Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Geshe Sonam Rinchen explores the fourth perfection—joyous effort or perseverance—and its counterforce, laziness. Building on the first three perfections (generosity, ethics, patience), he explains why wholehearted engagement in practice matters: without it, spiritual work becomes half-hearted or abandoned. He identifies three types of laziness that block progress: procrastination (putting off practice for everyday tasks), time-wasting (endless absorption in worldly pursuits while neglecting meditation), and discouragement (feeling incapable of enlightenment). He offers practical antidotes: setting aside definite time daily for spiritual practice, reflecting on death and the preciousness of human life, and recognizing that even insects possess Buddha-nature and can reach enlightenment. He illustrates with an anecdote of an overly intense meditator on an Indian train, emphasizing the need for balanced, sustainable effort rather than fevered intensity followed by burnout. Pitched at practitioners developing understanding of the bodhisattva path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 6PQ.mp3
UUID: 00dac8b4-03ef-4721-91cd-2630e77a39a8
Teacher: Geshe Sonam Rinchen
Collection: The Six Perfect Qualities (Geshe Sonam Rinchen)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,802
Yesterday, we were talking about the practice of generosity and ethics and patience. The essence of Buddhism is to give up all forms of violence towards others, and that’s the basis. And then after that, to try and work for others benefit, to do things that are useful to others in addition to giving up things that harm them. To do these things, both of these things effectively, one must cultivate patience. If we don’t have patience, if we’re not able to bear things that tolerate things that other people do, we’ll immediately feel the need to retaliate as soon as anybody does something which we dislike.
If we feel the need to retaliate, to take some form of revenge, then we won’t be able to give up forms of violence against others. We won’t be able to do things that are useful to them. The thing which damages our practice of patience is anger. Anger has many different defects. The ones that we can’t see, the drawbacks that we can’t see are that it destroys our positive energy.
But then there are also many drawbacks which we can see, which we can recognize for ourselves. Yesterday we were talking about the different forms of patience and we spent most of the time talking about patience which doesn’t take account of harm directed towards the person who has it. Then apart from that kind of patience which doesn’t get upset when others harm us, we also need patience or tolerance which is able to bear hardship. We need that kind of patience or tolerance. And that kind of patience or tolerance is based on lack of attachment to happiness and the ability to see suffering and problems as an ornament.
In our world, are so many different kinds of problems that arise, difficulties, hardships and even gross suffering. Since these things are happening all the time, since that’s happening constantly, it becomes really important for us to develop the ability to transform these into something positive, to transform these into factors which can help and be conducive to our spiritual practice and development, and to prevent our minds from becoming disturbed, from becoming troubled by these problems that we encounter. The difficulties that we encounter may have immediate causes that precipitate that particular situation. But the underlying cause is something that we ourselves have done in the past, the imprint of which is fruiting at that time. When we find ourselves in a difficult situation, when we are experiencing problems and suffering, we should think that a negative action which we performed in the past is now fruiting, is now bearing fruit.
We’re experiencing the result of that action. And therefore the momentum of that negative action is coming to an end. We should feel that we’re actually experiencing the fruit of an action which ordinarily we might have had to experience in an unfortunate rebirth. That we’re experiencing it now that the momentum of that negative action is coming to an end, and therefore we should feel happy because we’re not going to have to experience the consequences of that negative action again. It’s just like somebody who’s being condemned to death if he has his hands cut off, he’ll probably feel happy that he wasn’t put to death, that he got away with that punishment.
When we find ourselves in a difficult situation, when we are experiencing hardships, we should take it as a sign that it’s necessary to get rid of things which cause suffering. So we have to get rid of actions and emotions which cause suffering, which cause problems and difficulties, and strive to create the causes for pleasant experiences, for happiness. So we should take the hardship as a sign we should understand its meaning. That that is the fruit of negative action and therefore if we don’t want to experience that kind of situation, we must do something to prevent ourselves from creating the causes for that kind of experience. If we can remain serene under those sort of circumstances, if we are able to retain our tranquility, then we are practicing this kind of patience which is able to cope with hardships, which is able to bear hardships and it adds tremendously to our own mental stability and happiness.
