Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron teaches the fourth far-reaching attitude of joyous effort — a mental state that finds delight in virtuous practice rather than worldly pursuits. She identifies three obstacles to developing this attitude: procrastination and sleep, countered by reflecting on impermanence and death; attachment to worldly busyness, addressed through contemplating the unsatisfying nature of saṃsāra; and discouragement and self-doubt, remedied by recognizing our innate Buddha potential and the genuine opportunities of human life. Through sustained meditation on these antidotes, practitioners develop the courage and joy needed to sustain constructive action motivated by bodhicitta, the altruistic intention to benefit all beings. The talk concludes with the instruction to dedicate the merit of this practice while remembering the emptiness of agent, action, and recipient.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 43 GM.mp3
UUID: b3670a1a-465d-46db-8edf-d4f228a369ec
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~990
The fourth far reaching attitude is the far reaching attitude of joyous effort. So this again is a mental state or mental factor that takes delight in doing what is virtuous and worthwhile. And in order to cultivate it, we have to counteract three different kinds of laziness because laziness is what impedes our joyous effort. Here, joyous effort refers specifically to joyous effort in our Dharma practice. So remember, it’s delight in what is virtuous and worthwhile.
So it’s not joyous effort in making money or improving our social status. It’s joyous effort in transforming our mind and generating positive attitudes. The first kind of laziness that we have to overcome in order to have joyous effort is procrastination and sleep. So just reflect in your own life. Do you put off doing your Dharma study and practice?
When you think to study or to practice, does all of a sudden your mind say, I’m too tired. I better rest. Do you sleep more than your body needs, and do you like to just lie around and hang around and do nothing? So just reflect a little bit on your own life and see if this is an obstacle for you in your practice. The antidote to this kind of laziness is thinking about impermanence and death.
So if we have a precious human life and it’s not going to last forever, then we have to make sure that we use it now instead of just spending it procrastinating, sleeping, lying around, and neglecting our Dharma practice. So reflect for a few minutes on impermanence and death and use that to lift the cloud of the procrastinating sleepy lazy mind. The second kind of laziness is attachment to worldly affairs and pleasures. So in our life, this is called being busy. So keeping ourselves busy doing things which are not very important from a Dharma perspective is actually considered being lazy.
Because we’re lazy in practicing the Dharma but quite enthusiastic about experiencing sense pleasures and having fun, improving our reputation and status. So just examine a little bit in your life and how attached are you to worldly success, material possessions, praise, reputation, image. Do you keep yourself busy going here and going there with this hobby and that hobby and this activity and that activity? None of which are actually very important in terms of improving your mind and improving your heart. So how much time in your life do you spend distracting yourself from doing what’s really important and covering it by saying, I’m too busy to practice the Dharma.
I’m too busy to meditate or go on retreat. So the antidote to the laziness of being exceedingly busy is thinking of all the disadvantages of cyclic existence. The fact that we may do this and do that, but it brings no lasting satisfaction. It’s transient. We still have to die and get reborn.
So just reflect on the nature of cyclic existence, and that immediately makes our mind calm down and helps us to set our priorities properly. And the third kind of laziness is the laziness of discouragement. The laziness of putting ourselves down and thinking that we’re incapable. So, again, examine your life. And do you tend to be self critical and judgmental?
Do you spend a lot of time judging yourself, putting yourself down, feeding the feeling of low self esteem. And try and understand how this kind of discouragement and depressed mind is a form of laziness. It’s not the truth of who we are. It’s not the truth of the situation. Simply an attitude that’s created by our own mind.
The antidote to discouragement and putting ourselves down is remembering that we have the Buddha potential that already as the innate part of our mind, we have what it takes to become a fully enlightened Buddha, and that this is a quality of the mind that can never be taken away, can never be removed. And so when we have a sense of our own Buddha potential, that becomes a very valid basis for our own self confidence. And also reflecting on our precious human life, all the potential, all the opportunity, all the leisure that we have. This also gives us a sense of confidence and joy to do what we can do. So instead of focusing so much on the mind that tells ourself that we can’t succeed.
We need to focus on the good situation that we have at present and all the opportunities and good qualities we have going for us. And that uplifts our mind and enables us to have a lot of joyous effort. And so through doing this meditation again and again, we’ll develop a sense of joy and courage so that we can do the three kinds of practices of joyous effort. So the first is to withstand discomfort to work for the welfare of others. The second is to do all constructive actions motivated by the bodhicitta, the altruistic intention.
And the third is to work to benefit others. So come to a conclusion that you have the potential. We have the opportunity right now in this very life to do incredible things, to benefit ourselves and to benefit others, and that we have to take that opportunity and transform our minds, practice the Dharma with a lot of joy in our lives to make that determination. And as with the other far reaching attitudes, it’s important to do this one motivated by the bodhicitta, the altruistic intention. And at the end, we have to remember that we dedicate the virtue, we as the agent, the action of working with joy at the Dharma.
And then the things we work with are the people we benefit, that all of these are empty. So the understanding of emptiness, applying these to joyous effort, make it the far reaching attitude of joyous effort.