Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this teaching on the fourth perfection, Plamo addresses the spiritual obstacle of laziness and the antidote of perseverance. She identifies three types of laziness: gross procrastination and distraction, self-doubt rooted in unworthiness, and being consumed by busyness that prevents inner cultivation. She then pivots to mindfulness, explaining it as remembrance or presence in the moment, using vivid examples like washing dishes and drinking coffee to show how we habitually miss our lives. Mindfulness is presented as both foundational to spiritual practice and inseparable from daily activity. She outlines the Buddha’s four domains of mindfulness, starting with body awareness and breath, and offers practical anchors for presence throughout the day. The talk concludes with an introduction to taking refuge as the entry point to the Buddhist path, pitched at both curious newcomers and those considering formal practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 The Six Perfections.mp3
UUID: 33236b58-230d-45fb-9dbf-3f64938b2b47
Teacher: Plamo
Collection: The Six Perfections (Plamo)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~4,680
What to do? What to do? I’m thinking what to do. We need to stop being lazy, that’s what to do. Now in Buddhism, laziness is defined in three ways.
First is laziness of laziness, that means, oh, I don’t want to get up half an hour early, I want an extra half hour in bed. Or, Yes, I’d like to go to the Dharma center, I’d like to meditate, but there’s this really good movie on television, so sorry. That kind of laziness. Yes, I’ll do my practice when I have time. And, you know, having lots of enthusiasm if it’s something you really want to do, but when it comes to doing meditation or any kind of serious reading, then suddenly, Oh God, I’m so tired!
And you suddenly remember what late night you had the night before, and that’s the end of that. That kind of gross laziness, which we all suffer from, but which is obvious to recognize. The second kind of laziness is the laziness of saying that we are unable to practice because we are so unworthy. That sense that other people can practice, people can get realisations, other people can meditate, but me, I can’t do that. I’m too stupid, I’m too lazy, I’ve always failed at everything I ever tried at.
I’ve tried to meditate and I couldn’t do it, too many thoughts, or I know I’m going to be too lazy because I’m such a stupid person and I’ve never accomplished anything ever yet, and I mean enlightenment, yeah, it’s rather not for me. That is laziness. This sense that I can’t do it because I’m worthy, or because I’m always a failure, or because I’m too stupid, that is not regarded as humility. That is regarded as cross laziness. You’re shirking.
We all have Buddha nature. All we have to do is discover So therefore there’s not a question of higher or lower or being unworthy. Unworthy of what? We all have the potential for enlightenment. We all have this human birth.
We all have some intelligence. It’s up to us. And the third kind of laziness is being busy with mundane activities. So yes, I’d like to meditate, but I have to go and check my email first. Or even being caught up in Dharma activities, which give you no time for inner cultivation.
Doesn’t matter what excuses we make to ourselves. If we find ourselves filling up our days, week after week, month after month, year after year, with things to do, so we never have time to go inside. However much like little rodents on a wheel we may be, that’s laziness. You do see that, don’t you? Because you’re avoiding facing the task.
Our task here is to realize our own innate nature. And anything which takes us away from that is just an avoidance of what we should really be doing. So that’s why it’s so important that you use the events of the day as a way of cultivating the open heart and our clarity of mind, so that we don’t just use every event of the day, even events which look outwardly very good, like running dharma centers and things like this, as an excuse as an excuse for really facing what we are here for. A genuine spiritual aspirant is like a marathon runner, not like a short distance sprinter. It’s very easy in the beginning to have lots of enthusiasm You see people bubbling over with enthusiasm, you know, really keen, throwing themselves into all the practices and into all the activities and so keen and starry eyed and joyful, then you see them ten years down the line.
Still going, fifteen years down the line, slowed down a bit. By the time they are twenty or twenty five years down the line, they say, Oh, I used to be so enthusiastic, now somehow I just lost my interest. How do I get enthusiastic again? That is a difficult one. This quality of perseverance, not just of this initial spurt of enthusiasm, although that is important and inevitable, but the ability to keep going, even when it isn’t exciting anymore, even when nothing much is happening inwardly, looks like.
Just to keep going and not give up. This is such an important quality. But this whole quality is also something which well, in the old days, they used to translate it as what did they call it? They used to call it. One translation was manliness.
