PureInsight | August 13, 2006
[PureInsight.org] I read the
book of "Life Reborn: Stories of Reincarnation" in the last couple of
days. It is a collection of stories told by people from all walks of
life about their memories of their previous lives while under hypnosis
by the author Hang Ming. I was quite moved by the intense feelings of
love and hatred that some subjects have carried with them during many
lifetimes.
In one story, a person has always been nice to her sister. But her
sister has always been very mean to her. She felt quite sad about the
situation. Through hypnosis, she learned that she had killed her sister
in a previous life and she needs to pay the debt she owed to her sister
in this life. From this story, it occurs to me that the attachment of
wanting to be good to someone or not wanting others to mistreat us is
not something that we can control. It is actually controlled by a
higher principle. The true reason why we like certain people and are
willing to do a lot for them is that we need to pay back the debts we
owe them. But since we are lost in this maze of life, we think that we
like those people based on our rational judgments of who they are.
I also read the account of a hypnosis experiment from a website. The
person who performed the hypnosis told the test subject, "After you
wake up, when you see me touching my nose, go and open the window."
Upon waking up, the test subject indeed went to open the window as soon
as he saw the hypnotist touching his nose. Because he didn't know he
had been ordered to do so while under hypnosis, when he was asked why
he had opened the window, he gave reasons such as it was too hot or the
air was too stale in the room.
Teacher said in "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.:"
"And where do people's thoughts really come from? Scientists have now
realized that man's brain isn't really where his thoughts originate. So
where do people's thoughts come from? Everybody thinks they come from
what they've learned in the ordinary society and from their own
reasoning. But that's not how it works. When an everyday person has a
thought about doing something, his brain actually hasn't gone through
some long process of reflection. A lot of things just instantly pop up,
and a lot of words just roll right out off the tongue. So then just
where exactly do those thoughts come from? We cultivators all know that
there are actually connections between a person's mind and factors in a
lot of different dimensions, and when it comes to major things, man is
just doing things under the control of other beings. He's just acting
things out here in the human world, that's all. The surface of the
human body, the postnatally formed body, is really nothing."
Minds of everyday people are quite weak and they don't know the where
their thoughts actually come from. They often find reasons to
rationalize their thoughts or behavior. No wonder things in other
dimensions can easily control ordinary people. Being practitioners, if
we consider sentiments, feelings of "like" and "dislike" as our own and
defend such mental states stubbornly, then we really cannot get out of
this human world.
Now I understand what the term "immersed in sentiment" means. To me, it
means losing oneself. Sentimentality and emotion control ordinary
people. As practitioners, we need to know whether we are being
controlled by emotion when we do things. Only through studying the Fa,
can we break through the delusion. When our every thought is based on
the Fa, we can see the true nature of each issue with pure minds and
without any preconceptions. A cultivator needs to be compassionate
towards everyone. Compassion comes from cultivating away sentiments and
emotion. It is not dictated by our personal preferences in this life,
which in turn are controlled by karma accumulated in our previous
lives. Only through cultivation can we harmonize each situation and
find a benevolent solution for everything. Teacher said: "See the human
world with eyes of compassion, then are you freed from the spell of
delusion." ("Success at Consummation" from Hong Yin)
Conflicts between practitioners also have historical reasons. But they
also have surface reasons and also can be used to expose attachments
that we have yet to eliminate in our cultivation. Only compassion
through Dafa cultivation can resolve everything. Now is the last stage
in history. All the gratitude and enmities generated from previous
lives need to be resolved. If we can open our hearts and just share our
thoughts with each other and discuss a little, everything can be
resolved.
Looking from a different perspective, our level determines our
enlightenment. That is to say, we do things according to the level we
are at. During Dafa cultivation, when we gradually eliminate acquired
notions, detach from the emotional feelings of like or dislike, and
reach the rationality of our elevated levels, we will be able to
experience clearly the wisdom of that level in abundance.
Translated from：
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2006/7/2/38373.html