So then there’s the third kind of patience which is patience of definitely thinking about the Dharma, of being able to tolerate Dharma practice. So whether it means sitting in meditation or doing things which are positive and wholesome, cultivating love and compassion and so on, thinking about emptiness or the qualities of the Three Jewels or whatever it is. Being able to actually bear the hardships of being involved in practice. If we investigate the perfections carefully, we’ll see that all the parts and stages can be included within each perfection. So when we talk about the first three perfections, of course both layman and ordained people should practice the first three generosity, ethics and patience.
But it’s particularly recommended that lay people practice the first three or concentrate more on the first three because it’s easier for them in their situation, in their daily situation to practice that. So it’s important for us to remember that these are things that we can apply in daily life and we should make an attempt to recall them. When we talk about joyous effort or perseverance, it means taking a delight taking a a delight in wholesome action. Whatever we undertake, if we undertake any kind of constructive action, our ability to complete it depends on how much perseverance or joyous effort we can put into it. All mundane and transmundane qualities or developments depend on joyous effort or perseverance.
It’s important for us to undertake whatever it is with this kind of joyousness that we should try to have a feeling of delight. So whether it’s our daily commitments, if we have certain recitations and prayers to say every day, or whether it’s meditation that we’re doing, or whether we’re trying to do things for other people, whatever it is, we should try to do it in this way, to do it joyously rather than do it like a car that isn’t hasn’t got a very strong engine going uphill. And the thing which prevents us from developing this kind of joyous attitude, joyous perseverance is laziness. So, the first kind is laziness which is a form of idleness or indolence. So you don’t want to get on with whatever it is right away.
You tend to procrastinate. You want to put it off. So that kind of laziness, the laziness which tends towards idleness or indolence, which procrastinates, is one kind of laziness which prevents one from developing joyous perseverance in practicing. So we are all quite familiar with that tendency to procrastinate. So we all procrastinate in our daily lives, the ordinary things that we do.
We tend to procrastinate anyway. And then what we tend to do is always put off the Dharma because there are so many other things that have to fitted in. So, we tend to leave Dharma practices, leave things like meditation and saying prayers and so on, mantras. We leave those till the very, very end and try to fit everything else in before those. So what’s a really good idea is to try to put aside a definite time every day.
To set aside a time every day for doing some kind of spiritual practice so that that doesn’t always get pushed along and left to the very last. It’s very easy for us, if we don’t do that, to never find an opportunity to actually sit down and meditate or to do any kind of practice. There is a story of one Lama who said that the first twenty years of my life I didn’t even meet the teachings. And then the next twenty, I kept on thinking, well, I should get on with it now. And then the next twenty you spend saying, well, I’m getting too old to do it.
I won’t make it And that’s the story of a life which has been wasted. So the idea is to find a middle way, to set aside a little time every day. It’s not realistic to think that one’s going to be able to practice very intensively if one’s living an ordinary life. One’s not going to be able to sit and meditate all day. So what we have to do is to find a middle way to set aside a certain amount of time every day that is actually feasible.
The perfect counteraction to this desire to put things off all the time, especially in the context of our practice, is to think about impermanence and death, to think about our own mortality and the imminence of death, and also to think about the preciousness of our human life, the fantastic potential that we have at this point. If we look hard what we do in our heads, we’ll see that it’s really quite poor the way we organize ourselves because we probably have all sorts of plans for the future. Most people have all sorts of plans, all sorts of things that they hope they’re going to do. But the space spiritual practices in that, the space left for that is very small. In fact, they may not even come into those plans.
If you do have plans in that direction, then that’s fine and you can feel pleased about it. But if you don’t have any plans about that sort of thing, then you can see that you setting up everything to be effective in wasting your life. And then we need to look at where the emphasis lies in those plans. Are those plans about ourselves? Are they about our own happiness and well-being?
Or are they plans to do with other people’s happiness, other people’s well-being? So we can look at ourselves. This is something that only we can know when we look at our private thoughts. And if our plans are to do with others’ well-being, with others’ happiness, then that’s very, very good. Then we are have become altruistic in our attitudes.
And Buddhism is all about the mind. It’s about what’s happening in your mind. It hasn’t so much to do with outward outward behavior. It has to do primarily with one’s mental attitudes, with one’s attitudes, and that’s what makes it profound. So because it’s to do with thought, it becomes really profound and something which is connected with physical or verbal activity primarily is not so profound.
