Practice in the Face of Laziness

A reader raised a very good point regarding the November 19^th entry “A Change of Heart”. To summarize, she wrote that she finds that while “we are somehow, with great concentration, able to control our speech and what we do but it is the THOUGHT that is hard to control. Even minor bad thoughts will arise even though we are able to control our speech and actions…I have the belief, and I had vowed to go to Pureland but it is the practical effort that I lack in chanting due to my LAZINESS....and even though I know its a hinder to my cultivation.”

In response, Master Chin Kung (in Changing Destiny) talked of the difficulty of changing by trying to catch each thought in. The problem is that there's just too many of them. (A copy of the book is available here.)

Essentially, the best way to change is from the heart. To do this, we need to replace our old habits, like that of laziness, with new ones. If this were easy to do, we'd be sitting in the Pure Land having this discussion!

Like everything that is worthwhile, we need to keep working on breaking those bad habits. We can think of how we feel when we practice and contrast that with how we feel when we don't. As with any good habit, we feel much better when we’ve done what we knew to be right. And yet, even knowing this, we still give in to laziness.

As I mentioned in practice on the meditation cushion, we can set aside some time in the morning for chanting. Or perhaps at night when we’re done with our work and household chores and enjoyed time with our family. It’s fine to start our practice of chanting, or other meditation, simply and just for a little while, say five or ten minutes. As we feel good about having met our goal, we can gradually increase the time.

Today, we are used to quick fixes, immediate gratification. I don't know of an easy way to break our habit of laziness. It takes work, and it takes patience. If we have vowed to be reborn in the Pure Land, we can think of why we made that vow. We wanted to help all beings end suffering. Since it's difficult trying to get our mind around "all beings," we can think of those we love. Thinking of how much we want to help them can motivate us to do our cultivation.