The Shackles of Laziness

Laziness is a twisted human state generated by sentimentality. Master Li said, “Why can human beings be human? It is because human beings have sentimentality. They live just for this sentimentality. Affection among family members, love between a man and a woman, love for parents, feelings, friendship, doing things for friendship, and everything else all relate to this sentimentality(Chapter 4: “Upgrading Xinxing” in Zhuan Falun).”

Sloth and hedonism always go hand in hand, and people who love easy living must hate work. In the universe, there is a law called “no loss, no gain,” and in ordinary human society, “the harder you work, the more you get; the less you work, the less you get; if you don’t work at all, you don’t get anything.” And for practitioners how much you gain is equivalent to how much effort you put in. Therefore, in cultivation practice, our improvement is directly related to how much we let go of attachments.

Ordinary people don’t understand this principle, however, so they always wonder how to obtain more material things with less effort or even how to get something for nothing. They don’t realize the relationship between gain and loss or good and evil. Furthermore, they are involuntarily slipping towards complete destruction, and they are indeed pathetic. Since they don’t restrain themselves from the “law of heart,” it’s very hard for ordinary people to spontaneously resist laziness. Thus, ordinary people only do beneficial things when motivated by self-interest or pressured by livelihood. If possible, they are definitely willing to coddle their sluggishness.

Dafa practitioners are people who understand the karmic relationship between good and evil as well as loss and gain. Oftentimes, we courageously fight and win battles against adversity, the show-off mentality, jealousy, and the rest, all of which make their appearances in aggressive and violent forms. Despite this, practitioners are very likely to overlook or even evade laziness, which shows up in passive and invisible forms. Laziness expresses itself as “not wanting to do” in the choice between “wanting or not wanting to do.” It corrodes our brainpower like poison, tying us up. It stupefies our nerves like a drug and, like a mountain, it stands in the way of our returning to our original true selves.

Laziness may show itself anywhere and at any time; but it is often ignored, causing us to become numb to the laziness itself. We can usually realize when we’re not striving forward and we can often see the reasons for that, yet it’s always easy for us to neglect or even intentionally avoid dealing with our laziness, an invisible demon. Normally, we should be able to act once we acknowledge something, but in fact, we always fail to act on what we have realized. Our deliberate misconduct reveals the rift between our knowledge and behavior. Essentially, it is laziness that causes the problem.

Laziness can be shown in Fa study, exercising, Fa promotion, and sending out righteous thoughts, as well as in various aspects of our daily life . Laziness resembles an imperceptible net that gives us a hard time. When we study the Fa, for example, we may feel tired or even drowsy. When we need to exercise, laziness entices us to reduce our practice time or to use various excuses to avoid exercising. When we need to promote the Fa, laziness makes us whitewash ourselves by giving us excuses such as the bad environment, our bad cultivation state, or that most things have been done already, and the like. When it’s time for us to send forth righteous thoughts, laziness causes us to feel satisfied with the minimum five minutes instead of having a righteous thought at every moment. Furthermore, in our daily life, laziness causes us to be careless and drift along.

I’ve been interfered with by laziness for a long time now, and my cultivation state has also toggled between good and bad. When I realized my idleness, I have always compared the present to my past and myself to others. Actually, it’s laziness that’s digging into my head. I have always tried to avoid doing the Dafa exercises, and when asked by others, I make up various excuses to avoid the problem. When I want to write an article, I have thoughts about whether it’s even worth writing or if I should wait until my mind’s more mature, and so forth. It is exactly laziness that attempts to scare or hamper me by encouraging my disinclination toward consuming energy and brain-power.

Initially, I felt I had done quite a lot of Fa-promotion work. I even thought about how many flyers I had made and how many people I told about the Fa—until one day when a young practitioner said to me, “I feel like you haven’t done much.” I was deeply touched. That night, I had a dream in which I was sitting on the backseat of a fellow practitioner’s bike, and I was being dragged through the sky. This was Teacher prompting me to work toward higher levels on my own instead of relying on others to pull me up.

Laziness is virtually another fatal tribulation for all Dafa practitioners to pass. However, behind the laziness itself, there is in fact support from many levels of the evil forces. The process of eliminating laziness is actually eliminating the evil behind it, and it is also to create an environment for offering salvation to people.

Laziness has already wasted us too much of our time and it has caused many missed opportunities. If we don’t take it seriously, the billions and billions of years we’ve waited can be completely ruined—we can’t conform to the control of laziness and sit there waiting for Teacher’s help and changes in the outside environment. We must use our wisdom and mighty virtue obtained through Dafa to aggressively clean out all the idiosyncratic variations and aberrations. Teacher said, “You cannot always rely on me to bring you up to a higher level while you, yourself do not move. Only after the Fa is explicitly stated do you make a move. If it is not taught clearly, you do not move, or move backward. I cannot recognize such behavior as cultivation practice. At the crucial moment when I ask you to break away from humans, you do not follow me. Each opportunity will not occur again. Cultivation practice is a serious matter. The distance has become greater and greater. It is extremely dangerous to add anything human to cultivation practice (“Digging Out the Roots” in Essentials for Further Advancement).” Laziness often causes us to regard truth-clarification and salvation of people as a burden, thus suppressing our compassionate nature. We must always keep in mind Teacher’s instruction: “So in clarifying the truth, don't wait, don't rely on others, and don't just hope for changes in external factors. Every one of us is creating history for the future, that's why everyone is not only participating in group activities, but also taking the initiative to look for work to do. As long as something is good for Dafa, you should take the initiative to do it, take the initiative to work on it. Every person you come into contact with in society is someone to clarify the truth to, and what's manifest in clarifying the truth is Dafa disciples' mercy and salvation of the people of the world.” ( “To All Students at the Nordic Fa Conference”)

Laziness is a strong and persistent attachment derived from sentimentality. It exists in every dimension within our bodies. We have to break through it by using perseverance and tolerance so we may achieve consummation. “If this sentimentality is not relinquished, you will be unable to practice cultivation. If you are free from this sentimentality, nobody can affect you. An everyday person’s mind will be unable to sway you. What takes over in its place is benevolence, which is something more noble.” (Chapter Four: “Upgrading Xinxing” in Zhuan Falun,)

Directly facing the violent and stubborn laziness enabled me to obtained a deeper understanding of the words: “Together, let’s encourage ourselves by breaking through the shackles imposed by laziness; may we walk steadily through the final stage of Fa rectification” (unofficial translation, source unknown).

July 15th, 2001