There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.
Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme.
Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.
Much of the hatred and fear of sexuality found in religions stems from the idea that sex is a thing of the body and that the body must be denied so that the spirit may be elevated. In Buddhism there is no notion that the body is made of inferior matter while the spirit flies free within.
How attraction works, making one's body almost painfully alive and one's thoughts concentrated, also painfully. And the truth of these powerful attractions - they have their own morality and nothing else matters.
The problem with lethargy is that doing nothing validates the fear that nothing can be done.
There is not a thing on the face of the earth that I abhor so much as idleness or idle people.
No one with a body full of aliments can have a luminous soul and other intellectual faculties. It is necessary to care for the body if we wish the spirit to function normally.
What is it to 'walk in the Spirit'? It is not self-occupation, nor even occupation with the Spirit. Walking according to the Spirit is occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. If the believer ever looks to the Lord Jesus, depends upon Him, draws all his needs from Him- if He is his All in all- then the believer walks according to the Spirit of Christ.
We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost.
Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.
Fear is nothing but idleness of the will.
Love labour: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physique. It is wholesome for the body, and good for the mind. It prevents the fruits of idleness, which many times come of nothing to do, and leads many to do what is worse than nothing.
Much is being missed because of fear. We are too attached to the body and we go on creating more and more fear because of that attachment. The body is going to die, the body is part of death, the body is death - but you are beyond the body. You are not the body; you are the bodiless. Remember it. Realize it. Awaken yourself to this truth - that you are beyond the body. You are the witness, the seer.
Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.
Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.