Three Types of Laziness That Block Your Practice

Laziness is one of those words we throw around without thinking much about what we actually mean. We call ourselves lazy when we skip the gym. We call someone else lazy when they don't answer an email fast enough. But in Buddhism, laziness gets unpacked into something more specific — and more interesting. What we tend to lump together as a single thing actually breaks down into three distinct ways of being, and two of them aren't what most of us in the modern West would call laziness at all.

I want to be honest right from the start: I'm a pretty lazy person by my own admission. And whenever we're looking at our own habit patterns around something like this, we have to be gentle. We have to be compassionate. The teaching isn't here to criticize me, and it's not here to criticize you. It's here to point something out so we can become more skillful in our practice — so we can grow, so we can transform, and so we can move closer to peace and freedom. I want to say that right off the bat, because whenever we're studying something that involves looking at our own behaviors, it can easily tip into too much self-critique. And as it happens, that's actually the third type of laziness. So we'll get there.

Setting the Context

The Tibetan word for laziness is le lo. It comes from a Sanskrit root that, honestly, I don't know how to pronounce — so I'll stick with the Tibetan. Le lo refers specifically to a kind of spiritual laziness, a lethargic relationship to virtue and practice.

That's already an interesting distinction. We're not just talking about general laziness in life, though of course you can apply these teachings broadly. What le lo is really pointing to is a lethargic relationship to the practice of virtue — to dharma, in the sense of that which removes suffering and brings more wakefulness.

This matters because we might judge ourselves or others for laziness in ways that miss the point entirely. To flip it around: some people might think meditators are incredibly lazy because they just sit there all day. But from the perspective of this teaching, they may be among the least lazy people around. What we're really talking about here is the paramita of joyful effort — virya — and sometimes we have to rethink what we consider lazy versus what we consider diligent.

So with that context established, we're talking about a spiritual laziness, a lack of interest in virtue and practice — the kind of practice that liberates ourselves and others and leads to a more lasting happiness and peace.

The Three Types

Let me name all three, and then we'll go into each one.

The first is what we'd normally think of as laziness in the modern Western world: procrastination, lethargy. I'll meditate tomorrow. I'm too tired right now. I'd rather sit on the couch and watch Netflix and eat chips. We all know this one.

The second is the surprise for most people. This is the laziness of busyness — which is something of a modern epidemic. We're often taught that our worth is tied to how busy we are, how much we're doing, how much we're accomplishing.

The third is discouragement — self-deprecation, too much self-critique, low self-worth. I can't do this. I'm not good enough. This is also considered laziness here, and for the same reason as the others: it blocks our effort toward the practice of virtue, toward the practices that lead us to more peace and freedom.

That's the brief introduction. Now let's unpack each one.

Type One: Procrastination

I don't think we need to linger here — we all recognize this one. In traditional Buddhist teachings, it's often described as attachment to sleep, comfort, and pleasure.

But the antidote is important, and the main one is contemplating impermanence. When we really sit with impermanence, we start to see that things are changing all the time, that once a moment has passed, it's gone. And of course, our lives are finite. There's a timer ticking, and none of us know when it will stop. A lot of us assume we'll age gracefully, retire, have grandchildren — and yet many people save for retirement and never actually get to enjoy it. That's just reality. In Buddhism, this isn't a dark truth; it's just a truth. It's not light or dark — it just is.

In the context of laziness, when we forget this, it's easy to sit around and say, "I'll do it tomorrow. I'll work with that challenging emotion later." But when we meditate on impermanence and death, it creates a sobriety — not morbidness, but sobriety. We start to realize: I don't actually know if I'll have that chance later, so why not do it now? What's actually worthwhile?

A small sidebar here: we also need to take breaks. That's worth saying in the same breath, especially given what we're about to discuss with type two. Consciously resting — deciding, "I need a break, I'm going to eat chips on the couch, and then I'm going back to practice" — that is actually part of virya. That's part of joyful effort.

I'll also add an antidote from my own journey that may or may not apply to you: an obsession with encountering truth. In Buddhism, truth isn't something you arrive at through accumulating nice ideas — it's something you uncover in meditation, through continually investigating how things exist. Are they permanent or impermanent? Solid and unchanging, or interdependent? That pursuit brings me energy and joy. Sometimes I need a break from it, or life and emotions get overwhelming. But that pursuit inspires me. So beyond impermanence and death, I'd encourage you to find some piece of dharma — a teaching, a practice, a question — that lights something up for you and brings you back to the cushion.