When we die, we leave this gross body behind and it’s the continuum of our consciousness which passes on, which passes to the next life. So it’s important for us to somehow create a connection between our mind and the Dharma, the Dharma teachings, and to actually practice and gain insights. Our aim should be to transform our minds, to transform our attitudes. And of course, the state of mind, our state of mind does affect our physical and verbal behavior. But physical and verbal behavior is not paramount.
It’s our state of mind which is the most important thing. Inclination towards bad actions. So laziness, laziness in the form of an inclination, a strong habit or liking for bad or unwholesome actions. Difficulty doing all sorts of things which are not very constructive. One never gets tired, one never experiences tiredness when one’s doing those things.
Talking about all sorts of useless things, you know, just gossiping on and talking about business and about sewing. Again said about that one never feels tired. He says. Well, we were doing some of that last night to make a string for prayer beads. But he says you can do those things for ages. You don’t experience any tiredness when you’re doing all these sort of things which are not very important.
We do have this tendency to be absolutely tireless when it’s something that we’re interested in but which isn’t necessarily very constructive. We do have this quality and that’s not what’s called joyous effort or perseverance. That’s just called obstinacy. So people really whatever their worldly interests are, normally people are quite tireless in pursuing them. They can spend hours of energy and effort on those sort of things.
Whereas it’s very difficult for them to spend even a short time doing something which is connected with spiritual practices. So we need to see that those things are essenceless, that they don’t have any essence. They’re not useful in their essence. We spend so much time and effort on them, but actually, they’re not going to help us in the long run. That when we die, they’re not going to be able to they won’t have affected us in any positive way.
So in this respect, they’re essenceless and we have to recognize them as being such. So basically this kind of laziness is not the first one was the laziness of procrastinating and the second is the laziness of wasting time. And the third one is laziness which is discouragement, feeling discouraged. That kind of discouragement, most of us experience at some time and it’s the feeling that I could never attain enlightenment. I could never become a fully enlightened being or I could never give up my present lifestyle and practice more intensively.
It’s just this feeling, it’s this kind of defeatism. So what you need to overcome that defeatism is some courage. You need to think, even if I have to do this one practice like just trying to recognize the preciousness of human life, even if I have to do this one practice for my whole life in order eventually to become enlightened, I’m prepared to do it. So you need to generate that kind of courageous attitude. So we shouldn’t think that we’re going to achieve things quickly.
Our desire to get there quickly, our desire to get there quickly is very often leads to discouragement and disappointment when we see that we’re not making the progress we thought we should be making or could be making. When we realize that we’re not really making a lot of progress quickly, it often leads to discouragement. Therefore we need to take a long term perspective. We need to stop being in a hurry about our spiritual achievements. Often, you know, people at the very beginning when they first involve themselves in the dharma, they feel very very enthusiastic and they think they’re going to really be able to achieve something quickly.
And then after a short time, their interest wanes. They become less interested, less enthusiastic because they feel that they’re not getting anywhere. Sometimes see people when they first start out that they sit meditating everywhere on railway stations and you know in the most improbable places. You know where there’s a lot of hustle and bustle going on around them. They’re so sort of intense about their practices and it’s quite nauseating actually.
Of course that has some you know some positive points. I see this was an Indian actually. Gen Rinpoche remembers when we were travelling up from the south of India and then was a Sikh, it was an Indian person actually, who was sort of all meditating and sort of really into it. Sitting on somebody else’s seat and hadn’t paid for his ticket. And he absolutely wouldn’t budge.
He just stayed like that. And you know the ticket collector came and people were trying to talk to him and he was just absolutely engrossed. Yeah. It wasn’t anything. They couldn’t do anything.
The people who were supposed to be sitting there had some of his mates with him and they got thoroughly fed up and they finally just picked him up. And then he he then this guy absolutely roared. He let out a great roar. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I remember. Then as soon as he got a chance, he sat down again and started again. And then somebody pulled somebody communication cord and I mean it was just a whole big number. I remember police came.
And he wouldn’t talk to the police either. And then some Sikhs got on because he was a Sikh and then they were pleading with him to come off, get up and leave that seat and you know, get off the train and then eventually they got him off. Yeah. Yeah. So one of them took hold of his ear and that must mean something special for Sikhs.
We’re not sure what, but anyway. And then he went quite quietly. So he says, you know, you have to find appropriate places to practice your meditation. So he says, how is that for meditation nobody can disturb you? So he again says that it’s important you know to find a sort of moderate way to do things.
