PureInsight | July 22, 2015
[PureInsight.org] Recently, a fellow Dafa practitioner from our local practise site died of disease karma. In the past few years, several fellow Dafa practitioners had passed away, many were key members of our local Fa study group, and the average age of those practitioners was only 65 years. I felt very sorry for those practitioners. Many thoughts popped up in my mind.
In the past 10 years, some fellow practitioners have been very seriously persecuted. There are still others who are so busy with Dafa projects every day that they have become negligent of their personal cultivation. No matter how long we have practiced Dafa, no matter how many truth clarification tasks we have performed and how many people we have saved, we should never neglect on our own personal cultivation. In the first chapter of the book “Zhuan Falun”, Master has already told us, “I’ll tell you a truth: the whole process of cultivation is a process of constantly getting rid of human attachments.” Master also tells us the reason behind one’s inability to raise one’s cultivation level, “you have no way to cultivate if you don’t know the Law at high levels, and if you don’t cultivate inward, if you don’t cultivate your character, your gong won’t increase.” In the very beginning of our cultivation, we were all able to cultivate inward, we all knew that we should look inward whenever there was a conflict; we also learnt from Dafa that our physical discomfort was a result of Master helping eliminate the disease karma for us, we all knew that no matter how busy we might be, we would still need to keep up with Fa study and practice of the gong.
As one’s personal cultivation changes to cultivation in Fa-rectification, every Dafa practitioner has to help by eliminating the evil forces, saving sentient beings along with improving one’s own personal cultivation. Some fellow practitioners have gradually neglected their own personal cultivation while doing Dafa projects, these practitioners like to use the excuse of “evil interference” to hide their own problems that should be solved through cultivation. Such practitioners also like to use the excuse of “too busy with Dafa projects” to hide slacking off in regards to cultivation; some of those practitioners would even decide to “eliminate” those that they themselves dare not to save. As a matter of fact, no matter whether it is personal cultivation or Fa-rectification cultivation, the requirements pressed upon us have never changed. It is due to our own human attachments that we lower those standards to fit our own needs.
Now, the old forces don’t think in such a way in this current unprecedented persecution against Dafa and its practitioners. Those old forces have already felt uneasy when we became Fa-rectification practitioners, as a result, even trivial things can be used by the old forces as excuses to further their persecution of us if we don’t treat those things properly. I just read Master’s latest Fa Teaching Given at the 2015 New York Fa Conference and it has become clearer to me that a cultivator’s personal cultivation should never be neglected. There is just a single notion of difference between a human being and a deity, as soon as one lets oneself loose; one will more likely degrade to the level of an ordinary person. When we slack off a little bit, we are actually getting closer to becoming an ordinary person. That tiny bit of negligence might eventually become an ant-hole that leads to the collapse of a dam. Master has told us a story about a lonely person who cultivated solely in the mountains. At first, this cultivator was also very diligent in his cultivations; one day, a deer got shot by a hunter and that deer ran to this cultivator. This cultivator decided to help the deer and keep the deer to himself as he was so lonely doing the meditation cultivation in the mountains. As time went by, this cultivator began to pet the deer and even treat the deer as his dearest friend spending much time and effort on the deer, neglecting his determination to cultivate. After the deer died, this cultivator still thought about the deer day and night. Even when this cultivator was dying, this deer was on his mind. After the cultivator died, he then reincarnated to a deer and his many years of personal cultivation was thus ruined in a single day. The lesson from this story is a serious one.
When we first started practicing Falun Dafa, we would always make up for missed exercises. Are we still doing that? When we sometimes don’t send forth righteous thoughts for whatever reason, do we try to make that up? When we first began to study the Fa, we would always look inward whenever something touched our hearts. Master has told us in Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Europe, “Remember my words: Regardless of whether the problem is your fault or not, you should look inside yourself, and you will find a problem.” So, are we still doing things like we were doing when we first started to cultivate? Yes, there are evil interferences, yes, there are many external reasons, and still we must “look inside” throughout our personal and Fa-rectification period cultivation. Every Dafa practitioner needs to reflect upon his or her own enthusiasm when he or she first learnt of Dafa, what is the current status now? If we are slacking off in our determination to cultivate, we will have to cultivate ourselves solidly from now on. Let our initial diligence and determination return to us now.
Every attachment has its own physical elements. If we don’t look inside and don’t improve ourselves, those physical elements will never get eliminated. Some of those notions that have been formed over thousands of years have already become parts of our own flesh bodies in various dimensions. Master has shown us the key to dissolve all such elements: look inside. Now, what happens is that whenever we run into tribulations, we always tend to look outside. “Looking inside” is indeed soul touching and extremely painful, it is tantamount to the cut of one’s own flesh, of course, it is excruciatingly agonizing when we try to “cut a piece” of our body. Yet, only through unconditional “looking inside” can we improve ourselves and get rid of that “black stuff” from our body.
No matter how busy one is with one’s Dafa projects, no matter how deeply one is involved with certain Fa-rectification projects, one still needs to arrange time to study the Fa, to cultivate oneself while completing those Dafa projects. Only after we have cultivated ourselves well can we approach Dafa projects completely from a cultivator’s mindset; with such a mindset, it is guaranteed that our Dafa tasks will be more efficient, the results will be even better. Otherwise, if we are separating ourselves from the Fa by not cultivating ourselves well, it will be difficult for us to validate the Fa, we will degrade ourselves to the level of ordinary people and treat things like ordinary people do, the old forces will definitely take the chance to interfere with us.
No matter how degenerate ordinary people have become, no matter how serious the evil CCP’s influence upon the people around us are, we just need to cultivate ourselves; we don’t even want to see how other fellow practitioners are doing. We’ve got the Fa in our heart; we should always cultivate according to Dafa’s fundamentals so that we can walk our path properly and help save more sentient beings.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/145706
