PureInsight | February 11, 2002
Good manners, courtesy, politeness, cultivation of speech and clear thinking are some of the concepts that enter my mind when I think of kindness.
Master Li instructs us "When doing anything, think of others first." (Zhuan Falun) That also means that we cultivators must avoid the tendency to try and influence fellow cultivators with our own interpretations of the Fa, because the Fa cannot be interpreted by anyone who has not reached consummation, and even then that individual can only see things clearly on a certain level, to a limited degree. Only Master Li can fully interpret and explain His Fa.
Kindness does not boast, does not seek for recognition and does not push. Someone once said, "Don't push the river, it flows by itself." Let each cultivator follow his/her own path. The one who appears unassuming may have cultivated better than we think. Kindness does not preclude a gentle sense of humor.
Kindness is reflected in one's tone of voice, one's body language and facial expressions. It is evidenced in one's writings. Master Li tells us to be prudent in our choice of words, because our words have power. If our thinking is clear, logical, free of thoughts of retribution and pursuit and our thinking is without malice, the words following that thought will be kind and compassionate instead of injurious, damaging, gossipy or ineffective.
Kindness avoids creating dark karma. Karma is matter. It comes from a single thought. Kind thoughts followed by kind and compassionate acts accumulate de. We need less black karma, not more.
Kindness also means forgiving others their shortcomings and does not mean unnecessarily point the finger at others' faults. We have enough to deal with ourselves. Instead of recognizing "the splinter in someone else's eye," we need to first remove the twig from our own.
Kindness is humble and accepts genuine offers of constructive help in cultivation, a trait difficult to achieve in our assertive culture.
Kindness, however, is also assisting every cultivator to keep the Fa pure, not to take a cultivator's limited understanding of the Fa as cultivation policy for others to follow. Master Li reminds us that certain disciples in Sakyamuni's time distorted the Fa precisely because others followed what they had enlightened to instead following the Buddha's teachings. We incur great black karma if we distort the Fa even one iota.
The most precious thing in the world is the predestined relationship for obtaining the Fa. Let's keep IT pure.
Please do correct me if I have erred. Thanks, a Dafa particle
