March 31, 2025

Laziness - first entered the English language in 1540 (right around the time of Branks and changing the meaning of the word gossip).

As a student of both Zen and Yoga, I am very curious about translation. Having studied Sanskrit for close to two decades (in a personal way, not as an academic), I am interested when I see an English word in a translated text that feels unusual - one that I have never encountered in Sanskrit before. It always gets me wondering what the actual Sanskrit word was that the translator decided needed to be translated into that particular English word.

As part of my curiosity about all of that, I have been studying the Sanskrit text of Śāntideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicarayāra). I also spent five years in weekly classes with my Yoga mentor, Chase Bossart, looking at Patanjali’s Yogasūtra word-by-word. As I mentioned, I am not an academic so I have the freedom to roam around within the texts and speculate in ways that are not so bound by convention. So, when the word “laziness” came up in an English translation of a Mahāyana Buddhist text that was part of the study at Zen Mountain Monastery (where I practice and train), I got curious….to my knowledge, there isn’t a Sanskrit word that you could directly translate as “lazy” in the sense that we understand it today. So what was actually being said?

In the Yogasūtra, one of the nine antarāya or obstacles is ālasya, usually translated as lethargy. I am guessing that was actually the word used in the Buddhist text too because it is pretty common in spiritual texts of that era in India. To me, lethargy is not the same as laziness. It has a different quality to it. It is embodied, physical, in a way that isn’t so evident in laziness. And, laziness has a moral judgement lingering around it. A lazy person is lacking in some aspect of good character. Lethargy, on the other hand, is a physical state of being that comes and goes.

As I continued this thread of investigation, I became curious about the notion of laziness. It feels so….. capitalist. So rooted in the Protestant work ethic. And, indeed, it is. I was surprised and then totally not surprised to discover that the idea of laziness arrived in the English language right around the time that the word gossip was changing from an honourific title to the wise women in the community to a word of shame that could lead to torture in the form of a scold’s bridle or branks.

In the Bible, one of the deadly sins is sometimes called laziness (or sloth). A closer look there reveals a similar warning to what Patanjali offers in the Yogasūtra about ālasya - both texts are pointing to a state of spiritual apathy marked by a slowness and heaviness in the body and resulting in a disinterest in our practice(s). Suffering is soon to follow!

For me, this feels all of a piece with my questions around discipline and dignity being related to acceptance. Discipline, especially, has come to have a moral judgement implied in it - in this case, that it is good and productive. Not lazy.

After all of this digging around, I have decided to try to drop the word lazy from my vocabulary. It will be interesting to notice what I am really trying to say when it pops up in my mind and out of my mouth. I want to celebrate gossip in accordance to its original meaning and to learn to work with discipline in a way free of violence. Laziness is part of the problem but not as I have been taught to believe. It is actually binding me more to ideas that cause suffering, not release it.

February 11, 2025

Quick note: remarkably my trip to Scotland is delayed/cancelled because of the situation in the US. My sister works for the US government is has been caught up in all the Executive Orders governing their capacity to work. She also had planned to be my mom’s primary caregiver until September, allowing me to travel to Scotland. All that has changed.

Tapping into my discipline and dignity as it relates to acceptance to go with the changes, adapt the project and see what happens. If ever there was a time for this - it’s now!

January 25, 2025

My current project, Disciple, hinges on the relationship between three words: discipline, dignity and disciple and their very early root word: dek, which means acceptance. What does acceptance have to do with discipline or dignity? Intuitively, I know it is key somehow. But how?

In the midst of creating this project, which is focused on the labour of women in my community in Newfoundland (who have been the source of inspiration for this investigation and with whom I am positioning myself as their disciple) and women in rural Scotland who share a similar social and economic background, I have spent time in residence at Zen Mountain Monastery and I have been the full time caregiver to my elderly mother who fell and needed a hip replacement. I asked the Universe to teach me about discipline and she very kindly provided me with two different but clear opportunities to practice it. Not as theoretical or even as Art Project but as life.

At first, I was worried that I wasn’t working on my project, which has been funded by ArtsNL (my deepest gratitude to ArtsNL!) and will require some kind of reporting. After days became weeks and weeks became months, I realized that I was, in fact, “working on my project” but, like so many projects before this one, it just doesn’t quite look like what I thought it would look like. Once I saw that, the world opened up. Everything was fair game to be included, examined and celebrated.

One thing that I had set myself to do as part of the project was to make three performances - one each for discipline, dignity and disciple. Discipline would come first. This is now a video/audio project. It may yet include performance but let’s see what happens. Dignity was always going to happen in Scotland, where I will be starting on March 10th. And the conclusion of the project will happen this summer in Gillams with disciple.

After so many years of making art, I trust that forces are at play that I can’t always see or be conscious of in the moment. It is only afterwards that I can look back and point to things coming together outside of my control. Perhaps this too is part of acceptance?