Now that’s interesting. It’s because the Sanskrit is virya, and they must have been Latin scholars. So the word vir in Latin means a man. So the Sanskrit and and Latin are very connected. And so they were thinking manliness, you know, sort of carry on with the task, getting with you know, of, you know, sort of muscular Christianity type of stuff.
There was a scope of muscular Christianity. I’m not thinking about. And they called it determination, perseverance, effort. But I think everybody, as I say, got a bit tired reading that and start so they then they started calling it enthusiasm. That sounded a bit more upbeat.
But what it means, really, it’s not just enthusiasm, but it is this question of this carrying on. As I said, like a marathon runner, a marathon runner keeps back a lot of their strength so that they can keep going. They don’t expend it all in the first, you know, a thousand meters because they know they’ve got miles and miles to go yet. So so they school their energies very carefully and keep it on track and learn how to breathe properly and how to peace themselves so that they can just keep going. And that’s what we’re talking about.
It’s this quality of being able to keep this momentum going day after day after day after day day after day after day after year after year. The good news is that unlike with a marathon runner or maybe in a way in a way of getting a second breath, that once we really begin to see that our daily life is our practice and that everything we do and every encounter which we have is a way of developing, developing our inner qualities, developing our loving kindness, our understanding, our patience, and our generosity, our openness of heart. As we begin to realize that every encounter is for this and also to develop this quality of what is called mindfulness or awareness, then what happens is that the momentum builds so that we are carried along, because then the days become actually more and more fulfilling, more and more interesting, more and more vivid. And and if that actually happens, I mean, if one feels that one is in the flow, so to speak, then one is on the right track. If the days continually I mean, everybody has better days and not such good days.
But, basically, if the days feel flat and boring and routine and dull, we haven’t got the point. Do you understand? Because if we take everything which we do as a way of of of really cultivating the path, step by step by step, moment by moment by moment, then how could it be done? And and that gathers its own momentum as we begin to understand what to do, and our responses become more and more skillful automatically. Do you understand?
So this idea of perseverance isn’t actually, it isn’t something arduous. It’s something which is self generating moment to moment to moment. Once we begin to really, as I say, get on the right track, then it generates its energy. We don’t have to generate the energy. It will generate for itself because we’re in balance.
Do you understand? Yes? Because this is very important. I would like to bring in here, although it’s not strictly a part of the paramitas, but I think it’s very important for you in in this whole question of how to incorporate your spiritual practice into your daily life, it’s essential to talk about this quality called mindfulness or awareness. Okay?
So I’ll bring it in here. Recently, two lamas from my monastery in Tashijong in India, well, in November, they went to the Vatican in Rome because His Holiness the Pope was holding a big international interreligious meeting. All the different religions met together, and so these two Lamas went as representatives of the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama. And when they came back, they both remarked that they had been approached by a number of high Catholic prelates, bishops and whatever, to talk about mindfulness, mindfulness apparently is the new Catholic buzzword, and everybody apparently was talking about it. And and they acknowledged that Buddhists were supposed to be the expert in this field.
So they came to these lamas and said, please tell us more about mindfulness. What does it mean mindfulness? Well, the original word in Sanskrit, which is Smriti or in Tibetan, Drenpa, they both have the same meaning of to remember. I mean, it’s it’s in in so in Tibetan, it’s it’s the common word to remember. Drenpa is thinking about my homeland.
Ten is just the ordinary everyday word to remember. And it’s it’s very close to the Catholic idea of recollection or Gurdjieff’s idea of self remembrance. I don’t know if any of you ever read Ouspensky, but in Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, he has a wonderful chapter on this quality of mindfulness. It is classical, And he taught it very much in his school of training. It’s this quality of being here now, which usually is exactly where we are not.
And normally, we are not even aware that we are not here. It is extraordinary how unaware we are of our own mind, truly extraordinary. But once we start to train the mind, we see how totally out of control our minds are. And one of the ways to learn this is to try to be here now. Alright, everybody be here.
Think of the body, just be aware of the body. Now if we say, be aware of your body in this moment, just know it, Then in that moment you can know it, you can feel it, not judging it, but just knowing it. And then you think, yes, this is easy. Look, I know my body. I’m being mindful.
I know what it’s all about. You’ve already lost it. Because then you’re just thinking about being mindful. You’re not mindful anymore. So it’s tricky.
