PureInsight | October 1, 2002
Some of our disciples devote their hearts to Dafa. They are busy with all kinds of Dafa work and pay little attention to their personal lives. Sometimes things around them look frighteningly messy. As practitioners in cultivation, putting Dafa's work in the first place deserves our praise and encouragement. Compared to those who constantly brood over what they should do and cannot put down their personal interests in ordinary human society, these Dafa disciples shine like gold.
On the other hand, cultivation practice is about upgrading one's level. As cultivators, we can give up our attachments to the human world. Then why can't we take yet another step further and get rid of the attachments behind our careless conduct? Master said practitioners should do better than ordinary people when doing anything, especially in the current period of Fa-rectification. All lives in the universe are watching us, and all of what we do now will be left as references and models for the future. If we speak with a loud voice, always forget to comb our hair, and our dwellings are filthy, and so forth and so on, is this a good reference or model?
We all know it is not good, but why do we still do it? The state of our cultivation is reflected in our ordinary lives. Conversely, from these so-called trivial matters, can't we also dig out our deeply hidden human attachments?
First of all, we probably have an unclear understanding of cultivation itself. We neglect these trivial matters because we think they are unrelated to Fa-rectification cultivation. We think, "The three things that we must do well now are studying the Fa, sending forth righteous thoughts and clarifying the truth, and we can just deal with trivial personal matters later when we have time." As we always seem to run out of time, we just decide to forget about taking care of our personal matters. Let's not even talk about what negative effects our untidy personal images have on our clarifying the truth for now. Let's ask what on earth we are cultivating. Aren't we cultivating our hearts? Are there any differences between big or small matters when it comes to cultivating our hearts? Isn't the same heart behind both great things and small matters? What kinds of attachments are reflected from these trivial matters?
Many of our Chinese practitioners grew up after the Cultural Revolution. Those notions rooted in the Cultural Revolution, including the fighting mentality and eradication of traditional customs, made us develop many human notions during our childhood. These things get reflected in our personal habits. The so-called "new human beings" of today have become warped and view ugliness and disorder as beauty. Modern works of art use disorder and vulgar elements as their themes. Aren't trivial matters in our personal lives reflections of the demonic nature of the parts of us who haven't cultivated well? When we argue loudly with fellow practitioners, aren't we behaving the way that ordinary people do in a hard fought soccer match? From the perspective of eliminating demonic nature, these trivial matters are by no means trivial. Cultivation should make us become better and better people. If we do not become better, it is because we have not cultivated well.
If we watch carefully, it is easy to see that Dafa disciples who cultivate well appear elegant and beautiful in everything they say and do. They speak in such a calm manner. I remember when I participated at a group hunger strike in front of the United Nations during the Human Rights conference in Geneva this year; two disciples stood in the front of the group and carried a Dafa banner. They stood erect from early morning to night. No matter how the wind howled, the flag was absolutely still like them. We could easily feel their strong righteous thoughts from their standing postures.
In ordinary human society, some selfish people only clean the snow from in front of their doors. There are also those ordinary people who want to take care of the world but do not clear the snow in front of their doors. Sometimes that is because of their attachments to fame, gain and vanity. There is an ancient saying, "One must cultivate oneself first, then take care of one's family, then rule the country, and then bring peace to the world." This is a sequential process. If we cannot cultivate our morality well, how can we bring peace to the world? As Fa-rectification Period Dafa disciples, we should assist Master in rectifying the Fa. Then shouldn't we get rid of our own attachments first? Master taught us that we should purify ourselves first before we send forth righteous thoughts. When we do Fa-rectification, shouldn't we start with rectifying things around us first?
From these points of view, those problems of trivial matters existing in our personal lives are not trivial.
Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/8/22/18228.html
