PureInsight | August 6, 2001
In my thirty years of life, I have been an ordinary person who was in a sea of bitterness during the first 25 years and a Dafa practitioner who escaped the abyss of misery, doubly tasting happiness during the last 5 years.
Although I had done little physical work in my school days, I was deeply moved by the suffering of my family and the elder generation. When I became an independent thinker, I worked very hard, secretly hoping to win honour for my family. Finally, I obtained what I wanted: I went to college. Then, in 1992, I went to Beijing to study for my Masters degree, which required little effort. I even had a classmate who became my girlfriend, and eventually my wife. Our relationship was quite harmonious. Also, we obtained the Fa at almost the same time.
It seemed a fairly perfect life. But I knew there was deep bitterness in my heart that could neither be eliminated nor covered up by material acquisition. This bitterness came from the bottom of my heart. The unpredictable future, complicated and irrevocable relationships with others, constant trouble between people, the inability to distinguish right and wrong, as well as many very important but unsolvable questions, all plagued me. I had searched for answers in the library for several years and bought boxes of books. The more I read, the more confused I became and the more bitter I felt.
Once, I asked an old academician with an international reputation, “What is right and what is wrong, after all?” He answered me dispassionately, “Sorry, I have not studied that deeply.” My God! Even the intellectuals who are seen as the most rational and intuitive cannot tell what are right and wrong throughout their entire lives! What does this illustrate? So the whole human society is living in darkness, in a maze? Should we complete our lives without any understanding? Although we don’t know what right and wrong are, we are not necessarily suffering less from troubles.
When I looked at others indulging themselves in their lives, I asked myself if something was wrong with me. But my intellect told me it was not so, that the questions in my heart were also in theirs. They are the basic questions of life. The only difference was that I could face up to them while others were insensitive to or ignored them. I knew there must be answers for the questions in my heart. There must be sweetness as well as bitterness. I realized I would rather explore the meaning of life than ignore it. I believed that no matter how happy those people who ignored their inner lives seemed to be, they might well be miserable and confused when not deceiving themselves and others. If they could not face up to their lives, they would never get out of the abyss of misery unless, of course, they wanted to be insensitive to these questions forever.
It is Master and Dafa that saved me!
After cultivating Dafa for several years, the questions in my mind were finally answered. I’ve come to understand that the universal principles of “truthfulness, compassion and tolerance” are the basic criteria for judging everything. They can get rid of the bitterness caused by confused thinking. In addition, I’ve resolved for myself many questions of vital importance and obtained a lot of unexpected things. I understand many universal principles that are much higher than the human level, including being able to recognize the true sources of bitterness and happiness.
The reason is the basic characteristic of the universe that is “truthfulness, compassion and tolerance”. Everything in the universe contains this characteristic. There are different Xinxing requirements and standards for the living beings at different levels. Its manifestation in human society is ethics and moral standards. It really exists and people must be judged by this characteristic when they do something at different Xinxing levels, whether conforming to it or in opposition. The former is goodness and the latter is evil. “Good will be rewarded with good and evil with evil.” Suffering hardship is the process of evil being returned with evil as well as a process of obeying the characteristic and thereby producing happiness.
So the bitterness in human society stems from the deep yearning of one’s heart. It cannot be eliminated by fame, profit, or emotion. These can only create more bitterness. Nor can real happiness be obtained by seeking. It is the spontaneous manifestation of the universal law that surfaces from deep inside after one eliminates the acquired elements that oppose the universal characteristic.
This article was translated on 13th July, 2001 from: http://www.zhengjian.org/sci/sci/home/newscontent.asp?ID=9502
