May 14, 2003
(Clearwisdom.net)
It is said that the deepest love in the human world is a mother's love, which is pure and transparent. I realized that it is impossible to clearly explain love and hate in the human world.
Let me tell an old story about a mother's love.
A young woman cultivated for over 10 years, and her hard work in cultivation had finally rewarded her with sweet fruit. She was about to complete her cultivation. She sat cross-legged, conjoined her hands ("jieyin"), and rose up into the sky. Suddenly she heard a few heart-breaking cries, "Daughter, please don't be so cruel as to leave your elderly mother behind!" Yes, the mother had endured tremendous pain to give birth to this girl, for whom she felt happy her whole life. She had given her milk in this life that came from her own body. She had happily fed this girl with the pancakes that she saved from her own plate. Then one day, when the child was collecting firewood, she met an old man. The old man enlightened her and made her recollect that this life of hers was meant for cultivation.
Now the mother is old, and feels that what she loved her whole life was going away unnecessarily. Her crying echoed in the sky. She first cried, "Do you really not want your mom anymore?" The cultivator's mind was as calm as still water. The mother cried again, "How can a Buddha kill his mother?" The cultivator remained completely unmoved. The mother cried the third time, which turned into sobbing, "Alright, now that you are determined to leave, could you just turn around and give a glance to your pitiful old mother?" The cultivator was touched while rising up, "Since I am about to succeed, and I am determined to leave, why not give her another look?" As she turned around and look, she dropped onto the ground immediately. She then saw her mother's sad face deforming under her gray hair. She turned into a strange bird, and left with loud laughter, "Aha, in order to ruin your cultivation in this life, I have waited for three thousand years. Aha!"
There is a predestined relationship behind love and hatred, which is hard to explain in the human world.
The deepest love tends to turn into implacable hatred when one is not able to receive the expected rewards. Next, let's take a look at a story about hurt feelings from love. It is the love story of Buddha Sakyamuni.
Since Sakyamuni gave up his delicate wife and his wealth, and went into the mountains to search for the Tao, his young wife had been forced to give up her youth, beauty, and her love. When Prince Suddhodana became emaciated because of hunger, the lonely princess could hardly swallow water or rice in the palace, either. When a shepherd girl fed a spoon of milk congee to the prince who had fainted from hunger, the lonely princess reluctantly drank a sip of rice soup, merely for the sake of her young child. When Sakyamuni reached enlightenment after sitting for a long time under a bodhi tree, when he was saving all sentient beings and was admired by tens of thousand of people with his impressive and dignified manner, the lonely woman was getting more and more lonely, and older. At this time Sakyamuni came back to save the people of his own country. The old King Shuddhodana led the princes and their descendants and came out to welcome him reverently, leaving her sitting in the palace tower alone. His disciples reported to him, "She doesn't want to see you." Buddha said, "Fine. I will go find her." He went upstairs and closed the door. The two of them sat together, face to face. She did not say a word. Her wasted youth had turned bit by bit into hatred. Buddha said softly, "I know you hate me. But please take a look at this."
He used his palm to display the memory from her past life, and showed their predestined relationship. It was when Buddha was cultivating in his previous life. He was a young boy. He dedicated a lotus flower to Buddha Dipamkar with his whole body and soul. Buddha Dipamkar nodded with smile, "You are destined to attain the Tao in your next life." At that moment, a young girl walked up and keeled down in front of Buddha Dipamkar, "Buddha, with my Buddha nature in life after life, I beg you let me be saved with him in the next life!"
Buddha Dipamkar said, "In his next life, he is doomed to wander around to spread the Fa. You will have to pay the price of loneliness for a whole life. Are you willing to do it?"
"Yes I am willing!"
"You will have to give up your entire youth."
"Yes I am willing!"
"You will have to suffer from the pain of resentment for most of your life, until he saves you."
"Yes I am willing! I am ready! I am ready!"
Thus, came her suffering in this life.
Love and hatred are both obstacles of sentimentality for cultivators. If one cannot understand it thoroughly and let it go, not only will both sides be strangled with emotions, but it also serves no one any good.
In jails today, we encounter both the deepest love and the deepest hate. So many times I have seen moving scenes in the visitors' room when the kind Dafa practitioners say good bye to their wives and children, with tears in their eyes, turning away from the family's warmth, being called back to the labor camp, "that evil den with the blazing fire." I remember one of the scenes very clearly.
