Lethargy, sleepiness, restlessness, remorse

• How having impartial love and compassion towards other living beings makes concentration easier
• Lethargy and sleepiness & its antidotes
• Restlessness and regret & its antidotes
• Questions and answers

How are we important?

I think it’s quite important to hold in our mind the ways in which we are important as an individual and the ways in which we are not important as an individual. We often have it upside down and backwards. We spend so much time thinking, “I want this; I want that. I need this; I need that. Other people should do this for me; they shouldn’t do that for me,” and this is the wrong way of paying attention to ourselves. It just brings a lot of misery.

On the other hand, when we see our potential—to cultivate impartial love and compassion for all living beings, to know the nature of reality, to develop our unique talents and abilities and share them with the people around us and with society as a whole—in that way, each of us is quite noteworthy. We’re quite important, and we need to put energy into developing those talents and abilities. That’s the healthy way of paying attention to ourselves.

We’re just so habituated to moaning and groaning and blaming others, and we do that kind of habitually. But if we begin to see how much it causes us and other people misery when we act like that habitually, then we get enough courage to start counteracting some of these old habits. When we practice the Dharma, we’re going to come up against our old habits. There’s no way to avoid it. I know when some people come to a spiritual path, they think, “I want light and love and bliss. I don’t want to hear about anger and malice and sensual attachment. I want to leave that behind. I want light and love.” But the thing is, we’re not going to get light and love and bliss without letting go of all the things that obstruct us from creating the causes for light and love and bliss.

As we confront the obstacles and then begin applying the antidotes, we really start to free ourselves, and that creates a very good feeling within us. It may not be a feeling like, “Oooo-Woo,” [laughter] but it becomes a feeling inside like, “Oh, I’m doing something meaningful.” And that brings a lot of peace and joy in our mind. When we come to a spiritual path, we’re not seeking Disney World 24/7; we’re seeking something else.

I was just asked to write a response for one of the Buddhist magazines. Somebody had asked the question: “The Buddha and even spiritual mentors, like His Holiness the Dalai Lama talk a lot about happiness as a goal of spiritual practice, but isn’t that self-serving?” Here, we have to differentiate different kinds of happiness. We have to differentiate different ways of taking care of ourselves or different ways of paying attention to ourselves.

I thought the question was quite interesting. To me, it really illustrates how so often when we come to Buddhism, we bring in remnants of growing up in a Christian culture. In a Christian culture, there’s the feeling that unless you are suffering, you can’t be truly compassionate. It’s right there. We’ve learned that since we were little kids. But that’s not at all the idea in Buddhism. Buddhism talks about fulfilling the purpose of ourselves, our own goal, and fulfilling the purpose or aims of other living beings. It talks about both because we’re interrelated. Self and others depend on each other, so it’s not, “I’m worthless,” and it’s not, “I’m the most important one in the world—shower the light and love and bliss on me.” It’s not either of those.

Recognizing the real enemy

Did you have a good time thinking about sensual desire and malice? Anybody not have sensual desire and malice? Anybody free of those? Can you see how they cause you problems in your life? Can you see how they make you unhappy, how they make you do things that make you not feel good about yourself? Then we really see that the real enemy is not somebody outside.

From a Buddhist viewpoint, the real enemy is our own confused mind, our own grasping desire, our own malice, our own jealousy and arrogance. Those are the things that are really the origin of our misery, not other sentient beings. Other sentient beings are kind to us: “What? They’re kind to me? No, they are not, they did this and they did that!” We can list off all the ways people have hurt us and betrayed our trust and disappointed us. But if there weren’t other sentient beings, could you stay alive all by yourself? None of us could stay alive by ourselves; it’s impossible. We need other living beings. We depend on other living beings. It’s because of the effort and work of other living beings that we’re able to stay alive and even practice the Dharma.

