PureInsight | October 11, 2010
[PureInsight.org] Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to know what love is. As an ordinary person I searched for it in relationships with others. Once I stepped on a spiritual journey, I realized that this love I am looking for is not something that can be found on the outside. I've heard such terms as “spiritual love” or “divine love” or “universal love,” but really did not have a clue as to what it meant.
When I began cultivating in Falun Dafa, I learned that everything is composed of Truth, Compassion, Forbearance—Zhen-Shan-Ren, and that what truly makes a person fulfilled is assimilation to Zhen-Shan-Ren.
As I continued on the path, I felt a rapid change happening. It was not always easy: the tearing off of attachments, layers of “humanness,” disciplined practice. Recently, I feel I've gone through some change. I feel another layer of human attachments was shed. Over the years and especially during recent times, I came to understand, at my current level of cultivation, that Compassion is not love, or kindness as ordinary people understand. Nor is it “universal love,” as a feeling. I don't understand it intellectually like before, but through experience. I came to understand that Compassion only happens with spiritual freedom. Compassion is a state of beings enlightened at different levels, who are in the process of casting of attachments or beings who are free from attachments. Attachments cause suffering. As I work on myself and slowly cast off attachments, I see the suffering beings with attachments undergo. This experience naturally leads to Compassion. Compassion arises out of seeing others’ misery. Ordinary people can also experience compassion at their level, but not to the same extent, because ordinary people oftentimes are not aware of their own suffering, of their own burden. It is like only when you break free from a pit of mud, and experience the state of freedom, you may really feel compassionate to those beings that are still in the mud, even if they are not aware of the mud themselves.
Master said:
Question: How can we gauge the relative amount of affection for one’s family members, romantic love and friendship, and that of the love that comes from compassion (cibei)?
Teacher: “Right now you are not yet able to experience what it feels like for a person to have no qing, and thus you don’t know what compassion is. The compassion you can imagine now still comes from qing, and that is why you can’t experience it. Human beings’ jealousy, elation, competitiveness, unwillingness to be outdone, fear, anyway—you have to get rid of desires and attachments of every kind. Your liking or disliking something, what you do, what becomes your hobby and what doesn’t, your wanting or unwillingness to eat certain things, your enjoying something or disliking something… everything comes from qing. Human beings live just for this qing. So what are those high-level beings who live without qing like? Are they all cold and stern toward one another? No, they’re not. After a human being gets rid of qing, his compassion will come forth. Why can great enlightened beings save people? It’s because they have compassion and they have pity for all beings.” (Zhuan Falun Fa Jie – The Law of Zhuan Falun Explained, “Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Guangzhou”)
Master also said:
“As love is diminished in your cultivation, it will be replaced by the compassion (cibei) that emerges.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Eastern U.S. Fa Conference”)
I think (and this is just intellectually, perhaps somewhat intuitively) that true Compassion comes with complete spiritual freedom. While walking the path and tempering ourselves, fulfilling our missions, we can experience some of it, but ultimate Compassion will come with ultimate liberation, Consummation. One who is free wants to save those who are entangled.
Please point out anything incorrect.
Heshi.
