All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort, no one ever wins the crown.
Talent without effort is wasted talent. And while effort is the one thing you can control in your life, applying that effort intelligently is next on the list.
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.
Could many of our ills today have resulted from our failure to train a strong citizenry from the only source we have - the boys and girls of each community? Have they grown up to believe in politics without principle, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without effort, wealth without work, business without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice?
Effort without talent is a depressing situation... but talent without effort is a tragedy.
Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.
He acts without contact, instructs without meeting, guides without pointing. Desires do not conflict with Him, thoughts do not mingle with Him: His essence is without qualification (takyeef), His action without effort (takleef).
I love to praise what I love, and I won't for a minute believe that love is blind -- indeed, it gives clearness without sharpness, and surely that is the best light in which to look at anything.
There's no reward without work, no victory without effort, no battle won without risk.
So meditation is not really mind-effort. Real meditation is not effort at all. Real meditation is just allowing the mind to have its own way, and not interfering in any way whatsoever - just remaining watchful, witnessing. It silences, by and by, it becomes still. One day it is gone. You are left alone.
It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours.
The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving.
One Taste is not some experience you bring about through effort; rather, it is the actual condition of all experience before you do anything to it. This uncontrived state is prior to effort, prior to grasping, prior to avoiding. It is the real world before you do anything to it, including the effort to "see it nondually".
On occasion we need to make a second effort - and a third effort, and a fourth effort, and as many degrees of effort as may be required to accomplish what we strive to achieve.
Television, they say, will permit a person to be entertained at home, without the effort of going to a picture house, without the trouble of booking seats, without the presence of other people.