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Dhamma Talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu from Metta Forest Monastery
on "Anti-Slacker Dhamma"
There is a book that came out recently about what might be called “Slacker Buddhism”. The idea being that life is suffering, everything is impermanent, therefore there is no point in trying. We suffer because we try to be happy, and if we would just stop trying, everything would be fine.
You can understand this teaching as a corruption of Dharma when people try to sell it! People like to sell things that are popular, and there are plenty of slackers out there that would like to hear that the Buddha was on their side.
The problem is that this line of thinking does not start just with people trying to sell books on Buddhism. For there is a monk trained in one of the branches of the Forest Tradition that ended up saying that suffering is no big problem, and that once you realize that suffering is no big problem, then you are OK with it.
When you compare this with what the Buddha had to say, what the Buddha’s quest was, what kind of person the Buddha was, who even though he had no guarantee that he was going to find the Deathless, he was willing to give up everything for the sake of the Deathless!
The Buddha never gave up, until he found the secret to His awakening.
This talk reveals this secret…