Now this quality of being attentive to what we are doing in the moment, is so important because the present moment is all we have. Everything else is past gone or future not yet come or just mentally regurgitating the usual nonsense that we think about. But it’s not what’s happening. The only thing which is happening is in this present moment which is going so fast, we’ve already lost it before it’s even here. It’s it’s flowing.
Right? And it wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t matter if this happened just sometimes that we weren’t present, but the fact is that most of our lives we are not present. We are present for a few seconds and then we are off again. And so therefore, our lives become very dull, very routine, very boring. Why?
The French have an expression. Well, they’re afraid for being bored. Je m’ennuie, which means I bore myself. Right? Exactly.
It’s nothing to do with what’s going on out there. Our mind’s for us. So we’re going to talk a little bit about how to be present. Okay? Because this is so important, and if we can learn how to develop some basic mindfulness, then that will enliven everything which we do during the day.
Okay? This is really very important. Subtitles org To state it very simply, Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Vietnamese master, he talks about that there are two ways to wash dishes. Okay? One is to wash dishes to get clean dishes, and the other way is to wash dishes to wash dishes.
Now normally, when we wash dishes, that means when we do any activity, we do it because we want a result. Right? We wash dishes because then we’ll have clean dishes and then we’ll go on to the next task. The actual the actual task of washing the dishes is irrelevant. So when we are washing the dishes, we are thinking about, I don’t know, anything, frankly.
I mean, we’re thinking about what we said this morning at breakfast, he said this and I said that, or we’re thinking of last night’s television, or we’re thinking of, you know, where often does I have some coffee and I have to go to the supermarket and what do I need, or we’re thinking about something else we’re going to do that evening, or we’re quoting some, you know, favorite fantasy world or whatever. The one thing we are not thinking about is those dishes. Right? So then we finish washing dishes. Now I’ve got the clean dishes stacked up.
Now we go to drink our coffee and have a slice of chocolate cake, say. So we drink the coffee, and the first sip of coffee, we’re usually fairly conscious of it. Yeah. We like it or we don’t like it, whatever, but there’s the coffee. By the second coffee, by the second sip, we’re already kind of not really very conscious of it, And by the third sip, we’re totally unaware that we’re drinking the coffee anymore because we’re thinking about what we have to buy at the supermarket and then what he said to me and I said to him, awesome memory from years back, which has come back again, you know, and, you know, and then you take the chocolate cake, something nice, and first bite, yummy, second bite, you’ve already lost it, and by the third bite, you’re munching, like, you don’t even know.
You do understand. Right? Our whole life is led like that. Good things, bad things. We’re not here.
We’re not here. We’re not present. We’re we’re sleepwalking. We are sleepwalking. The meaning of the word Buddha one of the meanings of the word Buddha is to wake up.
He is the awakened one. In Sanskrit and in Tibetan too, sang gye. Sang gye means also to to wake. He’s woken up. The rest of us are dreaming.
Good dreams are nightmares. It’s all a dream. We’re we’re somnambulists. We look very bright, but we’re asleep. Where are our minds?
You know, I I sometimes really think it would be very interesting to have horrible, but interesting to have loudspeakers attached to our minds. Wouldn’t everybody want to learn to meditate? Because when you look inside and see what’s going on in the mind, endlessly and such trivia. It’s not even entertaining. If you really watch it, you see how totally boring it is.
I mean, oh, not that one again. We did that, you know, last week, last month, last year. You know? No silence. Now mindfulness is about being silent, actually.
It’s about having a mind which is completely quiet and present with what it’s doing. So the other way to wash dishes is to wash dishes to wash dishes. And this means that when we we get clean dishes anyway, right? When we wash the dishes, the most important thing in all the world that we could possibly be doing right now is to wash these dishes, because it’s what we are doing. Do you understand?
That’s what we’re doing, so that’s it. Everything else is just mind. And if we miss this, it’s gone. This is the moment. So to have a mind which is alert and knowing, a mind which knows that it is washing the dishes, and it’s conscious of the water and your hands and the dishes and just being present, being present, that sense of presence, of knowing.
Because if we can do it that way, if we really know how to learn how to do that, then when we’ve washed the dishes, we will only have washed dishes, we have washed our mind. We have a nice clean sparkling mind along with the dishes. It’s very easy, but the problem is we forget. You remember we said that the real meaning of mindfulness is to remember and the direct enemy is forgetfulness. The inertia of our mind is so great.
