Practice Library

Enthusiastic effort (virya)

14 teachings in the library are about this.

• D3S2 - Joyful Effort, and the Three Kinds of Laziness David Oromith · 69 minutes · recorded August 9, 2026

  Awareness itself is the object to begin with: sensations, then sounds, then thoughts, turning the attention back each time to the awareness that knows them, resting in the sky rather than the clouds. David then talks about joyful effort, and about switching the reward by asking why you want to do a thing and, afterwards, whether you are glad you did it. The three kinds of laziness follow: the wish for your own comfort, faintheartedness, and the busyness of worldly things.

• I Can't Meditate, My Mind Is Too Busy David Oromith · 7 minutes · recorded June 2, 2026

  A short extract from Motivating the Lazy Practitioner Within. David talks about what happens when we do a ten minute practice where the mind wanders the whole time and we think it was a waste, and why the wandering mind is not an obstacle to meditation, but the very fabric of it. He says, if meditation only worked when the mind was quiet, then we would not need it! He offers a small reframe: I can't focus, becomes I can't focus yet, as we remain open to growth rather than feeling defeated.

• Session Three - The Laziness of Discouragement David Oromith · 99 minutes · recorded June 2, 2026

  The third laziness, discouragement, the "this is not for me" that stops practice before it starts. David quotes Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo on feeling unworthy and Ven. Thubten Chodron's Martha's mantra, then sets Buddha nature against it: pile on the mud and the diamond is still a diamond. Pema Chodron's antidote is lightening up. David then has you hear your own words in a friend's voice, then turn your answer back on yourself, closing on phrases of loving kindness.

• Session Two - The Laziness of Busyness David Oromith · 78 minutes · recorded May 29, 2026

  The second laziness, too busy for practice, the one David calls the most disguised because it sounds so reasonable. The energy of busyness fills every gap: participants in one study chose an electric shock over fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts. David offers renunciation, not giving things up but not being fooled by the promise, and Oliver Burkeman's question of what gets your time. It closes with an experiment, noticing what the mind grabs when a gap appears.

• Guided Meditation - Arousing Aspiration for Practice David Oromith · 18 minutes · recorded May 19, 2026

  David asks why you joined the session tonight, and beneath that what draws you to practice at all, with time to sit rather than grab the most obvious answer. Then a moment when something on the path worked, and a person whose practice you admire or trust, on the thought that if they can do this then perhaps it is not beyond you. It closes looking forward, at what a calmed mind would change, with no shoulds and no pressure.

• Session One - Procrastination David Oromith · 81 minutes · recorded May 19, 2026

  The first of the three lazinesses, the pull of the sofa and "I'll do it later". David sets out the cycle of delay, brief relief then guilt, Shantideva's taste for idle pleasure, and Tim Pychyl's finding that procrastination is an emotion management problem rather than poor time management. In a guided practice on aspiration we recall a moment when practice worked and someone whose experience inspires us. It closes on specific intentions and a two minute version of the task.

• Practising with Joy: Lightness and Humour on the Buddhist Path David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026

  The evening opens with gratitude for a precious human life and closes with a longer empathetic joy practice in which we rejoice in good fortune, a loved one's happiness and even people you find difficult. David draws on the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu to show how humility frees us from self-preoccupation, and how joyful effort, reframing, humour and gratitude counter the mind's negativity bias. He shares his own depression and homelessness as reframed hardship.

• Session Two - Enthusiasm, People Pleasing and Contemplation David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded October 15, 2025

  The session opens with a guided meditation in which we drop from body sensation into resting in bare awareness itself, then continues through generosity, joyful effort and concentration among the six perfections. David explains the three kinds of giving, why generosity is spoiled by wanting something back, and pictures contentment and gratitude as floating in a reservoir, before setting out the three levels of wisdom: study, contemplation and meditation. Questions cover where generosity shades into people pleasing.

• D4S2 - The Buddha's Instructions to Bahiya, and the Stages of Attention David Oromith · 75 minutes · recorded August 21, 2025

  A few lines the Buddha gave to Bahiya, who urgently wanted teachings, used here as preparation: in the seen let there be only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognized only the cognized, without labelling or identifying any of it. David then takes the first four of the nine stages shown in the elephant artwork, where the meditator chases a mind that is following the monkey of involuntary thoughts, and the powers, faults and antidotes that go with them.

• Session 5 - Diligence, Meditation & Wisdom David Oromith · 79 minutes · recorded February 19, 2025

  A guided meditation on refuge and bodhicitta weaves earlier themes together: visualising the Buddha, taking refuge, the four immeasurables, and his light dissolving into one's heart. David covers the final three paramitas: joyful diligence, with its three kinds of enthusiasm and matching laziness, concentration and its nine stages towards shamatha, and wisdom as the direct insight into emptiness underlying all the others. A question asks what it means to ask the Buddha for guidance.

• D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024

  In this patient acceptance practice we ask what changes when a real conflict is met with acceptance, understanding and compassion rather than resistance. David covers enthusiastic diligence and its three kinds of laziness, then concentration as the union of shamatha and vipassana, the Buddha's key innovation. Questions turn on witnessing cruelty, whether to speak when nothing you say will change the person, and how much capacity we have to live out our values.

• The Six Paramitas - Enthusiastic Perseverance David Oromith · 31 minutes · recorded February 5, 2023

  A fourfold vision quest puts four questions to us in turn: what would bring genuine flourishing, what we would want to receive from the world, how we would love to transform, and what we have to offer, and we breathe life into each answer as an aspiration. David talks about the fourth paramita, enthusiastic perseverance, and what sustains it: confidence built from experience, clarity about our intentions, taking delight in the progress already made, and the fortitude to keep going when the path gets difficult.

• Part Five - Mindfulness, Alertness, and Difficulty as Incitement Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo · 123 minutes · recorded January 1, 2016

  The last of the verses. Mindfulness and alertness are the companions, and a sinking mind is the more dangerous fault because it can be mistaken for something profound. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo takes difficulty as the incitement rather than the obstacle, and a heavenly rebirth, with no incentive to practise, as a spiritual dead end. She names three kinds of laziness, including the one that says I am not worthy. Questions on trees, animal testing and addiction, then a short practice on the breath.

• Tools & Faults Glen Svensson · 85 minutes

  In an opening practice we take the rhythm of the breath as our object, noticing whether it is long or short, deep or shallow. Glen Svensson names two tools, mindfulness holding the object and introspection checking that it is still held, and contrasts that older sense with Jon Kabat-Zinn's. The five faults and eight antidotes follow, from laziness to over-application. A second meditation is guided lying down in shavasana, and four weeks of homework are set before Shantideva's dedication verses close.

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