Review
We are continuing our discussion of the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path, going very slowly, step by step, learning how to analyze all the points and seeing how we can actually apply them to our lives.
Initial Scope
We started with the precious human rebirth, appreciating what we have, recognizing that we have a temporary freedom, what we called a “respite” in English, from the worst states. It is not going to last, but for the time being, we have the opportunities to further ourselves, to study, and to practice. We are not hindered by the worst obstacles and so on. This is really quite amazing, quite remarkable, especially if we consider the causes for this and the difficulty of actually building up the causes, particularly if we examine, “Am I building up the causes now to continue to have this type of rebirth in the future?” We then think of how this precious human life is impermanent. It’s not going to last; it’s going to end with death. Death will come for sure, and nobody knows when.
What is going to be of help at the time of my death? Are we actually prepared to die at any moment? Are our bags packed, in a sense? When we talk about having our bags packed, we’re talking about the type of positive or negative potentials that we would be bringing into future lives. The potentials that we have built up are the only things that continue with our mental continuums. If we have built up a lot of negative potentials, then, certainly, we can’t expect to have another precious human rebirth very soon. Instead, we can expect to have a worse rebirth, and that would be quite awful. So, the only thing that will be of help at the time of death is having built up some strong positive habits and potentials that will shape our future lives.
We looked quite seriously at how awful it would be to lose this precious human life and to take rebirth as a hell creature, somebody that’s tortured all the time, as a clutching ghost, always frustrated, never being able to get any food or drink, always being chased, always paranoid, and as an animal, always in danger of being eaten alive and so on by predators. This would be quite awful. We certainly don’t want that, and we have a health sense of fear of that happening. But it’s not that we are crippled by this, feeling helpless and hopeless, because we see that there is a way to avoid that.
The way to avoid that is going in the safe direction of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, what’s known as “refuge.” But refuge is not, “Oh, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, you are so wonderful. Save me!” Instead, it’s that they indicate the direction, and that direction is what’s indicated by the deepest meaning of Dharma refuge. It is a state of mind that brings about a stopping of all of the causes of uncontrollably recurring rebirth and its problems and a state of mind that brings that stopping about and that results from that stopping. This is the direction that we want to go in. And we have some confidence that there are those who have actually achieved it in full, namely, the Buddhas. Those who have achieved it in part are the Arya Sangha. So, it’s a dynamic thing that we can achieve as well.
The first thing that we need to do to go in that direction is to try to make sure that we don’t have worst rebirths, which means that we need to avoid the major causes for that. The immediate cause is destructive behavior. That led to the whole discussion of karma and behavioral cause and effect. We then made a very strong decision to try our best to exercise self-control and not to act on the negative urges that come up and make us feel like acting in negative ways. At that point, we can exercise some self-control. When the first wish or feeling of liking to act in some sort of destructive way comes up, we can decide, “No, I am not going to act on that because I realize that if I do, it will cause a tremendous number of problems for me. I don’t know what the effect on others would be, but probably, it would be damaging for them as well. For sure, though, it will be damaging for me. Therefore, I will refrain from acting on this feeling like doing something destructive and harmful.”
Intermediate Scope
Then we went on to the intermediate scope. There, we looked at the what the situation would be like even if we had one of the better rebirths – as a god, as a demi-god, or asura, or as a human. We looked at the specific difficulties that are involved with being a human. Even with a precious human rebirth, we still have to go through stages during which there is not terribly much that we can do to benefit others or ourselves. We have to learn how to walk, we have to learn how to talk. Sure, that benefits us, but what an interruption it is on our spiritual path to have to go through that all over again, time after time. Then to get sick again, to grow old and have our memory fade, our energy fade and so on – that really is quite a limitation. We have to go through the whole education process and so on. We are subject to biology, to biological urges. We have to try to figure out a way to make a living, etc. This is something that we don’t want. We don’t want to have uncontrollably recurring rebirths in general, which is the basis for having unhappiness and our ordinary happiness, which doesn’t last.
In order to overcome all of that, we not only need to overcome our destructive karma, we have to overcome our ordinary, samsaric constructive karma as well. That means overcoming the disturbing emotions and attitudes that activate the karmic potentials at the time of death or during our lifetimes and that perpetuate the up and down of samsara.
We have gone through the root disturbing emotions. Now we are looking at the secondary, or auxiliary, disturbing emotions.
