“There are many different ways to counter your laziness.”

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

28 October 2024

“The mind doesn’t like to practice. The mind likes laziness. There are many different ways to counter your laziness.”

Question (M):  Which is the most effective way to counteract laziness?

Than Ajahn:  The best way is to keep yourself busy, by walking and sitting in meditation. You have to force yourself to do the practice. You have to strive. You have to put in the efforts. 

You have to exert. You cannot expect diligent to come naturally. It needs to be coerced. The mind doesn’t like to practice. The mind likes laziness. So one way to counter it is to force yourself.

There are different techniques of forcing yourself to practice.

Finding a suitable environment can force you to practice, like going to live in places where there are full of dangers—this will force you to be vigilant, it will force you to be mindful, to practice mindfulness and to practice samādhi. 

Because if you don’t practice, your mind will be consumed by fear and you will not be happy. If you force yourself to develop mindfulness and force yourself to sit in meditation, your mind will become calm and the fear that arises from your mind will subside. And you will become happy.

So, you need something to stimulate your practice. If you live in a comfortable surrounding where you are not subjected to any pressure, you don’t feel like you have to do anything. But if you live in places where you’re pressured by the surroundings to practice, then you have to meditate in order to overcome the unpleasant feeling you have. If you live in a safe and comfortable place, you don’t feel like practising. You’ll want to sleep more. But if you are in a surrounding where you always have to be mindful because you don’t know what is going to attack you, then your mind will be constantly in the state of fear. So, to be able to get rid of the fear, you will need to meditate.

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Question (M):  My main difficulty is that during the period when meditation is going very well, when I feel the pleasure to sit for a long time, laziness is very weak. But when my meditation is not so pleasant, I tend to put pressure to myself and it makes things worse as the laziness becomes quite strong. I can’t find the balance between striving but not putting tension in it.

Than Ajahn:  Sometimes you might have to think of death to stimulate your energy. You think that life is not certain.

You don’t know when you’re going to die. But for sure, you will die. If you keep being lazy, you will lose your precious time. When you think of death, it gives you a certain perspective as to how much time you are left with. Instead of wasting your time by being lazy, you can switch it and say, ‘I’d better start practicing now because I don’t know when I’m going to die.’

If you don’t think of death, you usually think that death is something far away. But when you start thinking about death by looking at the examples of people who suddenly died—people didn’t know when they were going to die, and yet anything could happened to their body—it will then stimulate your mind to exert and strive in your practice.

Thinking about death at the right time is good. 

But thinking about death at a wrong time, it can make you feel bad. So, if you think about death and it makes you feel bad, then you shouldn’t think about it.

However, if you think about death and it can stimulate your energy to do the practice, then you should use the recollection of death to help you to stimulate your practice.

Sometimes when you become discouraged, you can also think of the noble ones. Think of the Buddha. 

Think of the enlightened ones. 

They strove in order to accomplish their goal. 

They didn’t accomplish it by just being lazy. If you think of their good examples, then it can also generate the energy for you to do more practice.

So, there are many different ways to counter your laziness: sometimes you need to think of death; sometimes you need to think of someone who has already accomplished; sometimes you have to create an environment that will force you to practice; sometimes you have to stay alone in the forest. These are the ways you need to do in order to prevent you from being lazy or being complacent. 

“Dhamma in English, Dec 9, 2018.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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