Enlightenment: "A Single Thought" and "Cultivating the Mind"

[PureInsight.org] A couple of days ago, a practitioner who is my distant relative visited me. During the conversation, she repeated a pet phrase that I had heard so many times before, "My hearing is getting worse and worse." I said, "How could your hearing get any better when you keep reinforcing the unrighteous thought?" At night, I was talking to an elderly practitioner on the phone. She said that one day after she came back from another practitioner's house, "I was not able to sit with legs in the lotus position, no matter how I tried." She emphasized this point. That night I was immersed in thought. The same night, I pushed myself to finish this sharing article without letting up. Please kindly point out anything that does not line up with Fa.

I would like to share my enlightenment regarding "a single thought" and "cultivate the mind." As we all know, ordinary people don't have energy; the substance that arises from their thoughts dissipates very quickly. However, the single thought of worship from ordinary people could create a fake Buddha or a fake Bodhisattva. We are all familiar with the story that a person thought he would die because he was bleeding, and under the influence of that thought, his blood pressure, heartbeat and organs were made to wither and die.

If even ordinary people could create such an effect with their thoughts, wouldn't Dafa practitioners' thoughts be more important? Because "the thoughts the human brain produces are matter" (Zhuan Falun), matter and mind are one and the same, this is the truth in the universe. So if you always think your hearing is getting worse and worse, since you think that way, your hearing will manifest the corresponding "bad" state. Dafa disciples all have Buddha Fa's divine power. There's nothing more powerful. So the things that arise from a Dafa disciple's thoughts are strong, and the higher the disciple's level, the more powerful the things that emerge from his thoughts will be.

So thinking is asking for it, asking for it is an attachment and reinforcing the field. Not to mention now it is the Fa-rectification period, and the evil glares menacingly at Dafa disciples' "loopholes," enlarges your attachment, makes you not clearheaded, and in that way it manages to control you. At the crucial moment, it interferes with you. Regardless of whether it is a big issue or a small issue, you would fail. There have been so many lessons involving this.

I knew an elderly practitioner who, due to her righteous thoughts, had escaped from right under the nose of the wicked policemen while they were searching her house. However, later on, she wasn't able to properly understand a swelling that occurred on her cheek. She went to a hospital for treatment. By examination, there wasn't anything wrong with her body. So she had surgery to remove the swelling. Shortly after the surgery she died without any warning. Another practitioner had a swelling at almost the same place as the elderly practitioner before she started to practice Falun Gong. That practitioner sent righteous thoughts to clear it up, the swelling became smaller and smaller, and in the end it completely disappeared.

Another practitioner who I am very familiar with studied the Fa very well. Before the persecution of Falun Gong began in July 1999, she paid close attention to her every single thought and idea. She used Dafa to judge everything she did at every moment. She went to Beijing many times to validate the Fa. The detention center, the prison, and the brainwashing classes couldn't keep her locked up. At one time she was kidnapped to the detention center. She participated in a hunger strike demanding to be released unconditionally. The wicked policemen were scared and told her that as long as she would eat, they could get her the book Zhuan Falun and allow her to study Fa and do the exercises. She refused. The evil intensified the persecution on her. They pricked her fingers with a steel needle. As long as she still had consciousness, she shouted the Fa-rectification formulas and "Falun Dafa is good." Meanwhile, she held onto her righteous thought that "I have only one life but it is so precious that you can't take it away." She lost consciousness. After she regained consciousness, the evil continued to prick her fingers. As you can imagine, the policemen held this female practitioner down with great force. Each needle was driven in under the fingernail. In such sharp pain, she still kept a clear head of righteous Fa and righteous enlightenment. How solemn and tragic it is! How magnificent it is! But the evil didn't stop after pricking under her fingernails. They inhumanly started to prick her fingers and hands. Steel needles were used to pierce through her palms. Looking at the invincible practitioner, the evil twisted the needles one by one while laughing wildly, hurling insults. What would be one's feeling under such a circumstance? She is as strong as iron! In the end the evil sent the practitioner home because she "looked" like she was dying.

The practitioner was persecuted to the extreme by the evil many times. Every time she was able to clear the evil, which persecuted her physical body, and she continued on the path of Fa-rectification. Her feeling was "prison cannot lock up gods." It is because she was able to cultivate her single thought and single idea solidly all these years that she could achieve such a state.

While I wrote this paragraph, I couldn't help feeling praise from the bottom of my heart: only the Fa of the Cosmos can forge such magnificent beings! On the contrary, most of those practitioners who fell down usually couldn't let go their fear of dying. At the crucial moment, all kinds of human thoughts broke out; if any of the human thoughts emerged, the evils, which glared menacingly in all dimensions, would come at you immediately. As a result, you might lose yourself in pain, and you might end up with some behaviors that were even worse than ordinary people. So, it is so important for Dafa disciples to cultivate solidly while doing the three things!