Disbelieving a Fact (Continued)
In the last session, we dealt with number 15 from the list of 20, disbelieving a fact. We spoke on very ordinary levels of it – for instance, “I can’t believe that my computer just crashed.” We looked at the suffering that not accepting the fact of a situation causes us and how our disbelief prevents us from just dealing with it. However, I think that’s not the main intention for including this disturbing emotion in the list. The main intention has to do with disbelieving that enlightenment is possible, disbelieving that liberation is possible, disbelieving in rebirth, and these sorts of things. These are points in the Dharma that are actually very, very difficult to believe in and to have true confidence in. They are very difficult to understand in the first place, let alone believe in.
It’s very important to recognize that if we really disbelieve in liberation or enlightenment and say that there is no such thing – that is distorted, antagonistic thinking. With such an attitude, we would argue with somebody against this so-called wrong view. But here, we are just talking about disbelief: “I really don’t believe that that’s possible.” If we really don’t believe that it’s possible to gain liberation or enlightenment, why would we ever strive to obtain it? Obviously, this is a very big obstacle and troublemaker on our spiritual path. So, rather than to disbelieve it and say, “No, there is such thing,” it is better to have indecisive wavering. An example of indecisive wavering is, “Maybe it’s true; maybe it’s not true.” And within the types of indecisive wavering, it would be better to have the type that tends more toward accepting it. This is, as we say in English, “giving it the benefit of the doubt.” We say, “Well, I am not absolutely positive that it is true, that it is possible, so I am indecisive about that. However, I will assume that it is true for the moment and then see what happens, see what the benefits of believing it are, at least, provisionally.” I think that is the best strategy that we can take in terms of dealing with these issues.
Participant: In science, this is called having a working hypothesis, “If so and so is true, what follows is…”
Dr. Berzin: This is also part of the scientific method. What would be involved in actually coming to the decision or conclusion that it is true is discriminating awareness. In other words, we discriminate that this conclusion is correct and that a different conclusion is incorrect. There is a mental factor called conviction that adds even more certainty to the fact that nothing can sway us, that we’re fully convinced. But these are not so easy to develop, and we have gone through quite a discussion of that. Even though one might understand all of these intellectually, nevertheless, it’s hard to really accept them on what we would call a gut level.
Do We Believe That Anybody Has Actually Attained Enlightenment?
I was just proofreading a seminar that I gave in Latvia on the relevance of refuge and karma in daily life. In this seminar, I was exploring with the group the whole question of, “Has there ever been a Buddha?” If we are going to take refuge, safe direction in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, do we really believe that somebody actually attained enlightenment? If nobody ever attained enlightenment, why would we expect that we could? Do we think that we are going to be the first? We might theoretically accept that enlightenment is possible, but it doesn’t follow that anybody has actually attained it. The only conclusion that we can come to is a provisional conclusion, not a definite conclusion. All we can do is infer, on the basis of logic, that there is a greater possibility that somebody has attained it than that nobody has attained it. Theoretically, it is possible. So, we can infer that. It says quite clearly in the teachings that only a Buddha can recognize another Buddha. We wouldn’t be able to know straightforwardly that somebody is a Buddha unless we were Buddhas ourselves. Therefore, all we can do at our stage is to rely on inference.
So, how convinced are we by logic or a line of reasoning that something is possible? Do we have to see it with our own eyes? This becomes an interesting question. Buddhism always states that inference, inferential understanding, relying on a line of reasoning such as “where there is smoke, there is fire” is a valid means of knowing something. Do we really consider that valid, or do we only believe what we know through our senses, which after all, could be deceptive? Anyway, these are interesting questions.
Participant: I am thinking of the example of where there is smoke, there is fire. I don’t know if this fits in with becoming a Buddha. But how would we know if we hadn’t experienced it before that where there is smoke, there is fire? We wouldn’t be able to infer that there was fire.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that is a very interesting point. Would that convince us, that line of reasoning? If, for instance, we have never seen a fire in our lives, we’ve only seen smoke, could we be convinced that where there is smoke, there is fire, or that where there is light from a light bulb, there is electricity?
Participant: Only if you know the concept of electricity.
Participant: What does it mean to know it?
Dr. Berzin: We see that where there is smoke, there is fire.
Participant: The electricity example is more difficult.
Dr. Berzin: I have no idea how the electricity going through the wires actually causes the light in the light bulb. I am not a physicist.
Participant: Where there is light, there is magic.
Dr. Berzin: That’s right. That could also be the case.
