The fourth of the six perfections of a bodhisattva – perseverance, enthusiasm, joyful effort – is the most difficult, and so important. You can have patience coming out of your ears, but if you haven’t got perseverance, you won’t succeed. You can have generosity and morality, concentration, but you won’t succeed if you don’t have perseverance.
The word is good: “persevere,” you know, never give up. Another term they use is “joyful effort.” Well, that’s the result: right now, making effort ain’t joyful, we know that. Another term is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is like the attitude that gets you this perseverance and gets you this joyful effort, you know?
All this sounds very nice, but we can’t quite imagine how you get it and what it is. The most easy way to understand this clearly is to see it in terms of the opposite, then it’s crystal clear what it means. This is so, so important to understand, you know?
I think in the text they talk about three kinds of laziness. Laziness is the name of the obstacle: enthusiasm is the opposite: if we don’t have enthusiasm, we’re going to have laziness. But we have to understand this laziness. There’s three kinds, three levels, but I think I’ll do it slightly differently. It’s the same, effectively, but divided slightly differently.
The first one is the laziness of “can’t be bothered,” and the thing you can’t be bothered doing is the thing that takes effort. And why it takes effort is because you don’t know how to do it, it’s pretty obvious: if you knew how to do it, you wouldn’t have to make effort – it would be effortless.
If you’re going to go to the gym, you’ve got to make effort. And what keeps you going to the gym is the reminder of the result: a nice handsome body, nice, cute, well-muscled body, you know? If you forget the goal, then you’ll stop going, I guarantee.
You’ve got to know the reason in order to make effort. And of course your goal here is your own development, your goal is all these qualities – that’s very hard to have enthusiasm about. Attachment is so tremendous – attachment to comfort is so tremendous, so overwhelming, you know?
The first kind of laziness: “can’t be bothered.” But when you know the benefits of growing your mind, and you know the benefits of being less angry, less neurotic, less jealous – and you have to think about that – and when you know the benefits of not having future suffering, then that will energize you to make effort to abide by the laws of karma, keep your vows, do your practice, and purify, because you know the reason, you know the benefits.
That will energize you to do it, and you’ll go beyond that laziness, you’ll go beyond your comfort zone – just like at the gym.
This is where we can lie to ourselves: you go to the gym, and you’re on the machine, you know, and as soon as you start having to puff and pant, that’s when you stop, isn’t it – too much effort. But you lie to yourself: “Oh, I went to the gym today.” Well, you didn’t. Nothing will change – we know that – until that point comes where you have to start puffing and panting: that’s when the changes start to happen. We know that!
If we want to grow as a human being, we have to make effort – you can’t get around it. But it’s very hard to argue against the attachment to comfort – it’s so primordial, our comfort zone, so primordial.
It seems so simple: attachment to comfort. It seems much easier to give that up than, say, giving up attachment to sex. No, it’s not! It’s kind of completely pervading us, you know?
The second kind of laziness, now, is really tricky. It’s called, “I’m too busy, I’ll do it later.” This is a straightforward lie, okay? Later never comes, and we know that. Okay, sometimes it will – you’re being sensible – but you’ve got to see the reason we put things off, and it’s the same reason. What is the thing you procrastinate doing? The thing that takes effort – that’s it! But you lie to yourself.
The first kind of laziness has to come first. The first thought is when you see that job you have to do: “Can’t be bothered!” And then you add a lie on top, getting yourself off the hook: “Oh, I’ll do it later, phew.” No, you won’t. It just makes it worse, you know?
This is one of our worst crimes against ourselves: procrastinating, putting things off. It’s a chronic disease, and it happens in a millionth of a second because of bone laziness, you know? We all know this.
The third kind of laziness – which is hard to see, but it plays a major role – is, “No, I’m not capable, I can’t do that, not possible, not capable, I couldn’t achieve that.” And that can be quite subtle. We talk about the fear of failure – well, excuse me, we’re already failures. This one is, “I can’t do it, not possible, I’m not capable.” And it’s very subtle, it’s hard to see it, you know?
How do we counteract this laziness, especially the first two? “Can’t be bothered” and “I’ll do it later.” Remembering that the second one is just an added one on top of the first one – and it’s a lie. It just makes us feel better: we got off the hook, you know, but it’s just a lie.
We counteract them by catching our mind. It’s incredibly hard because attachment’s so addicted to feeling good. And the second it’s going to get threatened, we have a panic attack, you know?
The irony is we all know that when you finally do the job, it only took about 10 minutes, and you feel so happy. We all know that, but for some of us it’s a chronic disease – we can see that. It’s just laziness, but we lie to ourselves: “Oh, I’m too busy, I have to do this, I have to do that instead.” It’s just lying! Be honest with yourself! Okay, you’ve got to prioritize sometimes – that’s different – but we’ve got to be sincere with ourself.
It’s very much to do with passivity – passivity – not enough enthusiasm to want things to be different, you know? We’ve got to catch our minds, I tell you. Because we’re always saying, “I’ll do it later,” which means “I’m too busy,” which means we’re prioritizing something else.
It sounds very valid, and it can be sometimes – it’s being reasonable, fine – but we use it as an excuse to get off the hook for the thing we don’t want to do: “Oh, but I was busy doing other things.” Well, it depends on how you prioritize. That’s where you’ve got to check up.
In other words, we need to be very clear about the benefit of the thing we want to do. When we know the benefits, we’ll prioritize it, no question.
I remember one time a friend of mine, whenever I’d see her, she always apologized for not coming to the center for teachings. I never cared – I didn’t mind, I wasn’t expecting her. But she’d apologize and say how busy she was with the kids, no time to go to the teachings, etc., etc.
One time I was very naughty, and I said, “That’s interesting, isn’t it?” I said, “What if there was a check for a thousand dollars at the center for you?”
Because we know the benefit of a thousand dollars, it’s effortless to say, “Come on, kids, hop in the back of the car, just got to whiz off to the center, get this thousand-dollar check.” Even if it’d take an hour we’d do it with a happy mind – because we know the benefits of a thousand dollars.
The key one is don’t lie to ourselves. Don’t lie to ourselves! Be honest. Yes, sometimes you really have to make that decision not to do something, so own the decision, don’t blame other conditions for it.
That’s what we do. We say, “Oh, I’m so busy, I can’t possibly do it.” “Oh, I’m so tired, I couldn’t possibly do it.” Don’t lie to ourselves! Make a decision: I can’t be bothered and I’m going to choose to stay here and do this. I feel there’s more benefit to staying here. I feel I have to go to work so I don’t get sacked, and so I can’t go to the teaching.
Don’t lie to ourselves! Be much more authentic, more clear. Because if you lie, you don’t see the problem. You’ve got to see the problem, then try and fix it.
You can’t be super-human yet. Just be more sincere and more truthful: “I’m not brave enough to prioritize that over that. Hopefully, one day I will be.” We can say it like that, you know? Be sincere. Otherwise we can’t grow.