This depends on what the laziness and indulgence are related to. Whether it is towards work, whether it is at home, actual cleaning up your house, whether it is your Dhamma practice, meditation and so on. But laziness and indulging are negative qualities that are going to interfere with your personal growth. Whether it is your growth in meditation, whether it is your growth in work, whether to grow as a human being, laziness and indulgence are a negative qualities and you want to get rid of them.
One of the best ways to help alleviate laziness is to stick around people who are energetic, to have good friends who have energy. It is very hard to stay lazy when everything is moving around us and they enjoy moving. We may try to enjoy being lazy, but they enjoy moving and if there are so many of them, it affect us. So having good friends with lots of energy as our Kalyanamittas can inspire us to get on with doing something.
Samvega is a Pali word which means having a sense of urgency. So, another way to help let go of laziness and indulgence is to reflect on death. You don't know when death is coming. This may be your last sit and your last opportunity to practice the Dhamma. Some of you may have heard I have a friend who lived in a meditation center. He was washing dishes with another friend in between retreats, they were chatting away, just washing dishes. You may have done the same thing before this retreat. These friends were talking together, and then one of them falls over, dead. He was about 40 years old, there was no known heart condition. He just falls over dead, in the middle of a meditation center while he was washing the dishes.
You have to take it in, the fact that yes, you don't know whether you will have another chance to practice. You get in this retreat, but you don't know whether you will get the chance to do another. You have this day for practice, good. You don't know whether you are going to have another day. So, if laziness and indulgence come into your life and into your mind states, stimulate yourself, say, "No, I don't want that". Take inspiration from people who aren't lazy, even if you aren't around your active friends. Take inspiration from people like me and Rosemary.
What do you think, do you think that I am lazy? What do you think, is Rosemary lazy? The answer is pretty obvious; neither of us is lazy, otherwise you wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be doing what we are doing. We wouldn't be doing it for 21 years. So take inspiration from your teachers if they are inspiring teachers who are not lazy. Take inspiration from other friends if they are not lazy and if you are not around them. But if you are around them, well, what is it like?
Let me ask you, when you come into an interview and you are feeling a bit down. What does it feel like when you walk out of the interview, are you still the same level down? I hope not. But I know for most of you that you are not the same level down, you are charged up. You have been with somebody who has energy, you have been with somebody who has the Dhamma, you have been with somebody who pumped it into you for a while and gave you whatever you were looking for in that moment. You felt good after the interview and walked out with energy. It is just that simple. You get inspired and you get energy.
Now, some people have asked me for the 10 day retreat, what is it that we want new people to get? And really, not just new people, but everyone. What is it in one word that we would like for students to get? The word is "Interest." We don't care how much you have grown in wisdom, we don't care how much you have grown in Compassion, we don't care how good your mindfulness is, we don't care how good your concentration is. We care about whether you have interest. It is interest in the practice which keeps you going on day 11 after the retreat, out of here, which keeps you going on day 12, keeps you going the week after the retreat, the month after the retreat. If you leave here with interest, that stimulates energy, that stimulates your practice.
Then you don't want to be lazy, you don't want to indulge in other ways, you want to get going because you are interested in something. Ask yourself, what was your favorite subject in school? Nearly everybody would say it was the one they were most interested in. There might be a few people who are different, but quite frankly, when we were interested in something at school, we liked doing it no matter how hard it was, because we were interested in it. Maybe we got perfect A's for another subject but it was boring and we weren't actually interested in that subject. Maybe we got B's and C's in the subjects we were interested in, but we enjoyed it, we put in more effort because we actually enjoyed it. So interest goes along with an enjoyment factor and pushes us to have energy and off we go, avoiding laziness.