We can focus on the glass being half full or the glass being half empty. We can focus on all the ways sentient beings mistreat us, or we can focus on all the amazing ways they’re kind to us. “Wait a minute, how are those people kind to me?” Anybody here install the fans? Anybody here make this building? A few people supervised it. Anybody here make the carpet or make the chair you’re sitting on? Anybody here make the cloth that your clothes are made from? Anybody make their own glasses or their own hearing aids?

Look around: everything we use that helps to make our life comfortable, it all comes from the energy of other living beings. Some of them are in our country; some of them are in other countries. Some of them may be the same race, ethnicity, religion, gender—all these different identities that we have—as we are, and I bet most of the people on whose efforts that we depend are not in all those categories exactly the same as us. And yet, our whole lives depend on them.

I think it’s very important that we really think about this and that we have a big mind, because when we talk about being of benefit to all sentient beings, it really means all sentient beings. That means that we have to look beyond external differences, and even internal differences, like different political opinions or different religious beliefs or different social customs. We have to really see that all of us are wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, equally, and really open our hearts to that.

From a Buddhist viewpoint, it’s not me first, or my group first, or my country first, or whatever identity we have first—it’s all sentient beings first. Because we depend on all sentient beings. All of them want happiness and freedom from suffering as intensely as we do—whether we know them or not, whether we’re related to them or not. It’s much easier to concentrate in your meditation if you have that view of having impartial love and compassion towards other living beings.

When we have a very biased mind and we’re attached to some people, such that we just daydream about them constantly, or we have antipathy towards other people, such that we mull over how we’re going to get even with them, those two things really disturb our ability to meditate. So, we have to work with them.

Lethargy and sleepiness

The third hindrance is lethargy and sleepiness. Anybody have that problem? [laughter] It’s a very common problem in meditation, and it doesn’t necessarily depend on how many hours of sleep you got the night before. Many of us see that when we’re active and we’re doing things, we’re wide awake, but the moment we sit down to meditate, this amazing kind of mental heaviness just overcomes us. You were awake a minute ago—vibrant, talking. It was great. Then you sit down and listen to teachings or meditate, and it’s like your head got stuck in a bucket. [laughter] You can’t think clearly. You can’t even keep your eyes open. Have you had that happen? It’s usually in the front row, where everybody sees you. [laughter]

This summer I was leading a course, and we were doing a discussion group. I was bright, wide awake, leading the course just fine, putting out the questions for the discussion group. And then when everybody started talking, I started nodding off. [laughter] I’m thinking, “I’ve got to stay awake—come on, Chodron! You don’t want them to think you’re drunk or something!” [laughter] I was wondering, “Did it show that I was falling asleep?” [laughter] See, I told you—it happens when you’re in the front and everybody’s looking. Of course I was interested in what everybody had to say, but my head was just in this bucket!

That happens. It did have something to do with me not getting enough sleep, so I did have a little bit of an excuse, but it wasn’t totally that. This is sometimes because of karma. In the past, we created certain negativities, and then that karma ripens in such a way that we get this really weird kind of cloud effect where you can’t stay awake. That can be indicative of needing to do some purification. That’s also why it’s very good to do the prostrations to the 35 Buddhas—because on one hand you are doing purification practice, and on the other hand you are moving your body, which helps you to stay awake.

When I lived in Nepal there was one Italian monk who sometimes didn’t make it to morning meditation. My teacher was very strict; everyone had to be at morning and evening meditation. He was completely emphatic about that. One day, the Italian monk missed the whole session and people were asking, “What happened? Why did you miss meditation?” He said, “Well, I was doing prostrations in my room,”—he was doing the long prostrations [laughter]—“And I got down on the floor and I fell asleep.” [laughter] It happens.

Antidotes to lethargy and sleepiness

On a physical level, one way to counteract that lethargic feeling is to do prostrations beforehand, to get some exercise. Also, make sure you’re looking into long distances during the break time and not just putting your nose in a book or sitting in a very dark room or something like that.

