Week 4 - Perseverance/Joyous Effort

To be able to generate joyful effort, we must abandon laziness. It is therefore important understand the three kinds of laziness:

1. The laziness of procrastination

- putting our spiritual practice off until “later”. The antidote to laziness is to reflect on impermanence, the preciousness of human existence, and the uncertainty of the time of death.

2. The laziness of being attracted to what is meaningless or non-virtuous

- engaging in meaningless behavior like channel surfing or talking on the telephone with no purpose. These dissipate our energy and our spiritual practice seems like it is an obstacle to our pleasure. Antidote is remembering how these activities waste our precious human existence.

3. The laziness of discouragement
- since we cannot see enlightened beings with our own eyes, sometimes we can doubt whether they exist, or we may see faults in our spiritual teacher or guide. Antidote is to remember that we have the delusion of ignorance, so what appears to our mind is not the way it actually exists.

There are three types of effort:

1. Armour-like effort

We need to put our armour on each morning by firmly resolving not to become overwhelmed or depressed by the difficulties we encounter.

2. The effort of gathering virtuous truths

Exertion of effort into virtuous actions (as opposed to the wish or intention)

3. The effort of benefiting others

Again, the actual exertion of effort to benefit others (as opposed to the wish or intention.


There are four ways to increase our effort.
These are known as the four forces:

1. Aspiration
The wish to engage in virtuous actions by seeing their benefits and the dangers of non-virtuous actions

2. Steadfastness
Like water in a wide river, gently flowing day and night, year after year. Better to apply small effort continuously than a huge amount for a few days and then stop. Before you take on a task, think about if you can complete it.

3. Joy
Like a child at play, engrossed and content in our games, letting nothing distract us.

4. Relaxation
Don’t get overtired from exerting too much effort…relax so you can apply new effort again.