Anyway, I don’t want to spend our whole class discussing this, but these are the issues that are involved with disbelieving a fact and how we believe a fact. These are not easy issues. I think that having a working hypothesis, to use the scientific term, or, in other words, to have indecisive wavering aimed at the so-called correct choice is the best way to deal with it if we are going to follow the path sincerely.
Participant: I would also say it’s not just a matter of logic. For example, if you see someone who is much further on the path and has a lot of compassion, you can tell, even though you don’t know which stage they’re at, that there is a tremendous difference between you and them. In that case, I could infer, “Well, it might be possible to go further.”
Dr. Berzin: You didn’t give an example, but His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for example, still has compassion for the Chinese despite his being public enemy number one for all of China. So, we can infer that if we achieve that level by following the Buddhist path, we, too, could go further.
This is one of the arguments that’s used. If we can see with actual examples that it is possible to reach a very, very advanced level by following the methods that Buddha taught, we have reason to believe that we can reach that level too. Now, of course, it’s possible that that’s as far as we could go, that this is the limit of where the methods can take us. But the argument used is that if the Buddha’s motivation was compassion, the wish to help everybody be free from suffering, there would have been no reason for him to deceive people. If we can see from examples that by following his teachings that we can go 75% of the way, why would he have lied about our being able to go the remaining 25%? This is the argument that we find in the text. Whether or not we are convinced by that, I don’t know.
Participant: It’s only logical that if you have reached a certain level of bodhicitta or discriminating awareness, a certain level of attainment on the path, why would you stop at that level?
Dr. Berzin: If an antidote is effective 75% of the time, why shouldn’t it be effective 100% of the time is what you are saying. I think medicine would give examples where a medication wouldn’t necessarily be 100% effective.
Participant: If you are free of a certain amount…
Dr. Berzin: This is the same argument. If we can go 75% of the path – so, be free of 75% of our anger by using this method – is there any reason why going 100% of the path shouldn’t free us of 100% of our anger?
This is what I am saying – that there are inferential ways of coming to the conclusion that it must be possible. My question, though, is not whether it is possible. My question is whether anybody has ever achieved it. If we are going to have Buddha, Dharma and Sangha… well, that implies, given beginningless time, that somebody has actually reached it. Just because it is theoretically possible doesn’t necessarily mean that anybody has… in terms of probability. There is a probability that 25 people achieved it. There is also a probability that nobody has achieved it. That’s just science.
Participant: But that can’t be proved.
Dr. Berzin: None of them can be proven, unless we have actually met a Buddha. That was the original statement.
Participant: That one cannot recognize it.
Dr. Berzin: We wouldn’t be able to recognize it unless we were Buddhas. If we were already Buddhas, we’d already have proven that it’s possible to achieve enlightenment. There we are – circular.
Participant: I see it the way Jorge said before – that if you cannot have a proof, you just have to choose a way, and then see what….
Dr. Berzin: This is what I said as well. We have this working hypothesis, which is an indecisive wavering tending toward the so-called correct position. We assume that it is correct. That’s presumption, which is one of the ways of knowing. We presume that it is correct, and then we see what follows. If what follows is very beneficial, then fine.
Participant: There is a way in which you can see that you can probably get some benefits if you are not sure. If you have already tried in small stages, and you can recognize the little steps you’ve made, then you already have a kind of base for believing it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. So, if we have experienced some result from practicing, experienced that it does diminish our problems and suffering and unhappiness to a certain extent, we gain more confidence that we can go further if we continue.
However, there are these questions: “Can I only reach a certain stage?” “Is it only possible to get rid of only 75% and not possible to get rid of all of it?” Although it’s easier to become logically convinced that enlightenment is possible based on the purity of the mind and all these sorts of things, how do we prove that anybody has actually attained it? That’s the difficult part. How do we know that there ever was a Buddha?
Participant: Is it better to make an effort to reach those benefits, or is it better to solve…
Dr. Berzin: Is it more beneficial to strive towards that? Yes. But if no one has ever attained it, why would we expect to be able to do it ourselves, even if it is theoretically possible?
Now, one would say not to practice with expectations or disappointment. That’s another solution. I don’t know. These are difficult points.
Participant: I might deal with the rest of 25% when I’ve reached the 75%.
Dr. Berzin: That’s another way to delay making a decision. It’s not a bad strategy.
Participant: Is that what Buddha did?
Dr. Berzin: He went partially along the way of practicing asceticism with other ascetics. And then what? He saw that that wouldn’t take him the rest of the way, so he found another solution.
