Okay, so this is a question that's fairly practical.
What did the Buddha and what do you or other teachers recommend in order to generate greater motivation to practice when one's dedication and enthusiasm is waning?
I think the biggest thing that the Buddha recommended... No, I don't even know if it's the Buddha.
The biggest thing that I can think of, and it's actually from the commentaries, is to associate yourself with...
people who have the qualities that you lack.
This is based very much on the Buddha's famous sutta where he tells Ananda that living with association with good people is the entirety of the holy life, the entirety of the spiritual life.
Ananda says he figures it's about half.
And the Buddha says, shame on you, don't say that.
It's the entirety of it.
So,
association and that doesn't just mean talking with but even hanging around such people will lead you to cultivate the same sorts of states so what do I do with my students I mean you encourage them
It often depends very much on what's getting in their way.
It can be doubts.
If doubts are getting in the way, then they need an explanation.
Sorry, if it's intellectual doubts, then they need an explanation or they need an answer, something that at least tells them, that shows them that their intellectual pursuits are useless and unbeneficial.
If it's doubt about themselves or feelings of discouragement, doubt about their practice, like my practice is not going well or I'm useless, I'm not good at this, then they need some reassurance and they need an argument, a way of helping them to see things in another way.
Discussion is very important.
or often just a Dhamma talk giving them some kind of encouragement so if they feel discouraged in the sense like they aren't so interested in meditation then you have to give them a talk
explaining about the things that they are interested in and showing that those things are perhaps not as meaningful as they thought they were.
And it's talking about the importance of meditation.
So Dhamma talks about the benefits of renouncing and giving up and the disadvantages of clinging.
talks that are encouraging, discussion that is encouraging.
The best thing of course is to meditate because meditation helps you want to meditate more.
The more you meditate the more you become interested in it, the more benefit you see from it.
Anybody else?
What do you think motivates people?
What do we do to motivate ourselves and motivate others?
What do you do when you don't want to practice?
I think when it comes to sloth and torpor rising in the mind, a couple of simple things that you can do to overcome those to give yourself a little bit more motivation.
Go out into the cold air, some water on your face,
changing positions during meditation or if you're not like sitting formally you can uh just put your awareness on the tiredness on the lazy feeling on the feeling of not wanting to meditate things like that yeah i don't know so much about you know if you're just tired because people can really want to meditate even though they're tired
But it can be very discouraging.
And I think it's more the discouragement that's being asked.
How do you deal with being discouraged?
The best thing is to have a teacher and to have a community.
Because when you do, all of these things will come.
You'll have talks, you'll have discussions.
But one interesting thing about what you're talking about is tricks, right?
Sometimes you have tricks to make yourself more motivated.
Vaik actually here is commenting about...
doing metta meditation which is yeah another good trick do something to give you encouragement think about the buddha we talked about this yesterday right something that's very encouraging is to think about the buddha the buddha said whenever you feel afraid you're off in the forest and suddenly you feel afraid say to yourself think about the buddha and the fear will go away immediately and it does
quite impressive how thinking about the Buddha can make you fearless because you start realizing how fearless, remembering how fearless you are.
Okay, if anybody wants to pick through the comments.
Oh wait, stop this one.