Printed in the Fall 2014 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "Busyness and Laziness" Quest 102.4 (Fall 2014): pg. 130-131.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
—William Wordsworth
In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away.
—W.H. Auden
Since the close of the Theosophical Society's international elections, a theme has developed in my conversations with coworkers, friends, and family. It is something that usually occurs at the outset of a conversation, or even an e-mail. It goes something like this: "I wanted to talk to you, but I know you are so busy," or "I need for you to look at something, but you are so busy now." Apparently people are getting in touch less often in order to make room for the many things they imagine must be making demands on my time.
A friend spurred me to give the matter some thought the other day when she asked me a question. It was one question, but in two parts: "With your busy schedule now, how do you focus your mind during the course of the day? How do you maintain a sense of connection?" She was referring to a link with an internal center or balance.
Nowadays it seems that everyone is busy. Although many things in this world seem unfair, this pervasive sense of busyness operates in an even-handed, nondiscriminatory way. At least among the people I know, it does not make any difference whether they work a job or not, whether they are male or female, or what their country of origin is. As a friend of mine used to say, "It makes no difference if you are black, white, grisly, or gray." They all seem to be overwhelmed by the countless details that they must attend to in their lives. They often say there is not enough time in the day to accomplish all of the things that must be done.
From my childhood I can remember that one of the big selling points for a variety of products was that they were "time-saving." The label was applied to a number of items—dishwashing machines, disposable baby diapers, and microwave ovens. Particularly for those household items focused on women, the images in the commercials were of smiling ladies engaged in some leisure activity with friends and family while the "labor-saving" device was in the background relieving her stress and freeing her to fully enjoy life. Of course the reality has turned out differently. In current-day America, that idealized woman is working a job or two and employing every possible time and labor-saving device in order to find a few quality moments for her family, or herself.
Numerous studies have been done on technology in contemporary life, indicating how our attitudes toward it are shifting. At one point people were looking to be saved by technology. More leisure time and less work were the dream. Many people now, feeling challenged for time and oppressed by their many devices, are looking to be saved from technology. While it has been an unqualified boon in many ways, the application of current technologies has also robbed millions of people of their creative identities and turned their work into automatic activities that lead to boredom and little or no personal expression.
I have a friend who is a great and highly respected spiritual teacher. He travels the world and is regarded as one of the profound contemporary voices of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly in the West. He speaks to thousands of people each year and is in constant contact with students around the world. At last count he carried three cell phones. By anyone's definition he is a busy man, but being around him one never gets a sense of hurry, anxiety, pressure, or impatience. Somehow he remains unaffected by the swirl of activity that accompanies his every move.
He has a rather challenging point of view on the subject of busyness. Simply stated, he would say that busyness is a form of laziness. When I have shared this idea with others, I have gotten a mixture of reactions, from wholehearted agreement to puzzlement to dogged denial.
Clearly people whose time and energy are poured into trying to discover a cure for cancer, or organizing communities to save the rainforest or shift the human contribution to global warming are not lazy people in any conventional sense. For that matter, neither is the man or woman whose waking hours are invested in studying and trading on the stock market, or managing a business solely for personal enrichment. In all of these cases people focus their minds, direct their energies, and discipline themselves in order to accomplish their goals. In what sense could these people be considered lazy?
The problem with sweeping statements such as my friend's is context. Those who find themselves drawn to Theosophy or any genuine spiritual tradition very soon must come face to face with the issue of paradox. Somehow it seems to be part of life's fabric. It is not accidental that in At the Feet of the Master the first qualification mentioned is discrimination. In the spiritual life, and life in general, something can be true and helpful for one person, and utterly false and destructive for another.
Thus the statement about busyness and laziness has to be understood within a certain context. It was presented in reference to the spiritual practitioner, that person who has some degree of understanding that there is an underlying unitive principle "embracing all in oneness," and who is drawn to deepen his or her connection with that principle. Not everyone is consciously engaged in this practice, but for those whose dharma, whose internal constitution in this life, allows for a vision of this possibility of oneness, to make business, or protests, or sports, or any of the numberless normal activities of life one's focus is merely a distraction. It is like a student who knows she has a project due tomorrow, but spends all her time watching TV or playing computer games. It is an avoidance of one's known duty.
The question is one of priorities. One of the "three truths" in The Idyll of the White Lotus gives a sense of perspective. "The principle which gives life dwells in us, and without us, is undying and eternally beneficent, is not heard or seen or smelt, but is perceived by the man who desires perception." For the spiritual practitioner the perception of this principle is life's focus, and anything that leads attention and effort away from that focus is laziness in the sense of choosing the less difficult, less important, less productive path.
Unfortunately one's spiritual inclination does not make daily responsibilities disappear. The most spiritual among us must figure out a way to feed themselves and their families. For most that means a job. There is correspondence to write (today it is e-mail), meetings to attend, reading, teaching, learning, cooking, eating, travel, and on and on.
For those of us who have not retreated to the mountaintop or forest, there will always be a number of activities demanding our attention. There is a critical difference between busyness and a harmonious focus on multiple activities. The busy person finds his attention divided between an array of separate things. The only sense of connection is with the self who must perform the variety of actions. It is symptomatic of what is described in The Voice of the Silence as "the great dire heresy of separateness."
There is another point of view. A different friend, who was quite a mystic, was fond of saying that "we live in a spiritual universe, populated by children of God." The Bhagavad Gita echoes the same idea when Krishna declares himself to be the "Inner Ruler immortal seated in the hearts of all beings." Whether it is work, people, places, ideas, or relationships, it's all one thing—divine.
Even the slightest recognition of this fact changes everything. Gone is the sense of being divided and pulled in a thousand and one different directions. It also establishes a context for our daily chores. My next meeting is not with a separate personality, but with an expression of the divine. The e-mail I am sending is a movement of the one consciousness from itself, toward itself, within itself. The bills I am paying are the circulation of an aspect of the infinite energies of the One Life. Sensing our way into this realization, finding ways to remind ourselves of this fundamental truth, cuts through the fixation on busyness. The mentally busy person sees action as external and divided. To the inwardly focused mind there is only one thing going on—unveiling the hidden splendor within all things.