Virya sits fourth in the sequence of perfections, after patience and before the concentration of dhyana, and Mahayana commentary treats its placement as functional: patience removes the disturbances that would otherwise exhaust effort, and only a mind no longer drained by resentment or discouragement can sustain the energy concentration requires.
Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara analyses virya's opposite in some detail, identifying three specific obstacles rather than treating laziness as one undifferentiated failing: the laziness of procrastination, the laziness of attachment to inferior pleasures that feel easier than practice, and, the one he spends the most attention on, the laziness of self deprecation, a person's conviction that awakening is simply beyond someone like them, which he argues is itself a subtle grasping at a fixed and limited self rather than humility.
Rupert Gethin's account of the paramitas notes that virya is deliberately not framed as raw exertion or willpower in the sense familiar from other ethical systems, since unsustainable effort produces exactly the burnout the perfection is meant to prevent; the texts consistently qualify virya with joy, describing the ideal state as delighting in wholesome activity the way a person delights in a favourite pastime, rather than gritting through it by force of will alone.