"A person's every thought is built on a long period of cultivation" (Lectures in the United States, "Teaching the Fa in New York City"). So we can see that "a single thought" and "cultivating the mind" are supplementary to each other. Dafa disciples' cultivation is to emerge from among ordinary people, is to change human thoughts to divine thoughts. This process is the process of cultivation. Study the Fa and cultivate solidly. Master already spells out the Fa explicitly. We need to study the Fa thoroughly. The degree of how thoroughly we study the Fa and the level we understand the Fa determine the level of righteousness in our actions. While doing the three things, we keep studying the Fa, cultivating the mind, and using the Fa to guide our every single thought and idea, every single word and action. Hasn't Master already given us the treasure of cultivation: looking inside? Look inside our mind, focus our attention on our mind. Watch closely our every single thought without slacking off. Every day use the Fa to filter every single thought. Dig deeply for every bad thought to see what mindset causes the thought, whether it is a human mindset, distorted thoughts, or foolishness. Once you identify it, don't accept it, just reject it, explode it, clear it away immediately. However much we do, Master can help us. Cultivation is what you handle, gong is what the Master provides. Even if you can only measure one thought among your one hundred thoughts, that's the start of solid cultivation. Fellow practitioners! Cultivate our every single thought and idea; that is the way for a human being to become divine!

"Dafa is about cultivation only, Dafa has nothing but cultivation" ("Teaching the Fa at the Meeting with Asia-Pacific Students"). In the Fa rectification, we use different methods to save people, to stop the persecution, but those are not Dafa itself. Those are cases of Dafa practitioners walking their own paths validating the Fa, establishing their mighty virtue. As long as we can look inside all the time, clear ourselves, do it persistently and consistently, we can form the habit of looking inside without our noticing. Everything is simple and in a state of non-action. With the simple mind and simple life, it is not difficult to get rid of attachment. You can feel that your brain will follow your command better and better, you can quiet your mind whenever you want to.

If you still can't enter tranquility during doing exercises or sending righteous thoughts, especially if the distracting thoughts are very strong, then you really need to hurry up in genuinely in cultivating solidly! Grasp the most fundamental cultivation way in Dafa cultivation, look inside, measure the thoughts one by one with Dafa, give up the evil mindset and return to the good; clear and disintegrate any elements in your dimension that are not in keeping with Zhen, Shan, Ren.

You discipline your own thoughts and you administer your own small universe. You are the Lord of your universe, everything is up to you. Once some part in your physical body shows an incorrect state, first of all, look inside, then send a strong righteous thought: "I am the Lord of my universe, the body of a Dafa disciple must validate the beauty of Dafa to the world's people. I absolutely don't allow any beings to mess up my body and my universe with any excuse."

We need to be responsible for the countless cosmic firmaments inside our enormous cosmic bodies; we need to be responsible for the beings over there because when it manifests as sickness karma on our physical body, the countless beings in the dimensions of every level will be in danger of being eliminated instantly by the mighty current of Fa-rectification. Therefore, the progress of Fa-rectification is closely related to our individual cultivation! Cultivation is so serious! It is not a simple question of whether you cultivate well or not, but it is a life and death question of whether you save beings or destroy beings! We must cultivate ourselves well; truly cultivate in a solid manner. This is Dafa disciples' obligation; this is Dafa disciples' responsibility; this is Dafa disciples' sacred mission!

Master requires us to cultivate until no attachment is left in the end; every cell needs to be cultivated well. Master warned us in the "Fa Teaching at the 2008 New York Conference": "As I said, even if you quarreled over validating the Fa and saving sentient beings, or you heard some unpleasant comments, those were all for your improvement, because your improvement comes first. Without your improvement, nothing can be achieved, and that includes saving sentient beings. If you fail to improve and achieve Consummation, where will the sentient beings that you save go? Who will take them? Why not look at things that way?"

Now Fa-rectification is close to the end. It is not enough for us Dafa practitioners to get rid of only bad thoughts, attachments, and desires. We need to change the human logic and human notions that we, as an ordinary human, have formed deep in our bones over thousands of years. We also need to completely remove the poison spread by the wicked Chinese Communist Party (CCP) culture. Every single day, leave no regrets when we are in front of Master, in front of all the sentient beings. With righteous thoughts and righteous actions, be ever diligent! Cultivate ourselves well and save sentient beings, in a race against time to clarify the truth. In order to leave no regrets when we face Master and sentient beings in the near future, let us be ever diligent with righteous thoughts and righteous actions!

Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2008/7/7/53703.html