(Clearwisdom.net)
My Understanding of "Even If I Have Attachments, I Won’t Allow Interference"
By a Falun Dafa practitioner from China
I often read in practitioners' experience sharing articles the sentence,"Even if I have attachments, I won’t allow interference." I feel that the sentence has become almost like a slogan, and at my level of understanding, I think it is not in line with the Fa.
If we have attachments, the old forces will take advantage of them to persecute us. Their starting point is to safeguard the old Fa. On the surface, they want to be responsible to the cosmos. If our attachments are too strong, they think that we are not up to the standard of the old Fa. Therefore, they will take advantage of our attachments and interfere with us so that they can achieve their goal, damaging the Fa-rectification and preventing us from succeeding in cultivation. Whatever we are attached to, that is the level and realm we drop to. Then any lives at a higher level can interfere with and persecute us easily. In this case, Master and the guardian gods can’t look after us.
In "Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference:"
"Question: Many among the disciples currently have this thinking: When a practitioner experiences tribulations because of interference from the old forces, other practitioners think that even if he does have attachments, the persecution shouldn't be allowed to take place and everyone should send righteous thoughts. My question is, if the practitioner himself doesn't improve, will this work?
Teacher: That would be a serious impediment. If he himself isn't rational, whatever we do amounts to nothing. Sending righteous thoughts can eliminate what's outside him but not what's inside his mind. Whatever a person wants to do comes from a single thought of his--it's he who decides if he wants something or not. When this situation occurs, I think there has to be a knot in his mind that stems from attachments. If he's really not able to do it, you can go and help him. There's no problem with doing that. Try to help him understand things on the basis of the Fa-truths and by studying the Fa more."
Therefore, I believe when a practitioner says, "Even if I have attachments, I won’t allow interference," it carries strong sentimentality and isn't in line with the Fa-principles.
During our cultivation process, we have all experienced that when we have attachments, Master will use different methods to give us hints. Under the principles of "nothing is coincidental" and "look within," we can all realize our attachments. After we have cultivated away the attachments and upgraded our xinxing, Master is extremely happy. The old forces then have no excuses to persecute us. Instead, they respect us. However, if we know where our attachments lie, but refuse to get rid of them, or we can’t get rid of them even if we want to (in this case, the fundamental reason is that we don’t really want to get rid of them), then it equates to holding on to humanness with one hand and not letting go, and holding on to Buddhahood with the other hand and not letting go. In this situation, we are in great danger.
When we don’t want to let go of our attachment(s), the old forces will reinforce them through various means. In the process, Master gives us hints and chances again and again. If we still can’t realize and let go of our attachments, the old forces will then start to persecute us. When we are persecuted, we then want to deny it by thinking, "Even if I have attachments, I won’t allow interference." But it won’t work.
In fact, the practitioners who have actually been able to deny the persecution are those who have cultivated away their attachments when faced with persecution by the old forces. Some practitioners endure a long period of persecution as they take a long time to gradually get rid of an attachment. This was why some practitioners have been detained for long periods of time, and also why the old forces wouldn’t let go of some practitioners until they were persecuted to death. When practitioners showed symptoms of being sick, some police officers asked their families to take them home, while other police officers say, "No. We won’t release him even he dies. His death will count as a suicide." The two different situations don't result from different policies of different detention centers or prisons, or any surface reasons at the human level. Instead, they result from the differences in the practitioners’ xinxing.
Therefore, when facing the persecution, the first thing we should do is to look for our attachments and eliminate them. Then we should deny the persecution with strong righteous thoughts.
The above are only my personal understandings. Please kindly point out any mistakes.
My Understanding of "Not Acknowledging the Arrangements of the Old Forces"
By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China
Every practitioner has his/her own understanding regarding "not acknowledging the arrangements of the old forces" that Master discussed. When sharing with practitioners and reading practitioners’ articles, I felt that some of their understandings were only at the surface and perceptual level. Some even carried very strong sentimentality.
For example, there is a practitioner with very good technical skills who helps other practitioners use the computer and set up materials production sites. When we needed his help, we were very careful about his safety, making sure not to leak any information related to him. We tried to solve any problems beforehand which could become loopholes. However, this practitioner had a very strong attachment to showing off. He often told others what kind of "big" things he had done. We repeatedly reminded him to cultivate his speech, and pointed out his show-off mentality. However, he was very reluctant to listen, either emphasizing his "righteous thoughts," or "setting an example for fellow practitioners so that they will also step forward." It seemed that he had very strong righteous thoughts in terms of "denying the old forces’ arrangements." He had been arrested several times, and each time he was released without submitting to the evil. However, he was recently arrested again and is now facing a court trial.
This practitioner’s story makes one ponder a lot. Through Fa-study, I realized that "denying the old forces’ arrangements" is not just lip service. On the contrary, one must really put it into practice. My personal understanding is that the following four issues are very important:
1. No matter whether we are facing the persecution or not, we should have a clear understanding of opposing the old forces arrangements.
2. No matter what we do, we have to achieve Master’s requirement of not being attached to anything.
3. We should have a clear understanding of what the old forces can take advantage of. Just like the above-mentioned practitioner, how could he deny the old force arrangements when he showed off what he had done, while at the same time talking about denying the old forces?
4. One must truly apply the principle (of denying the old forces) in one’s practice. All of our understandings must be put into practice and be tested. Only then can we achieve our goal of denying the old forces.
The above are only my personal understandings. Please kindly correct me if anything is improper.
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