PureInsight | August 20, 2014
[PureInsight.org] Recently I ran into a couple of incidents. I have now realized those incidents were the direct results of my own attachments and my heart was not in a proper state. On July 4th of this year, we participated in the Independence Day celebration parade in our local city and I was involved in the dragon dancing. When the dragon dancing team was getting close to the end of the parade, suddenly the dragon head got detached from the body. At that time, I was the person moving the dragon head. The other practitioners in the dragon dancing team remained very calm during this incident and we finally made to the very end of the parade.
Since I was the “dragon head”, I felt very bad and sad. I figured that many other fellow practitioners in the team might have similar feelings towards me as well. Well, feeling down-hearted was not the right way to go as it won’t help my cultivation. In “Fa Teaching at the 2009 Washington DC International Fa Conference”, Master Li says: “For a cultivator, looking within is a magical tool.” Yes, it was my first time in dragon dancing and we didn’t practice too much before the parade. I could have made the excuse that we were not technically ready for the parade, and that might offer an excuse for the “head detachment” incident. It was also very windy that day.
From the perspectives of personal cultivation, I realized that all such excuses were not the real causes for the problem and the fundamental issue must have been of my own making. I must have certain issues and the evil forces took advantage of my shortcomings and made it possible for such an incident to occur. What was my problem then? I tried to find my own problem, but I couldn’t immediately find one and so I simply stopped thinking about it.
A few days later, when I was preparing breakfast for my family, I started to reflect upon another issue that happened earlier. I was involved in a certain project and the project manager told us that we needed to get rid of what we had just finished and start from scratch again. We had already gone through this process several times before and I thought we had finally made it right. Now the manager was asking us to start anew once again and I felt a little bit irritated. I immediately realized that it must be my own fault, so I kept calm and didn’t fight with the manager then. As it turned out, we just needed to get rid of a very small portion of the finished product and the issue was addressed.
There was yet another incident that happened to me early on. Two plates above one of our house’s doors were not aligned well. I discovered that the walls along the two sides of that door were not aligned. It was not a serious issue and I asked some fellow practitioners to give me a hand and we got this fixed quickly. Nonetheless, my wife still alerted me that there must be some problem within me.
All these incidents made me realize there must be something wrong with me that had contributed to the “head detachment” situation. Upon reflection, I eventually figured out what went wrong with me.
In the morning of the Independence Day, we were supposed to meet at the parade gathering ground around 10 AM to practice dragon dancing. The parade would start at 11:45 AM so we should have enough time to do the practice. Now, the person who helped delivering the dragon to us got to the parade gathering ground at 11:30 AM because many of the streets were already blocked. We had to drive out to help moving the dragon to the parade scene; on the way to pick up the dragon, I said to a local coordinator that the driver who was supposed to deliver the dragon on time was not taking his duty seriously. I also mentioned that if it were me, such a delay won’t happen, and so on. I was complaining and also showing off and I didn’t realize all these attachments then.
This “head detachment” incident might have generated certain negative images for Dafa. As I didn’t come to grasp my own faults when the incident occurred, I think the negativity got even worse. From this incident, I have come to understand that I should pay even more attention to my personal cultivation, I need to reflect upon every single thought of mine, and I need to get rid of my attachments right away when they pop up in my mind. In the article of “Further Understanding” from the book of “Essentials for Further Advancement”, Master said: “If you are able to succeed in improving yourself this way, what you do then, with a pure heart, will be the best and most sacred. ” I want to do exactly what Master has asked us to do.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/133442
