Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “What stops us from making effort?” is the practical question Khensur Rinpoche poses at the centre of this 77-minute public talk on joyous effort — one of the six perfections. He begins by grounding the concept in everyday terms: learning to write, training as a doctor, and practising carpentry all depend on sustained effort, and without it neither oneself nor others benefit. He then defines joyous effort precisely as taking delight in skillful, beneficial action, and identifies three obstacles that block it: outright laziness, drifting into trivial or unhelpful activities, and the dull apathy of self-defeatism (“I can’t do anything”). The antidote pairs honest self-examination with reflection on impermanence — life passes, and without effort no goal, secular or spiritual, is ever reached. Accessible to practitioners at any level.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 1989 11 04 PT Joyous Effort.mp3
UUID: 3d9a079b-4a72-4fa6-a676-db04fbd451b6
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-11-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 77.4 minutes
Words: ~1,180
Setting the motivation for listening to this present teaching, and we should try to develop the the attitude, the intention to listen to this in the context of compassion and you know, if I from my side, I I and goes on to explain how very important effort is in the passage in our spiritual path. That it is a great benefit and it is the essential point which is to be developed. And he goes on to explain that no matter what our aim might be, no matter what purpose we’re setting ourselves towards that it is effort which will help us to achieve that goal and this applies both to secular and to spiritual realm. And these excellent qualities come about that all the excellent qualities that we develop come about through a a type of training in achieving all our various activities that we set ourselves to. It is to say that we pursue them with effort.
By way of a simple example of training and developing some type of excellent qualities, some type of wisdom or learning even the writing of being able to learn how to write the letters, the alphabet. By means of these we can set forth, we can express ourselves and in turn others can understand what it is we’re trying to express. So we ourselves are temporarily benefited from training and learning how to learn the alphabet writing and being able to express ourselves and others are benefited in turn by. Another simple example would be if one had developed, had educated, had been educated in training oneself as a doctor, for example. And by means of this training one would be able to diagnose others’ illness and be able to describe the actual remedy whereby to cure their illness. In this sense, crafts that we can train in whether it’s simply building labor or carpentry or food processing, all of these bring about, they bring benefits to others. On the other hand, if one has no particular training, how does such a result come about? How do we actually develop ourselves with various training and develop educational skills and craft skills?
This all comes about on the importance of effort. Effort is the cause for such development. If we don’t make an effort, then we’re not going to be of any benefit neither to oneself or to others. So the greater that we have trained ourselves, have developed very skills, that we were going to be of benefit not only to ourselves, to others. And this benefit comes about through the practice of effort.
If we have not made any effort towards training ourselves, cultivating various skills, then we’re not going to be a benefit either to oneself or or to others. Taking of joy in practicing skillful action. The taking of joy and implementing skillful action. By skillful actions, we mean those types of actions which have the quality of benefiting oneself and others both temporally and ultimately and taking and. So in general, effort is to take the taking of joy in implementing skillful actions involving oneself in activities which are skillful which benefit others. We can talk about in terms of activities.
Between these two types of activities. Activities which benefit others and oneself, other activities which harm either oneself or others, and those which are neutral. But we investigating a particular activity, and we come to understand that it’s beneficial, it’s going to be beneficial in terms of the present situation additionally in the future, then we have to implement effort in order to bring about that. On the other hand, if making use of our wisdom, understanding a particular activity is of no benefit but even more than that is a harmful activity, then it’s necessary that we cease making effort trying to implement that to achieve that activity. Effort — why is it that you might not have benefit both oneself and others?
But quite often we simply can’t be bothered. We don’t have any desire to make the effort. To actually make the effort involves — feels rather comfortable just to do nothing. So the second type of thought to develop into a joyous effort would be absorbing oneself in activities which have no benefit. And the third — a crop or business does not have a life force.
It cannot achieve human ends, the goal of a human being. And likewise, one who has great intelligence — if we don’t make use of that intelligence, it’s as if we didn’t have it and one cannot achieve whatever goals one sets oneself upon. So we should try to couple our intelligence and our effort. These two are mutually reciprocally beneficial, benefiting one another and mutually supporting one another. Together, these two coupled together, there’s nothing that we cannot achieve.
There’s nothing that I cannot do. There’s nothing that I cannot attain. If we think in this way, in this way, then we will be able to cease this attitude of self-defeatism thinking, oh, I can’t do anything. This feeling of self-insufficiency which is in fact laziness. And then the second thought with respect to the development of joyous effort, better business.
And I’d say continue involving yourself in activities which are of little or no benefit. Beginning to examine what you’re actually involving yourself in and are they of any benefit? Beginning to see that you’re simply more often than not wasting your time, where one simply cannot be bothered. Apathy. It’s a kind of a dull sensation that one has simply — not — and one cannot be bothered to wake oneself out of it.
And so you have to inspect that your life and the fact it’s going by and you’re not achieving the happiness or the goals that you would like to achieve. And the fact is your life isn’t permanent. You’re going to die. And if you don’t do something, your life is going to slip by and you’re never going to ever achieve anything that you’ve ever hoped for. So to this this method of examining the type of activity which is predominantly involved in, and beginning to to see that these three types of fault, reflecting, using the antidote to overcome them.
If you remove these three faults, which are obstacles to the development of joyous effort, and in dependence upon actually developing a sense of effort in one’s life, then will come all the various, very excellent qualities which will benefit oneself and others, and one’s life will become comfortable and happy. A sense of joyous effort is extremely important both in the three, initially, in intermediate, and in the end. The end, initially overcoming any obstacles to engaging and developing developing ourselves, finally applying ourselves in the intermediate and achieving the ultimate goal and seeking to make use of that goal in benefiting others. So in terms of one’s standard practice, looking it’s the same in business. If you do an analysis and you see that you’re going to make a big profit out of