PureInsight | December 22, 2008
[PureInsight.org] For a long time, my job was taking up a lot of my time, but recently it let up, and I’ve had more time to study the Fa and write articles.
In my workplace, I faced many ordinary people’s issues and thus, as long as I cultivated myself well, I had many opportunities to get rid of my human notions. I would like to talk about my understanding on “looking inside” from a few different angles.
Talking about “looking inside” may seem like some sort of stale news. We may even mention “looking inside” frequently when talking among fellow practitioners. But in reality, it is not an ordinary or a casual thing. Can we truly lay a hand on our heart and examine ourselves whenever we encounter problems?
For example, for a while I was pleased that I could keep calm most of the time when I was at work. Later, however, I found this calmness was not the state achieved by letting go of attachments (in this case, often the attachment to fearing hardship), but a state whereby I was thinking, “I am a ‘cultivator’ and I should have a higher realm than you.” Frankly speaking, this included the attachment of showing off that I was better than ordinary people. Sometimes, I felt disgraced if I didn’t do my job very well. When I realized this attachment, I got rid of it steadfastly, and then I could finish my work very smoothly.
Several days ago, a practitioner named Wen came to see me, and he started to complain about a young practitioner who he said was irrational and not in a very good cultivation state. I had met this practitioner several times before and I knew she had undertaken a lot of projects. When I heard Wen talking about these things, I realized that I was slack at supporting the practitioners who were working at truth clarification materials production sites and those practitioners probably felt a lot of pressure. Then, I sent forth strong righteous thoughts to reduce those pressures from other dimensions. Later, I shared with Wen and asked him how much we looked inward when we saw fellow practitioners who were not in good cultivation states. I used to do materials and coordination work and I also had the same state as her; I felt very tired and upset, nobody understood me, and my xinxing could not be improved at that time. If we all blamed her, we could not have good results. However, the result would be different if we could understand her and help her by sharing some of the workload. If we point out others’ mistakes, we should be compassionate and never force others to accept our views. If we can have the heart to not just “do things,” but also to truly improve ourselves and be responsible for our fellow practitioners, our whole body would have more power.
The second day, Wen came again and told me that after he looked inside himself, the younger practitioner had become calm and rational.
At that moment I didn’t know exactly what to say, but I was thinking that in order to let us realize our attachments, our Master has gone to so much trouble to arrange these situations. Yet sometimes when we faced these situations, we wouldn’t look inside with the excuse that it was the other person’s fault. In that case, we wasted a precious chance to improve ourselves. What a pity!
I think that if we search inward carefully no matter what the situation, including when we hear or see our fellow practitioners’ improper words or deeds, we will definitely find our own attachments.
Many practitioners told me that some practitioners from other areas came and talked about “kindly disintegrating attachments” and said that this did not follow the Fa principles. When those practitioners from other areas were talking about it, there were a lot of attachments at work that they could not perceive. As for this, I think we should not discuss whether this statement itself is right or wrong. Instead, we should first look inside ourselves.
Shouldn’t practitioners realize that they are suffering when they are in a conflict with others? Sometimes we have an attachment of pursuing things externally, and we want to listen to other practitioners’ sharings and get a ready-made solution without trying to enlighten by ourselves. This is an attachment of pursuing a short-cut in cultivation and trying to cultivate “faster” by using some other methods. Also, we need to ask ourselves if we have the attachment of attracting attention by being peculiar. I think that there are no short-cuts in cultivation, and all is for not without the improvement of our xinxing. Attachments cannot be “kindly disintegrated” by our just sitting there, and we are only deceiving ourselves if this leads us to not truly cultivate and improve ourselves.
Furthermore, Master never mentioned “kindly disintegrating” attachments. I think we should always be able to connect to the most superficial Fa principles no matter how high we are enlightening. Groundless terms should not be spread among our fellow practitioners. If we take it lightly, we may understand it to be interference, and if we take it seriously, we may see that it is undermining the Fa. Even after so many years, there are still always some people who think they have enlightened to some high level principle and create some new terms among fellow practitioners. All these are interference to our cultivation environment. I think those practitioners who are behaving like this must do it accidentally, and it’s also possible that the practitioners relaying the information to others may not have heard things clearly. However, I think we should pay attention to this because this is our cultivation environment, and we will be equally responsible for any interference to it if we could have prevented a problem but didn’t. If other practitioners are moved or interfered with due to our un-mindfulness, doesn’t this go against our goal of solidly cultivating together with our fellow practitioners?
