PureInsight | October 3, 2012
[PureInsight.org] In the article “Clearheadedness” from Master Li’s book “Essentials For Further Advancement,” Master Li tells us: “Any work in Dafa is intended for people to obtain the Fa and for disciples to improve themselves. Anything other than these two points is meaningless.” Master Li also points out: “The experience sharing conferences are intended for the improvement of students and the promotion of Dafa, but not for publicizing how bad our students once were. They are for talking about doing Dafa cultivation practice, not dumping so-called ‘dirty water.’”
After I recently re-read this article, it occurred to me that, even for the daily discussions we have among fellow practitioners, we should also focus on how to improve ourselves. The goal of our discussions should be mutual elevation. We discuss to mutually improve ourselves so that we can do better in doing the three things.
Let me share with everyone some of my recent cultivation experiences. For a very long period of time, I didn’t do the exercises very well. I often neglected the standing exercises all together. From the discussions I had with other practitioners, I realized that many fellow practitioners also had similar problems; some practitioners didn’t even practice the sitting meditation. I felt like I was not alone, so I excused myself and slacked off. Eventually, I decided that was not the right path for me. I met with other practitioners and we made up our minds to start doing all the exercises daily. I began to practice every day and soon I noticed that my attachment to comfort was gone. I could do sending forth righteous thoughts (SRFT) on time, some other attachments also disappeared, and one form of sickness karma also suddenly stopped showing up. I told my story to fellow practitioners and let them know how I improved and got rid of many attachments. Many practitioners agreed to start the practice of all the five sets of exercises once again. One veteran practitioner said to me: “Look, you can keep doing all the exercises, why can’t I do them? I’ve made up my mind to keep up with you. I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself as a veteran practitioner.”
I had another similar experience in the area of truth clarification work. Again, for a very long period of time, I learnt from discussions with other practitioners that many practitioners (including myself) had not done a good job in clarifying the truth about Dafa to the public. I didn’t feel bad at my lack of enthusiasm and said to myself: “Hey, everyone’s not doing it diligently.” Such negative thoughts dragged me down and I simply didn’t want to move up. After I realized that I should not keep such a state of mind, I began to put more heart and thought into the truth clarification work. I shared my improvement with other practitioners, and again, many fellow practitioners started to proactively engage in this important truth clarification campaign.
Right now, we’ve already reached an agreement. Whenever we discuss amongst ourselves, we would share how we have improved, especially, how we have cultivated our minds to get rid of attachments. For me, if I still have issues with myself, I’d like to point out how some fellow practitioners have faced up to similar issues and managed to dig them out from the pit. I would learn from such practitioners. If there really is nothing to share, I would just silently listen to fellow practitioners’ stories about how they have just improved themselves. Of course, we still discuss our own short-comings, but that’s not the focus of our talks. We want to share how we can overcome our short-comings and how we can move up in our cultivations. Exposing one’s problems is not enough, we need to find ways to solve our problems and cultivate to a higher level.
One thing that we need to keep in mind when having positive discussions is that we should not aggrandize ourselves, and we should also watch out for our show-off attachment.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/111375
