PureInsight | June 8, 2015
[PureInsight.org] Recently, two fellow practitioners ran into some conflicts with each other. They each claimed the other was damaging Dafa’s unity while considering themselves to be innocent. The two parties remained in a deadlock. I’d like to share my own understanding on this issue.
Seeking inward to Discipline Oneself
My first reaction was that one should always seek inwards. I deeply believe that Master wouldn’t arrange things that have nothing to do with us.
One day, a fellow practitioner said to one of the practitioners in conflict, “I have already determined the reason for your conflicts. Both of you are fighting for the position of the local coordinator!” This same fellow practitioner later said to me, “Look, if they keep fighting each other, Master won’t take them anymore.” I replied immediately, “Well, we need to use the Fa as our teacher. We should never use what we see as our standards.”
After I got home that day, I was shocked when reflecting upon what the fellow practitioner had mentioned to me. I had never thought about the possibility of being left behind by Master, but at the same time, if we were not genuine Dafa practitioners, what else could our Master do for us? Master had come down to rectify the Fa. If we didn’t assimilate ourselves to the Fa, if we didn’t follow Dafa’s requirements to correct ourselves, how could our Master take us? How could we help our Master save other sentient beings? I once again started to reflect upon myself. I wanted to know how many regrets I already had, how many times I had let Master down and how many times I had missed opportunities to cultivate myself and clarify the truth to save people. Master had arranged all these chances with great effort and difficulties!
The characteristic of the old universe is selfish in nature, and everything is meant to validate oneself. Through self-reflection, I suddenly realized how far away I was from Dafa’s requirement of “considering others first, so as to attain the righteous Enlightenment of selflessness and altruism” (“No-Omission in Buddha-Nature” from Essentials for Further Advancement). Obviously, I had not been following such requirements as I had not tried my best to cultivate myself. I once again realized that I should start eliminating my ego completely.
My spouse was also a practitioner. He went to visit one of the practitioners in conflict the other day. When my husband got back, he let me know how miserable that fellow practitioner was. The fellow practitioner was also anxiously waiting for me to come over to discuss his difficulties. I had already talked with the other fellow practitioner in conflict, so I knew how the other practitioner was struggling. I didn’t know what to do. I felt anxious myself, I felt sad and I felt I was under heavy pressure. All kinds of emotions popped up in my mind. What should I do?
One day while I was studying the Fa, one sentence from Zhuan Falun suddenly jumped into my mind: “His level wasn’t high enough, so he was only shown the Buddha Law’s manifestation that he was supposed to see at his level.” So, in the end, whatever one saw was on par with one’s cultivation level; it was not the ultimate truth at all. I had been heavily influenced by own human sentiments towards fellow practitioners, which was why I also developed empathy for both practitioners in conflict. Only when I jumped out of human emotions was I able to clearly see the truth of the matter. Once one is beyond human emotions, one can rationally apply the Fa to what has happened and then deal with things with compassion; otherwise, one would not become a positive agent in solving issues and would be easily taken advantage of by the old forces. As for the two practitioners in conflict, if I tried to use my own human emotions to deal with them, I would most likely aggravate the situation. I had already run into similar experiences before. There was simply no alternative route in one’s cultivation; one had to seek inwards and apply the strict requirements to oneself.
A Particle of Dafa Should Always Take Responsibility for Dafa and Fellow Practitioners
Through my Fa study and self-reflections, I have come to understand that seeking inwards also means that one should deal with fellow practitioners’ shortcomings with a kind and rational heart. One should genuinely treat cultivation as one’s first priority. It is not an accidental when fellow practitioners run into conflicts. When we get stuck in conflicts for a prolonged period of time while other practitioners change their view of us from “tolerance” to “repulsion” to “indifference”, we have already suffered terrible physical or intangible losses in our battle to save more sentient beings. Everyone knows this. This is no longer an issue of personal cultivation.
Clearwisdom recently published an editorial titled “Starting Point”. I think we need to read that article one more time. We really need to reflect upon our cultivation. Whenever something happens to our whole team, what kind of role is each of us playing? We can’t say that each of us is not responsible for what has happened. We keep running into issues such as fighting for the position of coordinator, forming a small group to create conflicts, going everywhere to discuss issues but continuing to talking about ourselves, requiring other to have a strong righteous thoughts without regards to safety, asking people to perform events that will achieve so-called major impacts, defending personal relationships rather than the Fa itself, unwilling to point out other people’s problems, especially when two opposite sex fellow practitioners form an exclusive group and start to behave improperly, etc. The problems that the article “Starting Point” has listed also exist in our local area. Up until now, those fellow practitioners in trouble still don’t want to admit their mistakes. They don’t want to take responsibility for their cultivation. Some fellow practitioners even suggest that whoever points out the problems is actually “piling up more negative matter”. These practitioners are somewhat lost in their proper enlightenment. Yet, other fellow practitioners come forward to support such claims.
If we can use the Fa to guide us to correct ourselves, to clean up such a messed up field and take the Fa as our first priority, we can then cleanly and solidly do the “three things” at this urgent moment, form a genuine integrated unit and walk out of the human realm boundary and reach accidental a mature state.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/144443
