When Your Spiritual Practice Cannot Advance, Learn to Reflect

If one becomes lax in one's practice, one will lose oneself amid the trivialities of daily life, so that one's progress on the Path cannot advance—and perhaps one may even inadvertently regress. If one can constantly keep hold of oneself, introspect, examine oneself, and reflect on oneself, so that the mind has no gaps, afflictions cannot creep in, and meditative concentration and wisdom will gradually arise. If one's cultivation of the Path is not advancing, there must certainly be a problem. If the problem has been there all along, yet one cannot discover it oneself, what does that indicate? If one discovers the problem but does not want to resolve it, what does that indicate? If one wants to resolve it but cannot, what does that indicate? Worldly affairs are the easiest thing to make people sink into degradation, yet the hardest thing to break free from. When the power of the mind is insufficient, what is it lacking?