In your meditation, if you’re doing the breath, imagine that when you exhale, you’re exhaling a smoky kind of unclear mind and when you inhale, you’re inhaling bright light. I learned that when I teach this, there’s an important element to mention, because one time someone said, “I’ve been doing that, but I exhale all this smoke and then it’s just like stacking up in the room.” [laughter] I said, “No, when you exhale, it vanishes. [laughter] You’re not polluting the room.” You don’t start coughing in your meditation because you think you’re breathing in smoke. It can be very helpful to think, “That dark, heavy mind—I’m exhaling it,” and then inhale bright light.

If you’re doing the meditation on the Buddha, then make sure that the Buddha is at eye level. If you visualize him low, it’s easy to get tired or your mind gets slightly down while you’re meditating. Remember how I said to visualize him made of light? Make the light brighter and really think that when you’re visualizing the Buddha, he’s very bright light and that some of his light is flowing into you and filling up your whole body and mind too. That will help to stay awake.

Another thing is before you come to the session, put cold water on your face. When you sit, make your body a little bit cold—don’t wear so many sweaters and jackets and put a blanket on top of your knees—because if you make yourself too cozy and comfortable, it’s easy to get drowsy during your meditation. One of my teachers had a very good way of doing this. When we did puja with the young monks, he took a small offering bowl, and they had to put it on their heads with water in it. [laughter] That was a very good impetus not to fall asleep during the session.

Difference between lethargy and sleepiness

Lethargy manifests physically as a lack of physical energy and stamina, and it manifests mentally as a mental heaviness. The mind is dull and unclear and doesn’t want to do anything. We feel bored; we don’t have any energy. Remember, this is lethargy and sleepiness. Sleepiness is drowsiness—where your five senses begin to absorb inside. You can see that when you’re starting to fall asleep, and you’re no longer hearing. If it’s a guided meditation, you can’t hear the instructions so well because your senses are withdrawing.

These two are put together as one hindrance because they have similar causes, similar functions, and similar antidotes. I was just describing a little bit about the antidotes. I read you some of the citations from Nagarjuna’s Commentary on the Great Perfection of Wisdom about sensual desire and malice. He also has something to say about lethargy and sleepiness:

You, get up! [laughter] Don’t lie there hugging that stinking corpse. That is all sorts of impurities falsely designated as a person.

That should wake you up because that’s what he’s saying our body is—a stinking corpse that we’re very attached to and wanted, so we got it. If we’re not careful, at the end of this life we’ll want another one, and we’ll get that one too. Then you wind up with bodies that get old and sick and die all the time.

It’s as if you’ve gotten a serious disease or been shot by an arrow. With such an accumulation of suffering and pain, how can you sleep?

So, he’s saying: “You’re in samsara, kiddo—look at what your situation is!” If that doesn’t wake you up and make you want to do something so you don’t have to continue being in samsara, then what can we do? He’s saying, “Get up!”

The entire world is burning up by the fire of death.

It’s true, isn’t it? Every day people die. People who were alive yesterday are not here today. There was another mass shooting yesterday. But aside from that, there are many people who just died of old age, of sickness, all sorts of things. The mass shooting was in Texas, again. And Texas, today, is when some new laws come into effect, making it easier to carry guns into churches and schools. That’s what Texas is doing.

But yesterday with the mass shooting, somebody got stopped for a traffic offense—we don’t know what,—and he started shooting the officer. And then he drove down the highway between two cities randomly shooting at people on the highway until he wound up in a shopping center parking lot where they killed him. At one point it sounds like he stole a U.S. Post Office vehicle and was riding in it, too. There were at least five people killed, at least 21 people injured. They don’t really know the full thing yet.

All of those people woke up yesterday morning, and it was just a Saturday, Labor Day weekend: “We’ll go out shopping; we’ll do something fun with the family.” There was no thought that they would die, and then that happened. All the people that were sick, too, never thought they would die yesterday. They always thought, “One more day, one more day.”

This is Nagarjuna:

You should be seeking means of escape from samsara, from this cycle of rebirth. How then, can you sleep? You’re like a person in shackles, being led to his execution. With disastrous harm so imminent, how can you sleep?

