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In Praise of Laziness
What is wrong with laziness? What is wrong with just sitting still and listening to a distant sound come nearer and nearer? Or lying in bed of a morning and watching the birds in a nearby tree, or a single leaf dancing in the breeze when all the other leaves are very still? What is wrong with that?
…what really is laziness?
…if you haven’t read many books and have very little information, that is not ignorance. Real ignorance is having no knowledge of yourself, no perception of how your mind works, of what your motives, your responses are. Similarly, there is laziness when the mind is asleep. And most people’s minds are asleep. They are drugged by knowledge, by the Scriptures, by what Shankara or somebody else has said. They follow a philosophy, practise a discipline, so their minds — which should be rich, full, overflowing like the river — are made narrow, dull, weary. Such a mind is lazy. And a mind that is ambitious, that pursues a result, is not active in the true sense of the word; though it may be superficially active, pushing, working all day to get what it wants, underneath it is heavy with despair, with frustration.
… But a man who is watchful is not lazy, even though he may often sit very quietly and observe the trees, the birds, the people, the stars and the silent river.