Participant: He was using a different working hypothesis.
Dr. Berzin: Anyway, I don’t want to spend the whole class on this. I just wanted to make it a little bit clearer that when they talk about disbelieving a fact – although we had spoken about that on a more practical level, like “I can’t believe that my computer crashed and I lost all my data” – what they’re really talking about are these more essential questions such as whether enlightenment is possible and whether anybody has ever achieved it.
Participant: Is disbelieving a fact stronger than ordinary doubt?
Dr. Berzin: Yes, because disbelieving a fact means that we have come to the conclusion that the fact is not true. With doubt, we are still wavering. It’s like being an agnostic as opposed to being an atheist. If we’re really an atheist, we say that there is no God. If we are an agnostic, we’re basically saying, “I don’t know.”
Participant: In my case, sometimes the doubts come for a while and I don’t believe.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Sometimes the doubt comes up, and you think, “I don’t know”? Or is it that your doubt comes up and that you tend toward “there is no such thing”? Remember, indecisive wavering can tend either toward one conclusion or toward the other conclusion. It’s not always going toward one conclusion; it’s indecisive. And it wavers back and forth.
Laziness – 3 Types
The next auxiliary disturbing attitude or state of mind – as we saw, it’s hard to know whether to call these emotions, attitudes or states of mind – is laziness.
- Laziness is a part of naivety. With laziness, the mind does not go out to or engage with something constructive because of clinging to the pleasures of sleep, lying down, relaxing and so on.
Participant: What about waging war or earning money?
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is talking about not doing something constructive. Is it out of laziness that we don’t feel like going out and shooting the enemy? I don’t think that’s what is meant here.
Participant: It could be out of laziness, but it’s not constructive.
Dr. Berzin: Or we’re too lazy to go to the exercise club or go jogging today, or too lazy to go to work. These are, I suppose, neutral phenomena, unspecified phenomena. However, the text is talking about being too lazy to do something constructive. It’s one of the things that prevents us from engaging in something constructive because of clinging to the pleasures of sleep, lying down, relaxing and so on. A lot of things could be included.
[1] Lethargy and Procrastination
There are three types of laziness. The first is lethargy and procrastination, which is not feeling like doing something constructive now and putting it off until later because of apathy toward the uncontrollably recurring suffering of samsara, clinging to the pleasure of being idle, or craving sleep as an escape.
So we put things off until tomorrow. “I don’t feel like doing it now. I’ll do it later.” “I don’t feel like cleaning the house.” “I don’t feel like meditating.” We put off these sorts of things because of apathy toward samsara. Apathy means that, “I don’t care. I am not going to do anything. There is suffering of samsara. So what? I don’t feel like meditating, so I am not going to do it. I’ll do it later.” Or it could be clinging to the pleasure of being idle. “Idle” means sitting around and doing nothing. Or craving sleep as an escape: “I don’t want to deal with this now, so I’ll lie down and take a nap instead. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
I am sure we all have experienced this. In other words, there is something that we need to do now, but we don’t do it now.
Participant: This is just talking about constructive things.
Dr. Berzin: I think we could also apply it as we did the last time with disbelieving a fact, like “I can’t believe that I lost all my data” – so, not accepting reality. We could extend this one to things like, “I don’t feel like taking down the garbage.” We don’t think about the smell that it makes in the house. We just don’t feel like doing it.
Participant: I’d rather do meditation.
Dr. Berzin: That’s not laziness. In other words, if we are going to do it, do it now.
Participant: That would be the antidote?
Dr. Berzin: The antidote for that is to think that death can come anytime.
Participant: Then, one doesn’t need to clean.
Dr. Berzin: That’s why this example is not included here. Taking out the trash just a neutral, an unspecified phenomenon. But meditating, doing a meditation retreat, going to teachings – these are constructive phenomena.
Think about it. I find that when a teacher is a resident in a city and is giving classes every week, a lot of people feel, “Well, he is going to be there all the time. I don’t feel like going this week. I’ll go next week.” They are not thinking of the suffering of samsara. They’re not thinking, “I really want to get out of my problems and here is the thing that I can do to help me.” So, out of laziness, they don’t go. They put it off till next week. Well, “I can go anytime.” That’s why I said that death can come anytime: the opportunity can be lost.
Participant: The teacher might die.
Dr. Berzin: The teacher might die, or the teacher might leave.