Because we always feel that death is a long way away, don’t we? “Death happens to other people, and even if it happens to me, it’s not going to happen for a long time, a really long time. And somehow, I’m going to defy it. I’m going to be the longest living person on the planet. I’m going to set the record for the longest life.”

With insurgent fetters not yet destroyed and their harm not yet averted, it’s as if you were sleeping in a room with a venomous snake, and as if you have met up with the soldiers’ gleaming blades. At such a time, how can you sleep? Sleep is a vast darkness in which nothing is visible. Every day it deceives and steals away your clarity. When sleep blankets the mind, you are not aware of anything. With such great faults as these, how can you sleep?

That’s one way to approach sleep—to realize our situation and realize the good fortune we have and act on it now.

Additional antidotes

When the mind gets lethargic and heavy they say another helpful way to deal with it is to think about one of the teachings that lightens the mind and brings you enthusiasm and hope. For example, you might think about our precious human life, and how valuable it is to practice the path, and how fortunate we are to have it. Or you might think about the qualities of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. When you do, it makes the mind very, very happy, very joyful. These kinds of meditations and also thinking about the kindness of other living beings makes the mind happy. It elevates our energy. These meditations that elevate the energy are very good to do if we’re suffering from lethargy and sleepiness.

Chinese monasteries have wake-up devices that some monastics use. We have one of them here. We’ve never used it. [laughter] There’s a good reason. It’s kind of two sticks together. Usually, they’ll have somebody walking around in the meditation hall, and if you look like you’re falling asleep, somebody will whack you. [laughter] Often the meditators themselves will ask to be whacked. There’s certain points in the body—energy points—where on a physiological level, it will help to be whacked there. There’s certain places on the upper back and shoulders. They don’t just kind of whack anywhere, but in certain places. They say it works; I can imagine it works. [laughter]

Restlessness and regret

Then the next hindrance, again, has two parts to it: restlessness and regret. They’re combined into one hindrance, even though they’re different mental factors. Again, this is because they have a similar cause, a similar function, and a similar antidote. In terms of their causes, both restlessness and regret arise due to preoccupation with our relatives, our friends, our home, having a good time, loving companions, and things like that. And both function to make the mind unsettled and agitated. Developing concentration is the antidote to that.

If we look at restlessness in particular first, it’s a mental agitation that includes anxiety, fear, worry, apprehension, excitement. Does anybody here have these mental states? I think many people nowadays deal with anxiety. People get so anxious over things that aren’t really important. I think the media has a lot to do with it, and our educational system, and our family. We’re all pushed to be the best. I was thinking about Melania’s slogan: “Be Best.” I was thinking that in any group, only one person can “be best.” That means everybody else is not the best, has failed in some way. Then you put it on yourself: “Oh, I’m a failure because I’m not best.” That is totally psychologically unhealthy and also ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous kind of thought and a ridiculous way to compare ourselves to others.

We think, “I want to be best, and if I’m best then I’m successful!” But actually, when you’re best you have the stress of trying to remain best. Especially for athletes who are getting older and losing their energy but have the stress to remain best—oh my goodness, that’s really devastating. Or, whatever field you’re in, you get an award, and then you think, “Oh, how in the world am I going to maintain that?” Or you ace an exam and you think, “How am I going to do that again?” So, whether you’re the best or you’re not the best, you’re anxious.

I think this whole thing of comparing ourselves to others is really very detrimental because we have different talents and abilities. Rather than compare ourselves to others, I think it’s better to get in touch with what we’re good at and then use that. We can really drive ourselves crazy worrying about things, can’t we? Something hasn’t happened, and yet we’re worried about it. You can see how restlessness and regret share something in common.

On one hand, both of them take us into the past. When you’re restless, it’s like: “Oh, I did this. It was so much fun, now could I do it again?” Or: “I don’t know, how did that happen? What did that event in the past mean? What did that person mean when they said that?” With regret we also look in the past: “Oh my god, look what I said—no wonder I have problems. Look what I did—I had the chance to take that precept about not taking intoxicants and I didn’t take it. I went out and celebrated not taking it [laughter] and wound up intoxicated and then wound up in a big mess afterwards.”