The so-called "family gathering" room is in fact an evil battlefield. The police's motive was actually to invite the practitioners' family members to join their battle with the weapon of emotion while torturing the practitioners into giving up their belief.
I met practitioner Shuxiang (alias) from the No. 2 Team by accident. His young wife took him to the room that my mother and I stayed in and tried to get "help" from us. The intense atmosphere of her amazing beauty and pitiable and sad voice, a voice that was capable of wounding anyone, made me feel suffocated. She was crying, out of control, with her hands covering her face, and making accusations:
"Shuxiang, do you remember how you swore to my mom when we first married, saying 'Please feel at ease. I will take care of 'little swallow.' Have you forgotten all of those words?"
"I don't want a next life. I don't. I just want to be happy with you in this life."
"You could so easily hurt me, because I love you..."
I thought Shuxiang must be very hurt because even my heart was touched. I told Shuxiang from the bottom of my heart, "I admire you. You were able to resist such a beautiful weapon. To tell you the truth, even my heart was almost broken."
However, one month later, Shuxiang, the practitioner who didn't even give in under the brutal torture of electric batons night after night, had a good cry and submitted to the entreaties of "the little swallow." The guard who brought him to see her said that she was so happy that day, like a little deer.
When I met Shuxiang again, I tried hard to persuade him and even painfully begged him. I asked him to recite with me, "Lunyu" (from Zhuan Falun), "Non-existence" (from Hong Yin), and "Cultivators' Avoidances" (from Essentials for Further Advancement). However, it was all of no use now. His spirit seemed to have been drained from him. His face, which used to be so resolute and steadfast, now just showed a strange and cynical smile, without wavering. Recalling the "little swallow" at this moment, I feel as if I am being wounded by an icy blast of wind!
My predestined relationship did not give me a beautiful wife, but a mother who endured all kinds of hardships and encountered tremendous sufferings. When she was young, in order to help her poor family earn a living, she had to give up her educational opportunities, even though she received excellent grades. After she got married, she shouldered the family affairs alone and took care of my ill father who had been lying in bed for a long time, in great suffering. Now I am imprisoned in jail. Every time she comes to see me, my heart is torn. She told me how my father and she knelt down in front of the police department when I was first detained; how they wanted to rent a small room near the forced labor camp to stay there until I got out; how the tragedy happened to my father, who lost his senses under the tremendous pain and jumped off a building, and how she had to wash him, spending the whole night without sleep. In the end, one day in July 2001, I knelt down by her feet in the team meeting room, to offer a sacrifice for her suffering and greatness with my tears, entreaty, and tremendous pain. I knelt down on the ground and raised my face, to accept her palm on my cheek. At last, I held her palm and unburdened tenderly, "It's they who separated us and then turned others against us, slandering us ruthlessly. It is not that I don't feel pain, but I have to offer up this tremendous suffering."
Afterwards, I put together my broken body and soul, and steadfastly continued on my path that I should go alone. During the dark hour of that day, a verse flowed through my mind and heart, again and again,
"Dissolving into the Fa with selflessness and altruism
Dissolving into the Fa with selflessness and altruism."
In a light, milky crystal halo, I saw the salvation from millions of years of suffering by Master. I saw the sentient beings in my future world anxiously expecting me to go teach the Fa. I saw, among those sentient beings who were worthy for me to show tender affection and forego everything to save them, my mother sitting there surrounded by beautiful songs and illuminated by colorful rainbows. I saw myself like a tiny particle -- a Fa particle, dissolving in the ocean of the Fa.
Walking out of the workshop, after completing work after the rain, I suddenly saw a clear blue sky! Raising my head to behold those transparent light clouds and the sunset, I suddenly felt my world so vast and my heart so pure. Having been held for so long in the narrow and small space of the jail, I enlightened to such thoroughly delightful freedom.
The words that people often say in this world seemed natural and insipid, "With no selfishness in the heart, the heaven and earth will open wide to you." At that moment I realized that pain, hardship, and love--all the emotions--have to be seen for what they are and put aside. Only then will Master lead you to your origin, the heavens, and help you find the compassion that is capable of holding all, and resolving all things benevolently.
It is indeed difficult to distinguish clearly between love and hatred in this human world.
Editor's note: cultivation in the past stressed individual consummation. This is different from the cultivation of today's Dafa practitioners. However, the old forces still want to test Dafa practitioners with their own standards, leading to such tribulations.
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