Energy has two different levels, there's physical energy and there's mental energy. When you think of developing energy, think about developing interest. Imagine, you're back home, you're working a normal job, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. Imagine that one week has been very stressful. You have worked super hard, a lot of overtime, it's Friday afternoon. You just want to go home. You just want to have a drink of juice, go straight to bed. You don't want to do anything at all, you're so exhausted from the whole week. You're just so tired, off to bed the minute you get home. You get home, you get to your door, and there's a note pinned to the door. And you grab the note off and it is from a good old friend, "Hey! I'm in town, I haven't seen you for three years, How about we get together tonight?"
Are you going to go to bed? It's almost impossible that any normal person's going to go to bed. Your good friend's in town, haven't seen them for three years. What are you going to do? Friday night. You know, you're not going to go to bed. All the sudden there's going to be this wave of energy, this wave of excitement, this wave of interest. And with the interest comes energy. So when you think of developing energy in any way, whether it's physical or mental, think of interest.
Think of when you were in school, and each one of you had your favorite subject and you would have had subjects that were not your favorite. Right? Now a lot of you know my favorite was Math. It was very easy for me, I was very interested in it. I could do it very well, no problem at all. But there were other kids who couldn't understand it at all, they had no interest, it was hard. It was difficult, they had no energy for it. Some other kid was a bright science kid. Now I got by in science, it was ok, but it wasn't anything super for me. So it was harder for me. I didn't have the energy for it. That other kid had all the energy for it. So when you think of developing energy as a Parami, whether it's mental or physical, think of interest. The more you get interested in the Dhamma, the more you want to do it. It just kind of spirals then. The energy and the interest, they go together.
As to physical energy, we have to be a little bit more reserved as to how much we can push. Anyone who's been an athlete knows you can push quite a bit, but there's always a limit. There's a limit as to our physical body, there's a limit as to our age. As to even the bones, whether they're skinny, whether they're thick. that was a major thing for me personally in swimming. Kids with bigger bones could swim faster! It was simple. Their arms were wider. So when they pushed, they pushed more water with the same stroke. So physically there are limitations that we have to acknowledge, but at times we can push them a bit. We can all push them a little bit. But not to be too idealistic on that one. With the mental energy though, we can be a little bit more pushy, because there's lots of room there, if you develop interest, the energy can come.