One time we shared experiences in a course. People told stories of what they did when they were intoxicated. That took a lot of courage. We were all in the same boat and we laughed about it, but it wasn’t funny at the time. Because we do all sorts of stupid things, don’t we? So, regret takes us back in the past in the same way. Sometimes it’s worse even—we regret our virtuous actions. “I gave a donation to this charity but now the family can’t go out to dinner because I gave the money to a charity.” When you regret being generous that destroys the merit completely.

Restlessness and regret pull us into the past, and they pull us into the future, too. You know, restlessness: “Oh, what can I do, the retreat ends tomorrow. I haven’t had coffee in three days. [laughter] Where’s the nearest Starbucks from here? I’m going to get in the car and blast the radio [laughter] and go to Starbucks. I’ve been in withdrawal for two and a half days at this Buddhist place. [laughter] I’m going to go out and have a steak.” The mind is really restless. “Oh, she talked all the time about visualizing pizza, now I want some!” [laughter] Would you say that’s a hint to the cook? [laughter]

It’s probably not—we’re having shepherd’s pie, mushroom, corn, and brussel sprouts again. [laughter] It’s very interesting living in a monastery because you know what you’re going to have for lunch according to who’s cooking that day. If some people cook, you’re having fried rice or you’re having fried noodles and vegetables. Right? [laughter] Other people: “We’re going to have a stir fry today.” And then other people: “We’re going to have lentils, cabbage, beans and rice.” [laughter]

So, restlessness takes us into the future [laughter] wondering, “What can I do?” Regret can take us into the future, too: “I did this in the past. What’s the effect going to be in the future?” Again, the mind is worried and so on, and there’s so much distraction. We’re all probably very familiar with that in our meditation, aren’t we? The mind goes off on amazing things, especially if you do a very long retreat. Then so much stuff comes up. You wonder how did all that stuff get in your mind to start with? Commercial jingles from when you were a kid comes up; you think of your grammar school friends; you have regret for something that happened decades ago. You start thinking, “Should I try and look up all my high school boyfriends and girlfriends and see if I can find them again after the retreat is over?” The mind gets so restless! Then the meditation object is gone, gone, gone beyond [laughter]—but not to awakening.

Regret versus guilt

Also, when we regret past actions, sometimes we don’t just regret them but we go into guilt. There is a big difference between regret and guilt. Regret is: “I’m sorry I did that. I made a mistake. I regret having done that.” That’s healthy. When we’ve done something in the past that we don’t feel good about doing, it’s very appropriate to regret it.

But sometimes we take the next step and we go into guilt: “I’m such a bad person because I’ve done that.” So, it’s no longer, “I regret doing that action,” it’s “I’m a bad person because I did that,” and “I’m not only a bad person, I’m the worst person,” and ‘I’m not only the worst person, I can’t tell anybody about what I did; I don’t want them to know because nobody will like me if they know what I’ve done.” We sit there feeling horrible about ourselves and all bottled up; it creates a lot of tension and really impedes us.

We have, again from our Judeo-Christian culture, this idea that the more we feel guilty, the more we are atoning for the negativity we did. So we think, “The more I can beat myself up and tell myself what a horrible, lousy, worthless person I am, the more I’m atoning for those things that I did that I don’t feel good about having done.”

That is the logic—”logic” in our mind—but that’s not how it works. Feeling guilty, beating ourselves up, telling ourselves we’re worthless doesn’t purify anything. It only immobilizes us and prevents us from going forward and doing something useful.  From a Buddhist viewpoint, regretting our misdeeds is a virtuous action. Feeling guilty about them is something to abandon. Guilt is a big hindrance. How many of you are former Catholics? Former Jews? [laughter] How about Protestants? Who has the most guilt?

