REASON WE FAIL TO BE DILIGENT: YOU ARE LAZY!
Question: Master once said that practising Buddhism is akin to sailing against the current – if one fails to advance, they will retreat. This is a test every practitioner will encounter. Is “non-diligent” a function of one’s karmic hindrances, lack of faith, or one’s ‘unenlightened’ state? How should we deal with this?
Answer: What you mentioned are the three causes for one to fail to be diligent. On top of this, there is one more reason: laziness. Encumbered by a physical body, a person tends to feel tired and weary. For example, you plan to wake up at five in the morning to chant but then you feel, “Ah, I’m simply too tired to get up”.
I hope all of you will stay diligent in your practice. Diligence sometimes depends on one’s determination which is the driving force for one to forge ahead. In fact, it is when people suffer hardship that they will give rise to this kind of willpower. In times like this, they will start to think, “I must…I certainly will…” and their willpower comes into force.
With determination, they will not be lazy nor will they regress. This explains why “diligence” is such an important subject. It’s easy to encounter the dharma but to be able to diligently accomplish this spiritual path is an arduous undertaking.
Source: Master Jun Hong Lu’s World Buddhist Fellowship Meeting (Q&A Session), Hong Kong SAR, China, 24 June 2015
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