The “hidden laziness” holding you back, according to a Tibetan Buddhist master

The “hidden laziness” holding you back, according to a Tibetan Buddhist master View our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed The “hidden laziness” holding you back, according to a Tibetan Buddhist master Tibetan Buddhism identifies three very different ways of wasting your life. ©Nangten Menlang International / Tulku Lobsang Rinpoche / Big Think **1.**Sam’s just returned from work exhausted and slouches onto the sofa. So, Sam’s partner is left to do everything else for the night. Make dinner, tidy up, put the kids to bed.

All that domestic busyness is someone else’s job. Sam works hard at work, and the salary pays for the house and everything in it. **2.**Billy is 16 years old, and his weekend is spent doing all the things a teenager tends to do. Gaming, meeting friends, watching TV, maybe a spot of illicit drinking in the park.

Monday comes around and it’s deadline day. Didn’t have time.” **3.** Katie is driving her dad to the hospital for an appointment. He can’t drive anymore because of his eyes.

Katie is a single mother, looking after three young kids. She’s working part-time at a local department store, which is hard, but the manager is understanding with her hours. As she gets home one night, she opens social media and sees a post from a slim twenty-something in gymwear posing for the camera.

The caption says, “What’s stopping you from looking like this?” Tulku Lobsang Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Master, might be able to help us answer these questions and to help us understand laziness. For one, it’s often just a rude thing to say. For millennia, laziness has been portrayed as a character fault.

It’s one of the deadly sins. To call someone lazy is up there with calling them an asshole. But more importantly, it’s almost impossible to know if someone is _actually_ lazy or not.