So, think about it. “I am too tired.” Is that laziness? Well, there is being really exhausted, and there is using tiredness as an excuse. That’s why it says, clinging to the pleasure of being idle or craving sleep as an escape. “I don’t want to deal with this. This is too much.” We just put it aside. What we have to recognize is that this causes more problems.
Of course, the point is not to feel guilty about it, but to try to recognize that this is not a helpful state of mind. When it comes to doing something constructive, so what if we feel like doing it or don’t feel like doing it? Just do it. Samsara goes up and down. Sometimes we feel like doing something constructive, and sometimes we don’t. Nothing special.
Participant: There is the case where one likes to do virtuous things, like going on retreat or going to teachings, but one doesn’t like to do mundane things, like doing tax preparations.
Dr. Berzin: Well, in a sense, it’s necessary. It’s necessary, whether we call it constructive or not. If we don’t do it, it will cause problems. Therefore, it is constructive to take care of it. If we don’t do our work because we are too lazy, we could get fired. If we lose our jobs, we wouldn’t have any sort of income to sustain anything that we do, our Dharma activity or anything. So, indirectly, it’s constructive. It provides the circumstances for being able to do constructive things. But we have to recognize this state of mind, that of thinking, “I don’t feel like doing it, so I’ll do it later.” Often, we don’t do it later. This is quite different from “I am too busy to take care of it now.” That’s something else.
[2] Clinging to Negative or Trivial Activities
That takes us into the second variety of laziness, which is clinging to negative or trivial activities such as gambling, drinking, or being with friends that are bad influences on us, going to parties, etc. “I am too busy to meditate because I have to go out drinking with my buddy or my favorite TV show is on, or I am so involved with surfing the internet.” Being attached to trivial things is a form of laziness. I am sure we all have experienced that. “I don’t feel like working, so I’ll surf the internet.” Actually, the internet has provided more opportunities for this type of laziness. Before there was internet, we had to actually get up – say, if we were working at a typewriter – and find something else to do. Any comments on this?
Participant: Why would you not feel like meditating because you are depressed?
Dr. Berzin: It is a form of laziness. Surely, when we are depressed, that’s when we need meditation.
Participant: Maybe I should do something with my hands and not do meditation.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s not clinging to trivial activities or things. If we have experienced that doing something with our hands will help us to deal with this depression, this bad mood, then we do that. But we have to see that this is a provisional method only. Endlessly surfing or looking at the news or our Facebook page – that’s laziness. It’s clinging to trivial or negative things like gambling, drinking, endless partying, etc.
[3] Feeling of Inadequate
The third type is the feelings of inadequacy, feeling that “I can’t possibly do this,” which is just an excuse for being lazy. So, we don’t even try. Do we have an example of that in our lives?
Participant: Feeling like I am not able to do a long retreat.
Dr. Berzin: There, we have to evaluate whether we’re really able to do it. We have to do something reasonable. We don’t immediately do three years in isolation.
Participant: But if there are no adverse circumstances that would prevent us from doing a long retreat, then using the excuse, “Well, I can’t do it,” means that we don’t even try.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true.
When doing these preliminaries, these repetitions of something 100,000 times, there is a method for doing them that Serkong Rinpoche told me about. He said not to bother with counting, because we can really get attached to the numbers, in which case, we might as well just count up to 100,000. Instead, we do it until we get some sign that it’s being effective. So, we just do it. We don’t count.
But I have always thought that the benefit of counting was to be able to prove to ourselves that we can do something that we thought in the beginning we couldn’t do. “A hundred thousand? How can I possibly do that?” Or the Tara retreat – there are a million Tara mantras that we have to do for that one. And if we have actually done that, of course, we can feel very proud and arrogant: “Oh, I am so wonderful.” But if we don’t go to that extreme, it gives us the confidence that, “Hey, I can actually do something that seemed monumental.” And it gives us confidence to do further things in Dharma practice. I think that’s one of the side benefits. What do you think, those of you who have done 100,000 repetitions? Has anybody done that? I don’t want to put you on the spot.
Participant: I think it is helpful to count. It’s helpful if one continues, even if one has hang-ups.
Dr. Berzin: So, keeping count also tends to help us to push on even if we are at a low ebb in the practice or are dealing with various problems. Well, the numbers are there, so we keep on going.
Participant: Yes, that’s exactly right.
Dr. Berzin: I think there are benefits to counting, just as there can be disadvantages.
Participant: It can give us a sense of accomplishment.
Dr. Berzin: True.
