A Showbiz Idea of Being Important

From "Practicing Like Your Hair's on Fire," by Gelek Rinpoche, Buddhadharma (Fall 2008):

Many of us complain, “I have no time.” I like to call that a good, fancy, stylish excuse. Everybody likes to say, “I’m too busy,” because everybody would like to seem important. It is a great excuse that offers several benefits: you can avoid what you don’t want to do; it gives you a showbiz idea of being important; and all the important people do it, so you can include yourself with them.

I refer to that as busy laziness. We experience this kind of laziness because we have a problem recognizing our real priorities.

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In short, our human life, with the limitless capacity of our minds, is capable of producing any results we wish. If your goal is to get rich, your human life is capable of producing it. If you want to become famous, your life is capable of doing it. Hollywood is full of such people. It's the same with anything else you choose to do. Whether you are satisfied with the results or not is a different story, but human life is capable of delivering the goods. If you want to be fully enlightened, if your ultimate goal is to achieve enlightenment, then this life is capable of delivering that as well. From our point of view we may fail, but it won't be because our human life lacked the capacity for total enlightenment. It's be because we didn't take advantage of it.