if at all. They may not understand the teaching from the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness in the Satipattana Sutta, that we practice in order to understand how Hindrances arise, how to let them go and develop the understanding of how they will not arise again in the future. As well, how the Seven Factors of Enlightenment arise, and how to make them stronger.