Participant: Probably, a teacher would make it dependent on the personality of the student.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, a teacher would make it dependent on the personality if we had the good fortune to be personally guided by a teacher, which not everybody has.
Anyway, let’s talk about laziness. Or are we too lazy to talk about laziness? This is a good example of which form of laziness we’re talking about. Is it procrastination, being attracted to something that is more pleasant? Is it feeling inadequate? We are getting distracted and going off on a tangent because it is less devastating than talking about our laziness.
Participant: This is what I meant when I mentioned waging war and making a lot of money. Would that be a kind of laziness, doing something unconstructive?
Dr. Berzin: So, is doing something that’s not constructive the laziness of being distracted by something trivial or negative? The one example would be going out and trying to getting too involved in our business, waging war, getting into arguments. What about suing somebody? Is it a distraction in the sense that we’re going to pursue this in order to get some money, rather than doing positive things in our lives?
Participant: It depends on how much money is involved.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. Is it a form of “I could direct all my….” I’ll use an example from my life. I had given somebody some money to build a house for me, and they just ran away with the money. I was involved with writing a book, teaching and stuff like that. So, now, am I going to divert all my attention to a lawsuit and try to get this money back, which would completely interrupt what I was doing? Or am I just going to say, “Good luck. I hope you make good use of this,” which is giving the victory to others, especially given the fact that I wasn’t going to pursue a lawsuit. But holding on to the anger… it’s ridiculous to feel anger. It would just cause a big interruption to my practice, so I let it go. But it is easier – which is why it falls into the category of laziness – just to be angry and to grumble in my mind, “This horrible person deceived me.”
Participant: You wouldn’t need to stay with the anger. You could hire a lawyer instead.
Dr. Berzin: Anything involved with a lawsuit is very, very time-consuming. This was just an example. Let’s not analyze the example. What I am talking about is, out of laziness, diverting our energies to something that is taking us away from our serious Dharma practice. “I don’t want to deal with this, so I’ll deal with this other thing.”
Participant: It depends on the motivation.
Dr. Berzin: So, is it better to watch TV with a good motivation than to meditate?
Participant: Better than to meditate with a bad one, yes.
Dr. Berzin: Well, I suppose one could argue that. One could debate that.
Participant: I watch an hour of TV in order to relax.
Dr. Berzin: Is this laziness? It would be laziness to continue to watch beyond what is necessary.
Participant: It would be better than meditating with the motivation to gain something, to pretend to meditate, say, to show off to others.
Dr. Berzin: There could be plenty of negative or poor motivations for meditating, like showing off to show how holy we are and so on. But that’s not the point. The point is to identify within ourselves when we get attached to trivial things because we find it easier than dealing with the constructive work that we need to do. That’s a form of laziness. This is the point.
Participant: We could be too lazy in our study and practice of lam-rim to go back over the earlier stages in order to reexamine and strengthen them.
Dr. Berzin: This is also very good. So, why is that? Do we put it off till tomorrow? Not necessarily. It’s that we are attracted to getting to the good stuff, to tantra and so on. And we are too lazy to make our refuge firm. It’s not that we are attracted to something that is trivial or negative. Still, it is, in a sense, a type of laziness, isn’t it?
Participant: How so?
Dr. Berzin: It’s the laziness of not dealing with the problems that we still have. We have trivialized refuge. We certainly haven’t dealt with rebirth or the worst states of rebirth on a very serious level. We just go onto the more exciting and interesting stuff, whether it’s the teachings on love and compassion, tantra, or dzogchen.
Participant: It’s like building a house without the proper basis.
Dr. Berzin: So, this is a form of laziness, isn’t it? It doesn’t quite fit into the definition, but it seems to me a form of laziness and of being negligent. The question is, do we do that? Let’s not just think of this theoretically. Do we do that in our Dharma practice? Do we skip over the more difficult points and just deal with the nicer ones? The example from the Tibetans is that it’s like the old man who spit outs the meat because it was too difficult to chew, so he only eats the mashed potatoes. Do we do that? Or it could be the third type of laziness, feeling that we’re inadequate – for example, thinking that we can’t possibly understand and meditate on voidness, so we’re not going to deal with it. What forms of laziness do we have in our Dharma practice?
Participant: We only choose the practices that we like to do and not the ones that we don’t like so much, like doing 100,000 prostrations.
Dr. Berzin: “OK, I’ll do Vajrasattva, but I am not going to do prostration.” That’s also out of laziness.
