Moving from Humanness to Divinity

[PureInsight.org] (New England Fahui 2006)
When we look at the thinning ranks of our practitioners in the greater
Boston area, leaving us short-handed for all the pressing projects we
are doing, when we hear news about practitioners abandoning their
cultivation, or when we encounter new obstacles in our
truth-clarification projects that don't make any sense on a surface
level, it is easy to slip into periods of weariness, uncertainty, and
discouragement. I have had these feelings to varying degrees and
perhaps some of you have too. This is all part of cultivation and when
we experience lows like this, I think it is because we still have some
humanness left to cultivate away.



Of course, our cultivation practice takes the format of cultivating
while in ordinary human society. And it is precisely because we live in
ordinary society that we not only have an environment in which to
improve our xinxing, but that
we can carry out our mission of saving sentient beings. The two go hand
in hand. And we are in a process of moving from humanness to divinity.
As such, we have both human and divine thoughts.



In "Teaching the Fa in San Francisco, 2005" Master said: "Under the
tests that the human mind is put to, a state will come about in a
cultivator when understandings born of both divine and human thoughts
are present and collide. When human thinking gains the upper hand, that
person heads toward humanness; when divine thinking and a person's
righteous thoughts gain the upper hand, he heads toward godhood."



In the same lecture Master also said, "You are now in the last stage of
heading towards Consummation"  My understanding from these words
is that our own righteous thoughts and divine thinking should be
gaining the upper hand by now. We should be able to distinguish between
human thinking and divine thinking and not remain in the dark on this
all-important matter.



Humans have human thoughts and gods have divine thoughts. That has
always made sense to me but at the same time it has also been most
challenging. What differentiates the two kinds of thinking? How can I
know if I am thinking like a human or thinking like a god? There
certainly isn't any magic formula that can be followed, nor are there
any role models for me to emulate. Some of my thoughts are very human
and thus easy to identify. Some of my thoughts border, and maybe cross
over, into the realm of divine thinking. Yet there's a wide range of
thinking that goes on inside me that is not so easy to evaluate, at
least not on the surface.



However, all my human thinking, even my "good" human thinking, is
rooted in one thing, selfishness. If what I am thinking about stirs
uneasiness in my consciousness, no matter how slight, when I pause,
take a step back, and look inside myself, I will inevitably find its
selfish root. Perhaps I have been afraid of taking on something I
consider uncomfortable. Perhaps I am really trying to show off, or brag
a bit. Maybe one of my pet notions is challenged or I am reluctant to
let go of an opinion I formed about someone. Sometimes I find myself
day dreaming. All these mental activities are rooted in selfishness, an
all too human characteristic.



Perhaps a recent experience of mine will illustrate what I am trying to
convey. The News Department of New Tang Dynasty Television held an
impromptu experience-sharing conference a couple of months ago. With
less than two weeks notice, around two dozen experience-sharing reports
were read and the atmosphere was charged with wonderful, positive
energy. As I listened to the practitioners giving their reports and
looked around at many familiar faces, I was thinking about how far
these practitioners had come and how quickly the NTDTV news department
has grown in such a short span of time. That thinking revolved around
surface, technical things such as improvement in the techniques of news
editing and reporting. I was caught up in this thinking and was even a
little complacent for being a small part of such a great team.



After dinner, we broke into an English News group and a Chinese News
Group in adjoining rooms for more sharing and planning of future
projects. During the course of our English meeting, one of the editors
quietly shared her understanding that our English News team's most
important role is to direct Western public attention to Xin Tang Ren -
that we should shine the spot-light on them, so to speak, and make it
easier for them to do their job reporting truth to the Chinese people.
I was blown away! Her words were so clear and powerful, full of
compassion, with no trace of selfishness. This was such a contrast to
the way I had been thinking all day. I was ashamed of myself at that
moment. But I was also thankful for having my human thinking exposed so
quickly and compassionately.



Human thinking has selfish roots, that's for sure. There is also a
tell-tale characteristic about human thinking that I have noticed in
myself. When encountering a tribulation, if I am not thinking
righteously and unselfishly, I find that I am self-conscious. By this I
mean that I am thinking ABOUT the tribulation more than I am FACING the
situation. When I look at the tribulation directly and see the loophole
that needs to be closed, then there's no time for being self-conscious.
I just immediately do what needs to be done. This is part of what
melting into the Fa means to me. If we are afraid, if we hesitate, if
we look for the tribulation to be removed by Master or if we handle it
only with righteous thoughts, then I think we miss the opportunity to
move up another notch in divinity.



It has been my experience that cultivating a heart of kindness and
compassion creates a fertile ground for thinking more like a god and
less like a human. I find that maintaining a heart of compassion and
kindness, as Master has taught us in lecture 4 of Zhuan Falun,
is a very good thing to do. Why? Because, when we are genuinely
thinking of someone else, the focus is not on "me" but on the other
person. This applies equally well to working on a project with other
practioners. If I consider how the project will be affected by what I
think, say, or do, again the focus is not on "me" but on the success of
something much greater and outside of the strictly human realm. 
Isn't the key to being One Body unselfishness?



This is a constant challenge for me and although I know I have made
some progress, I often lose sight of the phenomenon in our cultivation
that Master expounded upon in great detail in his most recent lecture,
"Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital:"

"So as parts are continually being fully cultivated, they are
continually partitioned off. As parts continue to be fully cultivated,
they are continually partitioned off; the part that hasn't been fully
cultivated, meanwhile, constantly undergoes cultivation until the point
where nothing remains and everything has been successfully cultivated.
That is the cultivation path you are to take."



Because the divinely cultivated part that is cultivated is immediately
"partitioned off by a huge amount of space and time" ("Teaching the Fa
at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital"), we find ourselves pretty
much unchanged at this human level. The afterglow of having
successfully passed a xinxing
test lasts about as long as the flicker of firefly's tail light. But
there's no need to get discouraged, because we know what's happening.



We are not fireflies but true gods in the making. We glow with the
Buddha light that illuminates everything and rectifies all
abnormalities around us. By diligently applying ourselves and
continually studying the Fa, we have the best inertial guidance system
possible along our cultivation path. Let us think more and more like
enlightened beings and less like humans as the pace of Fa rectification
quickens. This period will be over in the twinkling of an eye.



How wonderful it will be!