PureInsight | August 27, 2001
3. Firmly believe in Teacher and Dafa, or preserve ordinary people’s dignity and feelings
I was perplexed for a long time, for my personal opinions conflicted with those of some of our major coordinators. At that time, in order not to add more pressure to their work, I didn’t insist on voicing my opinion. I silently went back to my area and did my Fa promotion and Fa rectification work. During that period of time, I was always searching inward, and despite the interference from various thought karma and human notions, I still found many attachments. However, the problem of cooperation between countries is like an old scar that can never be removed. After the Washington D.C. experience sharing conference, practitioners who went brought back Teacher’s attitude and expectations regarding Fa promotion in Europe, my heart was all of a sudden enlightened, my mind, which has been disturbed for the past two years, suddenly became optimistic. Looking back on my experience of Fa promotion and Fa rectification in those two years, I deeply realized that I didn’t study Fa enough and didn’t persevere in a righteous belief in Fa; instead, I was affected by human sentimentality. “Firmly believe in Dafa” is not something just to be said, one cannot do it just because one wants to, it’s achieved through long-term diligent and solid Fa study, and steady, firm and painstaking cultivation.
I recollected the year when I tried to found the “Yuan Ming” website with several other practitioners. We wanted to provide a Dafa website that could let Dafa practitioners communicate online and promptly report Fa promotion information in Europe to practitioners around the world. Nevertheless, there was much other Dafa work waiting to be done. In addition, there are lots of countries in Europe with different languages, and this work required humongous amounts of energy input. Because too few people supported it back then and I didn’t really realize the importance of founding a Dafa website from the standpoint of Fa, we gradually gave up. Now, recalling this incident, I finally discovered the problem with my xinxing [mind and heart nature]. I needed to at all times, “take the Fa as the Teacher,” no matter what we do, always think from Dafa and Teacher’s viewpoint. As long as something is beneficial for Dafa, we should take the initiative to do it, instead of passively waiting and relying on others. We must genuinely protect Dafa with our actual behavior. On many occasions, I saw some people’s attachments, but I was reluctant to point them out. I thought, after a while, as they made progress in Fa study, they would be aware of those themselves. Recently, I realized that this is actually a form of selfishness, it’s because I was afraid of hurting the other’s dignity, and therefore embarrassing myself. If I dig deeper, I wasn’t thinking from the perspective of Fa in the first place, I was preserving human sentimentality and face, and was not really being compassionate and responsible for myself and for that life.
Teacher said in “Lecture at the Fa-Conference in Canada,” “Because all of you are cultivating Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, you should be a good person in any circumstance. If you see his shortcomings and see when he can't move upward, why can’t you point them out to him with a kind heart?” Second, I was afraid of being misunderstood and hurt, so I was still defending selfishness and sentimentality. In fact, these are all perverted mindsets formed after beings in the universe deviated from the Fa and will be eradicated during Fa rectification. Regardless of whether it’s mine or someone else’s, from the standpoint of Fa rectification, it’s not supposed to exist. Because if we can really think for the other person and point it out for him, isn’t that helping him to improve and also step forward in the Fa rectification process? Now I see beings have been deviated way too much. If not for Teacher’s benevolent Fa rectification and saving all beings, how could we know that we were already so far away from the law of the universe that our existence relies on? Thus, the phrase “being compassionate to all sentient beings” ('Definitive Conclusion,' in Essentials for Further Advancement) contains much of Teacher’s painstaking care, effort and expectation; it also contains infinitely enormous and profound meanings. Therefore, when doing work for Dafa, interference and tests from various aspects are all examinations of our hearts regarding Dafa. Sometimes it may be interference from demons, sometimes it may be (Teacher) using the uncultivated side of the other practitioners as a test. All in all, all kinds of trials will appear, for “There's absolutely no way a person can reach Consummation if he doesn't go through arduous cultivation to get rid of every kind of attachment he's developed among everyday people.” (“Lecture on the Fa at the Washington, D.C. International Conference”) But, so long as we resolutely believe in Teacher and Dafa, we can overcome all tribulations.
4. Discard jealousy
Lately, I deeply felt that many problems were set off by jealousy. Yet jealousy itself, I think is also a state of high-level beings after they became corrupted and deviated from the Fa. Just as Teacher had said in “Lecture on the Fa at the Washington, D.C. International Conference”, “There's a very evil factor in the persecution of Dafa disciples. Namely, the old forces can't get over the fact that some students will reach Consummation or become Fa-rectification disciples; they think that these students have obtained it too easily, because even they can't be Fa-rectification disciples; and for this reason they manipulate evil and utilize wicked persons to beat our students--insisting on beating them to the point where they say, 'I'll stop practicing.' Isn't this evil? Could a God be like this? The cosmos is being rectified by the Fa, and the number of beings weeded out at every level is quite large.” The evil forces persecute Dafa; they had made thorough arrangements that didn’t miss out a single level, including such a thing as jealousy.