These three types: putting things off till tomorrow, distracting ourselves with trivial or negative things and feeling inadequate. Again, the point is to identify that these cause problems and that these are the things we need to work on. When we are feeling like that, we just need to persevere and to get ourselves back to doing something positive. If we need to take a break, fine, but don’t overdo it. Know when to stop that break and don’t take breaks when it’s unnecessary. It’s very difficult, especially when doing something positive is very boring. Like these days, I am correcting punctuation in various transcripts before they go online. Well, believe me, it’s very boring to be going through and correcting them. And there is certainly a tendency on my part, being a bit of news junkie, to look at the news over and over again on the internet. That’s laziness, and it certainly prevents one from getting really involved in doing something positive. So, one just does it.
My mother used to have a lovely saying. She said if you are going to do something, do it straight up and down, not sideways. “Straight up and down” means that we just do it. “Sideways” means that we’re not going to do it or that maybe we’ll do it but that we get involved with something else. We’re not going in a straight path; we’re going back and forth. So, just do it.
Participant: Not only the internet favors this kind of distraction but also the society in which one is doing more and more multitasking.
Dr. Berzin: We are constantly getting text messages; if we have the computer on, there are Twitter feeds, Facebook feeds, emails and all these sorts of things. Facebook, certainly, is a good example of being distracted: we are constantly looking at the messages of what our friends had for lunch or whether they liked what we had for lunch.
Participant: Even if you’re productive at work, you are expected to multitask.
Dr. Berzin: But what does that have to do with laziness?
Participant: It’s much easier not to focus on the productive task.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true. But laziness would be, “I am only going to take care of this side work because the main work is too boring or too difficult” or something like that. One has to discriminate between what’s important and what’s not important. That’s not so easy to do.
When we first turn on the computer in the morning, do we get down to our work on the computer, or do we first check all our emails, Facebook page and all these other things? How much time does that take? And by the time we are finished with all of that, do we feel like working? Of course, we also read the news, look at the stock market quotes of the day, and check the weather. I do all of these as well. I am equally guilty. This is laziness, basically, with the excuse that maybe something important came in.
This happens in meditation as well. When we are trying to think about and analyze something that would be constructive to do, we are more attached to our mental wandering and are therefore too lazy to come back to our object of focus. Laziness is listed in the list of major obstacles to concentration.
Not Caring
We have a little bit of time left, so we can go on to the next one, which is not caring.
- Based on longing desire, hostility, naivety, or laziness, not caring is a state of mind of not caring to engage in anything constructive or to restrain from activities tainted with confusion. It’s not taking seriously, and thus not caring about, the effects of our behavior.
“I don’t care about going to class or not going to class.” We don’t take it seriously. We don’t seriously think about the effects of that. Or “I don’t care about going to visit my sick relative.” It could be based on longing desire: “I’d rather be with this friend than go visit a sick relative.” It could be hostility or anger: “I am really annoyed with how difficult it is to fill out this tax form. So, I don’t care about doing it.” We don’t take it seriously. It’s too annoying. Or naivety – we are naïve in thinking that our sick relative wouldn’t feel horrible if nobody came to visit. Basically, we don’t take things seriously.
Let’s examine ourselves. That obviously is an obstacle; it’s a disturbing state of mind. I speak a lot about this in sensitivity training – not caring what the effect of our behavior is on others, not caring that the other’s feelings could be hurt.
[meditation]
Now, we have to be careful here. To care about something doesn’t mean to be worried about it. It just means to take things seriously. “I don’t care that this great teacher is visiting in town and giving a teaching, so I am not going to go. I don’t care if I miss it.” It’s that type of attitude.
Participant: I don’t care if I get angry.
Participant 2: It feels very self-centered not to think of the suffering of others.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, it’s very self-centered. Also, not thinking of the suffering of ourselves: “I don’t care if I fail the test, so I am not going to study.” It doesn’t have to involve others. Or “I don’t care whether I get out of samsara or not. It’s not important to me.”
What about when our child doesn’t want to do their homework, and we say, “I don’t care whether you feel like doing it or not. Just do it”? Is that an example of what we are talking about here? If not, why?
Participant: Because one cares.
Dr. Berzin: No, “I don’t care whether you feel like doing it or not, but I care that you do it.”
Participant: Sometimes, there are better ways of telling him that he has to do it. Trying to give him reasons for doing it rather than saying you don’t care. “OK, I understand that you are tired but…”
Dr. Berzin: OK, so you can be a little more diplomatic than saying, “I don’t care whether you feel like doing it or not.” You can try to convince them that there is a positive reason.