For those practitioners who heard or saw these things, I think we should, on the one hand, share compassionately with the practitioner(s) in question. But, on the other hand, we should not concentrate our efforts on discussing who’s right and who’s wrong. Nothing can interfere with our Fa study, sending forth righteous thoughts, and saving sentient beings.
We are so lucky to be Dafa disciples in the Fa rectification period. Countless Gods don’t have this chance, so they envy us and want to develop a karmic relationship with us and be saved.
Moreover, in Fa rectification, Master bestows on us mighty capabilities, and not all of us can sense these. Regardless, we should mind our speech in this aspect and make sure we don’t have any attachment of showing off when discussing these issues. It is not because we have cultivated very well that we have mighty supernormal abilities, but that Master helps us when we have the wish to cultivate in our heart, and that is Master’s compassion and the power of Dafa. We should be very clear about this. Without Master’s protection and help, we cannot do anything.
Take myself as an example. When I found that I had the attachment of pursuing fame, I asked myself, why am I so arrogant? There are so many aspects I haven’t cultivated very well. To tell a little joke, sometimes many practitioners want to see what I look like, but when they actually see me, they feel discouraged. They think, “You are just so-so, nothing special, and you also have a lot of attachments.” We are cultivators, so we are bound to have some shortcomings and mistakes. We should not idolize or demonize other practitioners. We should only follow the Fa. We should view this issue with a broad mind and recognize that there are some parts we have cultivated well and some we have not.
When I was in my hometown, I remember there were some practitioners who had different opinions from me on certain issues. After I left, I later heard that some practitioners from my area were being persecuted. I recalled that my first thought was not righteous when I heard this. I was thinking, “I knew that your conduct didn’t follow the Fa, and see? Now you are undergoing persecution. I must be right.” I did look inside about this issue, but I didn’t search inward very thoroughly.
Yesterday, I went to see an older practitioner, and he told me about some practitioner who took sides against another practitioner and said that this practitioner had suffered retribution if he was being persecuted because he took the opposite side. Suddenly, I asked myself why I heard this and if I have the same attachment of complaining about fellow practitioners as this person? It has been two years since I left my hometown, but how much have I given up those attachments after such a long time? Had they been forgotten because of the passage of time and the change of the environment or been truly given up through cultivation? I found I was not compassionate enough and cultivated poorly. If, in my hometown, I had been able to truly tolerate with the heart of a genuine cultivator and share with compassion, at least fellow practitioners would not have been interfered with because of my understandings. I cried when I thought about this; how could I blame those fellow practitioners when they were being persecuted because of me? Here, I want to say that I am sorry to practitioners in my hometown. Because of my human notions and attachments, fellow practitioners focused their attention on me, and they could not study the Fa with a calm mind and thus left a loophole for the evil that caused some big losses.
As a practitioner during the Fa rectification period, I think the persecution is targeting Dafa and the whole group, no matter what the reason is. Only the evil would think this persecution is reasonable. Our reasoning should not conform to that of the evil.
Also, as a practitioner, we should defend the Fa instead of some other practitioner. I remember that one year ago, a coordinator told me that I should not mention my wife when contacting other practitioners, as that would make me lose face and fame. At that time, I said that my wife definitely has some shortcomings, but she also has some aspects of her self that she has cultivated very well and she deserves to be admired.
Also, please do not defend me since that is a result of human notions and I have many attachments too. Everyone should walk their own path well and should not rely on others. We would definitely not find other Gods to help us solve our problems after going back to heaven. Therefore, we should cultivate the wisdom and capabilities of Enlightened Beings.
How well we walk our path and how well we fulfill our responsibilities are questions we should think about carefully. Chances are so limited. Let us look inward, stop arguing, and be responsible to ourselves and sentient beings.
The above is only a small sharing of my own understandings. Please kindly point out anything inappropriate.
Heshi.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2008/11/12/55898.html