Sometimes people hear about mindfulness and they think, oh, this sounds good, let’s have a go, and so they really, you know, try to be to be present with what they’re doing, to hear themselves when they speak, to know what they’re thinking, to know how they’re moving, to really be present in the moment as much as possible, which is not that much, I mean, because when we first start, it’s quite difficult to be present. As I say, mostly we’re just thinking about being present. But it’s okay. We we we go from where we are, and we’re trying to be present. And then they say, oh, wow, that was great.
I really enjoyed today. You know, I’ve been trying now for two or three days and it’s really, you know, fun to be mindful. And people are already saying I’m a much nicer person and, you know, I’m feeling really good, is it great? And you think, yeah, yeah. And in six months, you say to them, how’s the mindfulness coming along?
The mindful? Forgot. Forgot. Not because it wasn’t working, not because, you know, I mean, within reason it’s easy, but the inertia, the laziness of our mind, the inability of our mind to be present. So this is a very, very important quality.
Buddha said that mindfulness was like salt in all the curries. In other words, it’s the thing which gives it taste. It gives taste to everything which we do. It brings it alive. Because then everything which we do, it’s like it’s like doing it for the first time in a way.
It’s vivid, it’s clear, everything comes into focus. It’s like we see so clearly then that normally it’s like, you know, if you’re looking through a lens and it’s all sort of blurred, it’s out of focus, we’re not seeing clearly, and then we turn it and then everything becomes very sharp and very clear, and it’s like that with the mind. Suddenly we turn it and suddenly everything becomes very, very clear and vivid and newly washed, like those dishes and not the stale old mind that we normally live with. This is a new mind. So this quality is very important in developing spiritual in the midst of our daily life.
And it’s something which we can all cultivate. The Buddha I just do this very briefly because it’s a huge subject, of course, but the Buddha basically divided it into four, which is mindfulness on the body, mindfulness on the feelings, mindfulness on the mind itself, and in the Mahāyāna, mindfulness on external phenomena. That means all everything which is received through the five senses. Right? Sights and sounds and tastes and touchables and so on, smells.
So we start with what is most easy, which is the body, because the body is most gross. The Tibetans usually emphasize a mindfulness on the mind itself, but that is quite difficult at this first stage because our minds are very quick and very turbulent, and it’s very difficult to catch hold of it. So it’s better to start with something quite, you know, fairly fairly looking to us, fairly stable and solid, which is our bodies. And so the Buddha said, you start by thinking: thinking. When I’m standing, I know I’m standing.
When I’m sitting, I know I’m sitting. When I’m lying down, I know I’m lying down. When I’m walking, I know I am walking. Just think about that. How often we are sitting or standing and we’re not even conscious of sitting or standing?
Because our minds are going ahead, we don’t even know what the body is doing. And this is something very simple to bring us into the present, just to know when we are sitting, we’re sitting, and to experience it, how the body feels in this moment, this body awareness. And then a breath awareness, because if we breathe in and we breathe out, it’s a way of becoming instantly centered. Because we cannot breathe in or breathe out in the past or the future, we can only breathe now. So that is a way during any time of the day in which you can become centered.
There are infinite opportunities throughout the day. In Delhi, at the red stoplights, the traffic lights in Delhi, they have red stoplights and they they have written across them in big white letters, relax. So great. You come to a red light. Wonderful.
Relax. You’re on breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. Gratitude to the light going red and giving us an opportunity to become centered again. Right? If you ring somebody up and all you get is their interminable answering machine, Great!
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, centered. Then you can have, by that time, you’re ready to give your message after the beep. Throughout the day, endless opportunities to come back into our center, into our being. Okay? Brushing teeth, drinking, combing your hair, shaving, even smoking a cigarette, whatever.
Use that moment, that simple action, know it in that moment. Don’t brush your teeth and think of a thousand other things. Brush your teeth and brush your teeth, and know that in that moment. It’s a training. It’s a training in being present, because the present is all we have.