Participant: In a sense, you are trying to help him deal with this feeling that he has.
Dr. Berzin: But this isn’t the point. We are talking about how to deal with a child. We are talking about the attitude of “I don’t care.” Is that an example of this disturbing emotion, or is this a different case?
“I don’t care about polluting the environment and environmental issues, so I am not going to separate my trash. I don’t care.” That would be an example of what we are talking about here. It would be out of laziness or naivety, in this case. But in the other example that I used – “I don’t care if you feel like doing your homework or not. Just do it” – it doesn’t matter whether they feel like doing it or not: they have to do it. So, that’s not important. Here is an example where it is important. We’ve acknowledged that they don’t feel like doing it, but so what? Just do it.
That’s not helpful, according to our mother here.
Participant: Not with my son.
Dr. Berzin: But what we are trying to identify is the disturbing emotion of not caring.
Participant: In this sense, we should care. We should try to make him do it because he will have this feeling of not wanting to do something…
Dr. Berzin: So, we should care that the child does the homework. But we don’t care whether he feels like doing it or not.
Participant: We should care about why he is not feeling like doing it and how is he dealing with it, because when he is an adult, he will feel like not doing something and he will have to deal with it.
Dr. Berzin: This is very good. This is a disturbing emotion. If we don’t care whether he feels like it or not, we’re not going to investigate why he doesn’t feel like doing his homework and won’t help him to overcome that.
Do we have to care about everything? Care about all the troubles of the universe?
Participant: We can’t.
Dr. Berzin: We can’t? Ooh, the laziness of feelings of inadequacy. Does a Buddha care about everything and everyone? Yes.
Participant: But I am not a Buddha yet. It’s not within the sphere of my influence.
Dr. Berzin: “I don’t care if these two tribes are slaughtering each other.”
Participant: What can one do?
Dr. Berzin: There is a difference between being able to do something and taking it seriously. “I care about it. This is a big problem. I may not be able to do anything, but I care about it.” This becomes a very interesting issue in terms of signing petitions. Our experience has been that signing a petition makes no difference at all because the people in charge don’t care whether 100,000 people sign a petition. So, do we care about signing it?
Participant: Sometimes, it does make a difference.
Dr. Berzin: Well, the point is that, usually, even if we know that it’s not going to have any effect, we feel that we at least did something.
Participant: We had this discussion recently when we were at this anti-nuclear power demonstration. One might think that because there are so many people there, it doesn’t matter whether we go or not. There will still be enough.
Dr. Berzin: That’s very good.
Participant: But if everybody thought like that, there would be no demonstrations. Without all those demonstrations and other things in Germany during the last 20, 30 or more years, we wouldn’t have the discussion of whether or not to close down….
Dr. Berzin: But what about all the efforts of all the various leaders, the petitions and so on for China to respect human rights more? It’s quite obvious that the government in China doesn’t care. “This is an internal affair, and it’s none of your business” is their official statement. So, is it worthwhile to still sign a petition for the release of this political prisoner or that political prisoner?
Participant: They don’t care really, but it is irritating to them.
Dr. Berzin: So, it irritates them, like a mosquito. They get annoyed. It doesn’t mean they will do anything.
Participant: In some cases, these petitions have been effective.
Dr. Berzin: The point is that not caring is not a very helpful state of mind. If we are able to do something, even though the chances of succeeding might not be so high, it’s helpful to do something constructive.
Participant: It’s not just China. There are many countries with human rights abuses.
Dr. Berzin: So, we shouldn’t pick on one country. But these officials in the government are always surprised when people in Germany or this or that country care about these human rights issues. It gets them to start questioning, so it could have an effect.
Participant: I think every change starts out from a small,…
Dr. Berzin: Right, every change starts out from a small group of people caring, taking a situation seriously.
Participant: Fighting for something, I think, can make a difference.
Dr. Berzin: Now, let’s apply it to Dharma. Do we care about getting out of samsara?
Participant: That’s a difficult one.
Dr. Berzin: Do we care about overcoming our attachment?
Participant: I think so.
Dr. Berzin: Good. Some people are very involved with their attachments, whether it’s to people, sex, money, food. And there is a difference between caring about it but not doing anything… and then laziness comes in. These are more disturbing states of mind. The whole point is to recognize this in the big category of causes of suffering and, therefore, to try to develop renunciation, which is to think, “I really would like to get rid of this troublemaker, this state of mind.”