Type Two: Busyness

This type is usually described as excessive engagement in worldly activity — spending too much of our time, energy, and worry on very temporary things.

I should be careful here, because this can be taken to an extreme. The Buddha didn't advise lay practitioners to quit everything. For those who choose monastic or yogi life, fine — that's a different path. But for his non-monastic followers, the Buddha actually taught extensively on how to be ethical in business, how to think about money and sufficiency, how to consider supporting others. So we have to be discerning: when does ordinary engagement become the laziness of busyness?

For me, it really comes down to avoidance. I can find myself endlessly creating tasks to do because I want to avoid boredom, or avoid a difficult conversation, or avoid meditating. That's what this is pointing to — the busyness that is really about avoidance. We can see this in workaholic tendencies, or in the drive for endless accomplishment. There's nothing inherently wrong with accomplishing things; it's when it becomes excessive, when it's mainly functioning to keep us away from virtue or dharma practice, that it becomes this kind of laziness.

I want to point something out that's a little harder to see: this can also happen to dharma practitioners. The easiest place to hide is often behind virtue. It can look like we're being a genuinely dharmic person, a dedicated meditator — but in actuality, we're running away from our own mind. That's happened to me. I can't speak to anyone else's internal experience, but I'm pretty sure it happens to others too. We can look very much like a spiritual person while actually just being busy all the time.

So what's the antidote? A few things from the traditional teachings: contemplating the nature of samsara — recognizing that worldly activity is literally endless, and that busyness never actually delivers what we're after. When we step back and ask, What do I actually want to accomplish? What will be most worthwhile? — that can loosen things up. And ultimately, the point is to cultivate the kind of joyful effort that's willing to look at the nature of mind, to see where we're bound, and to genuinely want to wake up from that — for our own sake and for the benefit of others.

Type Three: Discouragement

I've really struggled with this one. It's the sense of I can't do this. Other people are good at this — I'm not. I'm too angry, too attached, too distracted. Sometimes this can feel like honesty or humility, and I think genuine honesty matters. But there's a tone where it curdles into avoidance, where we're really just using it as an excuse rather than working step by step.

Nobody says we have to be good at meditation or dharma practice or working with our minds. This work is intense when we're actually doing it, because we're looking at all the problems internally. So we need to pace ourselves. We need to go step by step. Not from zero to a hundred — just from zero to one or two or three. If we feel down on ourselves, if we feel unworthy, if we're constantly comparing ourselves to others, it can solidify into this third type of laziness.

The main antidote I'd recommend here is studying and reflecting on Buddha nature. This isn't really something you arrive at through a single technique — you encounter it through meditating on nondual wisdom, on emptiness, on bodhicitta. But the core perspective is this: fundamentally, the nature of our mind is neither good nor bad, and underneath everything, it's free in a way we don't normally experience. And that freedom has compassion embedded in it. When we meditate on this — or even just study and reflect on it — we start to sense that there is a fundamental openness available to us, and that openness isn't something we have to achieve. It's not a medal or a title granted by someone else. It's completely related to our own experience, to what the nature of mind actually is.

Some teachers call this basic goodness. But by "goodness" here, they don't mean good as opposed to bad — the word "basic" is there precisely because it's beyond that distinction. It can be a bit of a deep dive at first, but I really encourage you to explore what Buddha nature means. There are a lot of teachings and texts on it, and I talk about it quite a bit elsewhere on the site. Just search and you'll find plenty.

The other thing that helps with discouragement — and this is more practical — is simply taking small steps and letting those steps build a sense of capacity. When people I work with fall off their regular practice, the thing I always recommend is this: just practice for a short amount of time, but do it every day. That consistency keeps the energy alive. It keeps us from spiraling into self-critique or losing our sense of connection to the practice. Sometimes the most important thing is just to keep taking small steps toward growing our capacity and our confidence.

Wrapping Up

These three types of laziness — procrastination, busyness, and discouragement — really do pervade a lot of our experience. As with any dharma teaching, the point isn't that you shouldn't have these. It's: look at them. Notice where they might be present in your life. And generally, the antidote is virya — joyful effort, which is the direct antithesis of all three.

Instead of self-deprecation, little by little we grow our confidence, reflecting on Buddha nature and studying it. When it comes to busyness, we take some stock — there are obvious responsibilities we need to tend to, but we can ask, when is enough enough? And with procrastination, we learn to recognize the difference between genuine rest and when it tips into avoidance, and we try to be a little more diligent there.

There's so much more to say on each of these. This piece is really just a way in. If something here resonates — or if you notice one of the three showing up more than the others in your own life — I'd love to hear about it.