Audience: Mary Murphy says that the Jews invented guilt but the Catholics perfected it! [laughter]

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): On one retreat we had, we had a discussion group about guilt. At the end, the Protestants lost, [laughter] but that was really before Evangelical Protestants came—well, no, it was still there but it wasn’t as strong. [laughter] So, you don’t feel guilty about it? There was a little discussion between the Catholics and the Jews over who had more guilt. The Jews are “The Chosen Ones.” We have more guilt. [laughter]

It was really interesting to see how you’re raised and how you take in things that you were taught as a kid without having the ability to really sit and think about whether it makes sense or not. That’s one of the nice things now as adults to think about—what makes sense and what do I really believe, and what is hogwash? Who invented the expression “hogwash?” It’s not kosher. [laughter]

Audience: It seems like the word regret must be a different word in Sanskrit for these applications, because the regret in the five hindrances and the regret in doing purification seem very different.

VTC: It’s the same word.

Audience: Really?

VTC: Yes, but like I was saying, regretting our misdeeds is something virtuous. But when you are trying to develop concentration, it still takes you away from your object. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have regret. That kind of regret is very healthy, and we need to purify our misdeeds. But we should do it in another session—and don’t regret virtuous actions.

Antidotes to restlessness and regret

In terms of antidotes, watching our breath can be very helpful when our mind starts spinning with fear, anxiety, restlessness, regret—when the mind is just totally unsettled. Just watching the breath can be very helpful. Also, paying attention to our physical, verbal and mental activities is also helpful. If we really strengthen the mental factors of mindfulness and introspective awareness then with mindfulness, we keep our mind on something positive, and with introspective awareness—in the break times, too—we check what’s going on in our mind. If our mind just wandered off into all this kind of rumination, we bring it back. Staying attentive to what’s going on, what we’re doing and saying and thinking is very important when we have restlessness and regret.

And another helpful thing is just trying to remind ourselves that the past has happened. It’s not happening now. The future is also not happening now. So, why transport my mind into a state of anxiety over something that is not happening now? If I open my eyes and I look where I am right now, I’m in a place with like-minded people, and it’s peaceful, so let my mind be peaceful, too.

Here is what Nagarjuna counsels for restlessness and regret:

If you feel regret for an offense [if we’ve broken a precept or we’ve acted in ways that we don’t feel good about], having regretted it, put it down and let it go.

So we do the purification process. We regret our misdeeds. We change our attitude towards whoever we harmed. We do some kind of remedial action, and we make a determination not to do it again. Those are the four parts. And when we’ve done that then we put it down. Now, it’s true that we purify the same thing again and again, but each time we try to put it down to a greater and greater extent.

So if you feel regret for an offense, having regretted it, put it down and let it go. In this way the mind abides, peaceful and happy. Do not constantly remain attached to it in your thoughts.

So, you don’t sit there and beat yourself up, thinking about what you did, or what you should have done and you didn’t do. Because we regret not only what we did, but what we didn’t do. So, don’t remain attached to it, constantly going over and over and over it in your mind.

If you possess the two kinds of regret of having not done what you should have done or having done what you should not have done, because this regret attaches to the mind, it is the mark of a foolish person.

When it goes into guilt, and we start ruminating again and again, like he says, it’s really the mark of a foolish person. So, don’t think, “The more I beat myself up and the worse I make myself feel, the more I’m purifying and atoning for it,” because that’s not what’s going on.

It is not the case that, on account of feeling guilty, you will somehow be able to do what you failed to do. All of the ill deeds that you have already committed cannot be caused to become undone.

Sitting there and feeling guilty about them doesn’t do anything. It’s better to regret, purify, make a determination to act differently in the future and go forward.

Audience: I was reading in the book on meditating on the breath to counteract discursive thoughts, and I’m just a little curious. It goes down to steps five and six. It seems to get into pretty advanced things, but then right below it, it says, “They go through all the stages in a session.” Is there a way to do that when you’re not super advanced?