Not to be overly intense in one’s practices and then eventually abandon them. So we need to find a happy medium. There’s a good reason why we shouldn’t feel discouraged. We shouldn’t feel that we’re not capable of doing these things. That we are not capable of generating these insights and of eventually attaining Buddhahood because the Buddha himself has said that even insects, even a fly has Buddha-nature.
Even a fly has Buddha-nature and eventually, through many lifetimes, can achieve enlightenment. So if that’s possible, then so can we. We have Buddha-nature. We have the potential, the seed for attaining enlightenment. As human beings, we have the ability to discriminate between what is wholesome, useful, and what is harmful.
And if we actually involve ourselves, if we actually involve ourselves enthusiastically in the practice, in paths, in trying to generate the insights which lead to Buddhahood, then we certainly can achieve it. And you know, we read in some of the Buddhist texts about bodhisattvas who have the ability to give the limbs of their bodies, their eyes, their heads, whatever. They have the ability to sacrifice their bodies and one needs to develop such an ability to sacrifice in order to reach enlightenment. Well that shouldn’t make us frightened at this point. These are things which are not for us to do now.
They’re not the things that we should be doing now. What we should be doing now is gradually training ourselves to enhance our willingness to give. And by enhancing this willingness to give, we eventually will reach a stage when giving away these things, when sacrificing our body or our limbs will just be like giving vegetables. And when it becomes easy, when it becomes easy to do, when it’s easy and effortless, that is the time when you should do it, not beforehand, not when it demands tremendous sacrifice. When we think about Buddhas in fully enlightened beings, think of their infinite qualities and we think, oh, how could I ever have such qualities?
How could I ever have such countless qualities, such countless skills and abilities as a Buddha? But then there are all sorts of techniques. There are countless techniques for developing these insights and these techniques are available to us. So if we make use of the techniques which are available, we too can actually develop the qualities that they have. We need to be courageous.
We need to be courageous and overcome this sense of defeatism, this sense of discouragement that we have which is just a form of laziness. There are different kinds of enthusiastic effort or joyous effort. There’s the armor like joyous effort. So this joyous perseverance is something which bodhisattvas have. These six perfections are the activities that Bodhisattvas engage in.
A Bodhisattva has this armor like perseverance which enables him to feel that he’s prepared to to endure eons of of burning in the hells or in the lower realms for the welfare of a single of a single living creature. They never feel anxious about the prospect of having to take rebirth in cyclic existence, of having to take rebirth in cyclic existence and having to endure difficulties for others. They never feel depressed about it. Bodhisattvas who are able to work most effectively for others are not governed by contaminated actions and negative emotions. And so they don’t take rebirth, a rebirth propelled by such negative emotions and contaminated actions.
And since they don’t have the causes for experiencing suffering, when they take rebirth in cyclic existence, it’s not the same as in our case. Since it’s just the same for them, whether they’re reborn, whether they are in a pure land or whether they are in the world because they’ve got rid of all the causes which create suffering. So they don’t experience suffering in the way that we do. They don’t experience suffering as we do. So for them there’s no difference between taking birth in the world, the world that we know, and taking birth in a pure land.
So Bodhisattva is able to endure cyclic existence when he takes birth into the world. He’s able to endure the situation in the world because he’s not experiencing suffering in the way that we experience suffering because he’s got rid of the causes for suffering. But on the other hand, we need to develop a distaste for the kind of existence that we experience for our own personal cyclic existence that we experience which is determined by negative emotions and contaminated actions. And it’s this that we have to develop distaste for but later as a bodhisattva we will have a willingness to return to the world, to be involved in the world because our situation is very different and because we’ll be working for others exclusively for others’ welfare. So a Bodhisattva when he takes birth in the world for others benefit, it’s not through these negative emotions and contaminated actions.
And so we have to understand the difference between his involvement in the world and our own uncontrollable involvement in the world. So in this way, we have to develop perseverance which is armor like. It’s not so much involvement in the world. The bodhisattva’s birth as a human Put it this way, a bodhisattva’s birth as a human is different to our own birth as a human because his birth as a human is directed simply for the benefit of others and it’s a process over which he has control whereas our birth as beings is an uncontrollable process because it’s the result of certain things that we have done in the past, certain negative actions and certain contaminated actions even if they were virtuous, even if they were wholesome, they were still underlain by certain negative emotions and mental states.