PureInsight | January 24, 2005
[PureInsight.org] There are many different kinds of mental states that bring about pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy in human beings, and they compose song after song, and drama after drama in the human world.
Compassion, love and tolerance can develop beautiful and cheerful musical movements, piece after piece, and can direct touching, live dramas, play after play. Jealousy, hatred and suspicion, on the other hand, can make countless people lose their senses and put on tragic performances in case after case.
Here I'd like to describe how suspicion harms one's life and cultivation practice.
Suspicion can turn many things that start out as good into bad things: it can turn friends into enemies; it causes husbands and wives to abandon their precious predestined relationship that was developed over tens of thousands of years; it creates conflicts among colleagues, chaos in families; and moreover, it causes people in power to kill innocent people and bring disasters to the nation and the people…
With suspicion, one complains about heaven and bears grudges against men. Such a person lives in panic, isolation and extreme nervousness. With much suspicion, one risks danger in desperation, harming others and the society and also himself.
In cultivation practice, suspicion is an even bigger problem.
As I personally understand it, Teacher has mentioned the harm caused by suspicion many times in Zhuan Falun.
Example #1: Cao Cao was ill and asked the famous doctor Hua Tuo to see him. Huo Tuo wanted to perform a brain surgery on Cao Cao. But Cao Cao became suspicious of Hua Tuo's intention and imprisoned Hua Tuo. When Caocao's illness returned, he asked for Huo Tuo but Huo Tuo had already died in prison. In the end, Cao Cao died from his illness. While harming others, he harmed himself.
Example #2: A person suspected that he had been cut and was bleeding. He died from the conviction that his blood had run out. Suspicion caused his death.
Example #3: A person had spirit or animal possession. Teacher removed it from his body, but he still suspected it was there. In the end he brought it back to himself again.
The above examples are sufficient to illustrate how harmful suspicion can be.
In my humble opinion, the whole process of our cultivation practice is one of testing our faith in Teacher and Dafa, and there is no room for any ambiguous feelings.
Only with determination and upright faith can we walk our path of cultivation practice righteously. Otherwise, with suspicion and doubts, obstacles will come, one after another, and one will suffer tribulations in vain. In the end one might be destroyed in an instant. Therefore, in my humble opinion, the issue of suspicion is a very serious matter in cultivation practice, and we must treat it seriously.
Of course, during our Fa study we might have a hard time understanding the profound principles Teacher has taught us and might think, "Is it really true?" That mentality comes from suspicion that we have acquired postnatally. Teacher's Fa can break through all notions. Every time when it occurs, our Main Consciousness must be strong and we must strengthen our righteous thoughts. We must tell ourselves, "What Teacher has said is the Fa, the truth! Because I haven't cultivated to that level and reached that realm yet, I haven't been able to enlighten to it." In cultivation, our comprehension of the Fa principles grows upward constantly.
Through constant, calm-minded Fa study we will find all our questions answered in the Fa. If we allow ourselves to get overwhelmed by our suspicion and put down Dafa books because of it, we would miss the extreme, rare opportunity of getting saved. Even if one persists in reading the Fa but is unable to let go of his suspicion, he cannot understand the inner meaning of the Fa. Cultivation practice is extremely difficult and extremely serious, as Master has told us.
Failing to firmly believe in Teacher and the Fa, some practitioners have taken detours on their cultivation path.
In an evil field such as a labor camp, some practitioners' demonic natures were strengthened, magnified and used by the evil, and it made them take an evil path. Our esteemed Master lifted us out of hell again. Fellow practitioners who had taken detours on their path must abandon suspicion in their cultivation.
Don't complain and say that we have made mistakes because the elements that compose our beings are bad. The only thing that we should do is to thank our esteemed Teacher for his merciful salvation. We have obtained Dafa. It should be so easy to get rid of our attachments in the big furnace of Dafa; it all depends on whether or not our minds are steadfast.
Cultivation practice penetrates into trivial matters in our daily life. We must pay serious attention to every word we say and everything we do. We must keep strong righteous thoughts at every moment; consider others and give the task of offering salvation to people the first priority.
I was once stirred very badly by suspicion. During that time I couldn't sleep and became extremely suspicious of everything. A fellow practitioner saw it and pointed it out to me, "No matter what others say, you should see it in a positive light. Even if they really have other meanings in their words, you should be righteous from head to toe."
How right that is! Aren't we cultivating "righteousness" in our cultivation practice? Righteousness is the direct manifestation of selflessness and altruism. The field of righteous thoughts can correct any wrongs, not to mention those phantom things that were transformed for us to see? How could they amount to anything?
Teacher is calling on us to "Let go of human attachments and save the world's people," and "in Fa-rectification, your thoughts have to be righteous, not human."
How can we achieve that? In one word, if we truly want it to happen, it will. Only after studying the Fa more with a calm mind, truly cultivating ourselves and digging out the selfishness root, can we abandon suspicion. And only when we firmly believe in Teacher and Dafa, can we truly believe in the importance of clarifying the truth to people and touch people's heart when we do that. Only then when we send righteous thoughts, can we demonstrate its mighty power and unfold the formidable might of the divine power of the Buddha Fa to sweep aside all the dark minions and rotten demons and save more sentient beings.
Like healing illnesses, in which one cannot merely alleviate the symptoms of an illness without curing its root, it is the same with getting rid of suspicion. We cannot look at the issue merely on the surface. We need to find out the root cause. Why do we become suspicious? When we were everyday people, we were suspicious of people and things because we didn't want to lose our possessions and good names or get hurt emotionally. In cultivation, we become suspicious because we are afraid we will get left behind, see our levels drop or be unable to reach Consummation…
Teacher said, "I also want to tell you that your nature in the past was actually based on egotism and selfishness. From now on, whatever you do, you should consider others first, so as to attain the righteous Enlightenment of selflessness and altruism. So from now on, whatever you do or whatever you say, you must consider others—or even future generations—along with Dafa's eternal stability." ("Non-Omission in Buddha Nature," Essentials for Further Advancement)
Through Fa study I realized that selfishness is the root of all evil from which suspicion comes.
Selfishness penetrates into every single human thought during one's daily life. Sometimes it conceals itself deeply and cannot be easily detected. Sometimes, even for high-sounding reasons (for example, doing Dafa work), one can hide egotism and selfishness. How can one enter the new universe with such a filthy mind? And how can the ferocious, dark minions let him off?
The panacea for removing selfishness is to study the Fa more and study the Fa more. If one can truly take the Fa as the teacher, start solidly, bit by bit, consider others first when taking any action and do not burden himself with petty gains, as time goes by, it must make a difference. At that time, when that person clarifies the truth, he would have one pure thought: People of the world, I will offer you salvation.
When my writing reaches this point I understand that suspicion is one of the deformed notions that the old forces have imposed on us, and it is not part of ourselves to begin with. Our mission is to offer people salvation and assist Teacher in Fa-rectification; only this is the grand aspiration we came for. I immediately erected my palm to get rid of these notions. I shall use the field of my righteous thoughts to rectify anything wrong and wash away all evil.
This is my personal understanding. Please point out anything incorrect.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2004/12/27/30464.html