VTC: When you’re really expert in it, then you can go through all the stages in one session, but most of us are at stage one? [laughter]

Audience: In the part about “obscuration and the mind,” if you don’t know what you did, how do you purify something? How do you purify when your mind gets sleepy, because I can purify, but when I don’t know what I’m doing…

VTC: So, if you don’t know specifically what you’ve done to purify, how can you purify? Well, they say we’ve been born as everything in samsara and that we’ve done everything, so you can make a very vast regret: “Any and all negative actions I’ve done, I regret them.”

Specifically when we feel tired and sleepy, I think some of the actions that may lie behind that is maybe in a previous life, we disrespected the Dharma, so that created the cause not to be able to focus so well when we meditate, or we disrespected Dharma items in some way. Maybe we called people names, like “lazy bones” or whatever. Calling people names like that or chewing people out for being lazy—that’s the kind of thing it seems to me that could ripen into our being quite lethargic.

Or also, in a previous life, maybe we didn’t fulfill our responsibilities by being quite lazy, sleeping in. Maybe we said, “Well, I don’t feel like doing it, so I just won’t do it, and who cares if it’s inconvenient for someone else? In fact, I don’t even think about it being inconvenient for somebody else. I just think I don’t feel like doing it,” and left it like that. I think that kind of attitude, and actions done like that, make the mind dull. So, you can think about things in this life when we’ve done that and then, even if we can’t remember past lives, we can think, “I could have done that in a past life.” Also, it’s always good when we purify to add: “and all the other negativities I’ve done, too.”

I was thinking it could come, too, from avoiding the Dharma. Maybe in a past life we had access to the teachings but then we didn’t go, or we slept through the whole teaching, or something like that. We preferred to lie in bed and oversleep, so we didn’t get up for morning meditation or we went to morning meditation for five minutes and then we left. Those kind of things could contribute, too.

Audience: Something you brought up last night triggered something in me—based on this hyper-productive society that we all live in—with “RBG,” Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Even in the hospital with pancreatic cancer potentially, she was concerned with having a physical body because it prevented her from doing what she wanted to do. Then I think about my own self when that lethargy or the sleepiness comes up. What, in your opinion, is the healthy balance of rest, relaxation, caring for oneself and forgoing your own needs in a way for the benefit of others?

VTC: I think it’s something that each of us have to figure out for ourselves, and it’s not something where you reach one conclusion and the conclusion is the right one forever and ever. I think it’s a constant thing where we’re coming back and rebalancing ourselves, again and again. It depends what you’re doing, too. For example, there are certain things where there’s a deadline and we have to do it. Otherwise, it becomes very inconvenient for other people. On those things, I may not be in the mood to do it, but I nudge myself, and I do it.

Or if it’s something really that I can’t do—like if I’m totally exhausted or whatever—I’d call and give them some notice in advance why I can’t do it, so they can find somebody else. Or maybe I help them find somebody else who can do it. But then there are other times where I know I can do it, but I’m just being lazy, so then I kind of nudge myself. And once I get going, I’m usually okay. It’s just the getting going part that’s hard.

Then there are other things, like writing books. It’s very interesting how there are some days where the inspiration just isn’t there, and there are some days when I’m lazy and I don’t feel like sitting down and doing it. There’s a difference between those two. It’s easy to push them together and give myself a reason to not write, but I have to see when is it that the energy just isn’t there? Because I know, for example, in the evening is not always my best time. Sometimes it is; I’m invigorated to write. Sometimes it’s not. When it’s one of those things where the energy isn’t there, I leave it. I come back to it the next morning when I’m feeling more alert.

But then other times, it’s the morning time and I still don’t feel like writing, and it’s not that the energy isn’t there; it’s like I want some distraction. I don’t want to sit down and really discipline my mind right now. I’d much rather read something. If I read something that is still Dharma, that’s okay, but if I’m reading something that’s not, then I need to discipline my mind, like: “Yes, we’re feeling lazy. Let’s start doing this.” Other times, it’s like that and I know what I need to do is take a walk. So, it’s a matter of trial and error. When do I need to give myself a break? When do I need to nudge myself? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for this.