Teacher said in Chapter 7 of Zhuan Falun, “The main reason is that people such as senior monks, supervisors, or abbots in temples are not necessarily of great inborn quality. Though they are abbots or senior monks, these are only positions of everyday people. They are also practitioners, except that they are professional ones. You practice cultivation at home as amateurs. Whether one succeeds in cultivation all depends on cultivating the heart. The same is true for everyone, and one cannot fall short even a bit. But a junior monk who cooks meals might not be of poor inborn quality. The more the junior monk suffers, the easier it is for him to achieve the Unlocking of Gong. The more comfortable the senior monks’ lives are, the harder it is for them to reach the state of Unlocking Gong since there is the issue of karma’s transformation. The junior monk always works hard and tirelessly. It is quicker for him to repay his karma and become enlightened. Perhaps one day he achieves the Unlocking of Gong all of a sudden. With this Unlocking of Gong, enlightenment, or semi-enlightenment, his supernatural capabilities will all emerge. The monks in the temple will all come to ask him questions, and everyone will respect him. But the abbot will be unable to put up with it: 'How can I still be the abbot? What enlightenment? He is experiencing cultivation insanity. Get him out of here.' The temple thus expels the junior monk. As time passes, nobody in Chinese Buddhism dares to mention supernormal abilities. You know how capable Jigong was. He could move the tree trunks from Mt. Emei and throw those logs out from a well one after another. Yet in the end he was still driven out of Lingyin Temple.”
Here, I don’t want to talk about who has great inborn quality and who doesn’t. Instead, I want to say that if we don’t clearly understand the harm jealousy can do between practitioners, between the people in charge, and between practitioners and people in charge, then we won’t be able to remove this arrangement made by the evil forces, and this will also make the Fa rectification difficult. We are cultivators and are being harmonized by Fa rectification. The substances that polluted us after birth on different levels and the deteriorated substances, which strayed away from “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance”, the characteristics of the universe, and formed within the beings after they deviated from Fa must be completely eliminated. Because all substances are living beings in other dimensions, they are lives. Jealousy in ordinary human society is the reflection of the field of such matter in other dimension by the old forces. For instance, practitioners’ disagreements between each other or some people in charge suspect and distrust some practitioners and new practitioners, are all reflections of jealousy. There are also many problems in countless other aspects in which the shadow of jealousy can be found.
Thoroughly repudiating the arrangements made by the old forces requires us to clearly realize all these from the principles of Fa, so we can really root them out. Otherwise, this jealousy directly hinders the teamwork and cooperation between practitioners, and gives the evil forces an opportunity to take advantage of us. Then, not only won’t we do Fa rectification and truth clarification work well, at the same time our own Consummation will also be a problem. Because “There is this rule: If in the course of cultivation practice jealousy is not given up, one will not attain Right Fruit—absolutely not.” (“Jealousy” in Chapter 7 of Zhuan Falun,) I feet this issue is very prominent for many of our practitioners, especially some practitioners in charge. The jealousy problem is brought about when someone has greater achievement among ordinary people or does better Fa promotion work. This is a relatively common and outstanding problem at present. Therefore, only by getting rid of jealousy and assimilating to “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance” during Fa rectification, can we gradually approach our original realms, or realms even better than our original ones, being harmonized during Fa rectification.
5. Study Fa well; improving on the principles of the Fa will guarantee doing all work well
“Under any circumstance, in any period, and no matter how busy you are with your work, you can't stray from your Fa-study, as this is what fundamentally ensures that you'll continue to improve and reach Consummation. You can't do Dafa work without studying the Fa, or it would be an everyday person doing Dafa work. It has to be Dafa disciples who do Dafa work--this is something required of all of you.” (“Lecture on the Fa at the Washington, D.C. International Conference”) Regarding the issue of Fa studying, I have profound experience and learned a good lesson from it. There was a long period of time when I didn’t have a clear understanding of this issue. Every day I was busy with my job and neglected Fa study, to such an extent that I was taken advantage of by my thought karma, various notions acquired after birth, and the evil forces. Therefore, although I worked until midnight everyday, I didn’t read the Fa and didn’t do the exercises, and as a result, I couldn’t pass the tests. I ended up in a terrible fix and complete mess. I still felt that I was doing work for Dafa and helping Teacher to rectify the Fa. Until later, when one after another scripture by Teacher emphasized the importance of Fa studying, I changed my mind and began solidly studying the Fa.
Dafa really has great power. After I had begun to study solidly, many conflicts were easily solved. Now I understand that, when we are studying the Fa, our true lives and thoughts are being assimilated by Fa, and are gradually approaching the microscopic level. Then, at this time, we are in the state of gods. When conflicts with ordinary people or tribulations appear, the substance on the level of molecules is the most powerless. How could it affect the microscopic matters in you that are already assimilated to Fa and on a high level? So, at that time passing tests will be very easy. But when we neglect studying Fa and our hearts fall back into the level of ordinary people, often at such times our attachments will be used by the evil forces, then we would suffer long-term interference, and become trapped in such a state. Fa rectification has reached the current period and has a very high requirement for us Dafa practitioners. If we don’t diligently and steadfastly study Fa, then we won’t be able to understand what we ought to understand from the principles of Fa during the progress of Fa rectification, and what we should do to closely follow Teacher’s Fa rectification process. Teacher emphasized again and again, “take the Fa as the Teacher.” So assimilate to Dafa and help Teacher to rectify the Fa, everything is included within this Fa. “…as long as you read Dafa, you are changing; as long as you read Dafa, you are elevating.” (“Melt Into the Fa,” Essentials for Further Advancement) The historical mission bestowed upon us by Dafa is “Assisting Teacher in the human world.” We were born from Dafa, and are being harmonized during Fa rectification, and we will eventually return to Dafa, and obtain eternal life from within Dafa.
In the morning on August 10th, 2001
Translated on August 14, 2001 from http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2001/8/11/11300.html