If we can learn to really learn how to use our day, to develop this quality of mindfulness, of awareness, then when we come to sit, there won’t be so much problem. Because we’re using the mind during the day, we’re training up the mind. We’re using the mind to help us, instead of, as it usually is, being nothing but a hindrance. So this is a wonderful tool, And I do urge those of you who are serious about having a practice to read books and and if possible, attend courses and and ask for those with greater experience about this quality of mindfulness. Because it’s a very, very important quality.
It has nothing to do with one’s spiritual orientation. Everyone can use it. And you’re doing this most profound practice and nobody even knows you’re practicing. And you can carry it with you everywhere, under any circumstances, even sitting on the toilet, a perfect opportunity. Doesn’t matter where, everywhere, every action, every thought, every word can be an object of our awareness, of our knowing.
This is very important quality to develop if you’re serious, and it helps us in everything. As as the Buddha said, it’s a salt in all curries. It helps in all fields of our endeavors. So this is not something to be taken so lightly. Okay?
So it’s half past three. I I just here would like to talk we’re gonna open it up for questions, all right? But I just for five minutes, I would just like to talk a little bit about this question of of going for refuge. It’s not that I’m trying to make conversions, but I mean, sincerely, I I couldn’t care less whether people are Buddhist or not Buddhist. That’s not the point.
The point is to really develop the mind and and be of benefit to yourself and others. That’s what counts, to be of benefit to yourself and benefit to others. But some people are interested in the Buddhist path, and and they do ask, how do we start? And how you start is by taking refuge. Traditionally, from the time of the Buddha, the first step on the path was to take refuge.
It’s like the doorway which leads into the whole edifice of the Buddhist path. And we take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma and in the Sangha. Now to take refuge, what does it mean? If you’re taking refuge, a refugee is someone who is fleeing from danger. And what danger are we fleeing from?
We are fleeing from the dangers of old age, sickness, death, not getting what we want and getting what we don’t want, all the problems and dissatisfactions and frustrations of our mundane existence. We are fleeing from this repetitious and never ending wheel of birth and death and rebirth and re death in a state of ignorance where we cannot help either ourselves or, genuinely speaking, others either. So we are looking for a way out of this, how to make our lives meaningful, how to really put a genuine spiritual perspective at the center of our existence, not merely as a peripheral interest. And so we go for refuge to Buddha Dharma Sangha, the Buddha, because he was omniscient and also because the universe really the universe is full of intelligence and love, but normally we are unable to connect with that. Those symbols of intelligence and love, we call the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, But whatever you call them, that’s just a name.
The fact is that they are there and they can help. That is a quality of this this whole universal law. In addition, we are also going to for refuge ultimately to our innate our innate wisdom and love and compassion. All of us have this inner potential for Buddhahood. All of us possess what is called Buddha nature, which means this inherently pure nature within, which is space like, like the sky, it’s not a little, you know, a little hard knob inside which says me, all wisdom and love.
It’s not like that. It doesn’t mean that. It doesn’t mean please understand, Buddha nature doesn’t mean a bigger, better, more wonderful me. Right? That doesn’t that’s not what it means.
It’s it’s this level of being in which there is no longer even the idea of self and others. It’s this this incredible space like quality of the mind. The space has no center and it has no periphery, and it interconnects with all beings everywhere. That’s the quality we’re going for. That’s our inner Buddha nature, which all beings have and interconnects all beings everywhere.
And the Dharma is the teaching of the Buddha. It is also the universal law of ultimate reality, and the Sangha is the community. First of all, it’s the monastic community because the monastic community represents those who have dedicated their life completely to Buddha Dharma Sangha. It also, in particular, means the Ārya Sangha, the noble community of those both lay or monastics who have had a direct glimpse or or direct realization of the ultimate nature of reality. And and so therefore they are able to be genuine guides on the path and helpers on the path.
So traditionally, from the time of the Buddha up until the very present in all Buddhist countries everywhere, the first step on the path is to take refuge, to take refuge in the Buddha Dharma Sangha. So if anyone would like to do that, I I will stay behind at four, and we can have a short ceremony in which you can do that. But as I say, it the important thing is not whether you’re Buddhist or not, Buddhist, important thing is whether you really try to use the spiritual life to, you know, make some changes, transform yourselves. It’s up to you. It doesn’t matter what labels you give yourself.
They’re just labels. Anyway, I thought I would just mention that. So if anybody is interested, they could stay behind when everybody else leaves. Now are there any questions about everything else?