“The Buddha described three kinds of laziness. The first is laziness, which we all know about. When we don’t feel like doing anything, when we allow ourselves to stay in bed longer instead of getting up and practicing.
The second laziness of feeling wrong about oneself is laziness of thinking. “I can’t do anything. Other people meditate, others practice, they can be mindful and kind, generous, but not me, because I’m too stupid. Or on the contrary: “I am a very angry person,” “I will never do anything in life,” “I can’t do anything, it’s not worth trying.” This is laziness.
The third type of laziness is constant preoccupation with worldly affairs. We always have the opportunity to fill the vacuum of our time by keeping ourselves busy. Moreover, all these activities can generally be considered a virtue. But, usually, it’s just a way to avoid meeting yourself. When I came out of the cave, some people asked me: “Wasn’t it avoidance?”
I replied, “Avoiding what?” Where I was, there were no newspapers, no radio, no television. There was no one to talk to. If something had happened, I didn’t even have a friend’s phone number. I was left face to face with the one I was and the one I had never been. There was nowhere to run. You can’t run away from yourself.
Our lives are usually so full, and we are so busy, that we can hardly find even a minute in it to be who we are. That’s what avoidance is. One of my aunts has the radio or TV on all the time. She can’t be in silence. The silence worries her. Background noise accompanies us all our lives. Many of us are exactly like that.
We are afraid of silence – outer silence, inner silence. When nothing comes to us from the outside, we begin to create our own internal noise – opinions and judgments, recapitulation of what happened yesterday or in childhood. We fantasize, dream, make plans, are sad or afraid. There is no silence. Our noisy outside world is a simple reflection of the noise inside: our constant busyness, doing something.
I recently talked to a wonderful Australian monk who was so preoccupied with his dharma activities that he literally turned into a workaholic. He got up around three o’clock in the morning. In the end, he just collapsed. His whole system of activity collapsed, he couldn’t do anything else.
His personality was only related to his activities. With one activity. His work for the benefit of the Dharma looked very virtuous. It looked like he was doing really good things. He was respected by many people and followed the instructions of his teacher, but now that he was unable to do anything, who was he? Because he had to go through a severe crisis – because he identified himself with what he could do and what he could achieve. He is currently unable to do anything and is completely dependent on other people.
So I said to him, “What a wonderful and amazing opportunity! Now, when you don’t have to do something, you can just be.” He replied that he had tried to come to this, but doing nothing just scared him, the very possibility of being who he was, and not what he was doing, scared him.
And that’s the key point. We fill our lives with activities ourselves. And it’s really beautiful, but you have to be very careful that it doesn’t turn into avoidance. I am not saying that one should not do good and useful things, but only that where there is an in-breath, there should be an out-breath. We need both activity and contemplation. We need time to be ourselves when our mind is calm.
Source:
atraita.livejournal.com
