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Let Go of Sentimentality, Treat Fellow Practitioners as Practitioners

Oct. 31, 2010 |   By A Falun Gong Practitioner from Shandong Province

(Clearwisdom.net) I am a young adult practitioner. Recently I've passed a test in my xinxing. I would like to share my experience:

Several months ago, my company hired fellow practitioner A and he became my manager. Prior to that, practitioner A and I knew each other for a year. Within that year, whenever I had questions or issues, I always discussed them with practitioner A. Almost every time, he helped solve my problem and helped me understand it from the Fa's perspective. However, my attachment to admiring and depending on this practitioner was gradually exposed. It turned out that within three months of working together, we started having conflicts.

Practitioner A implemented a new management routine. Coworkers criticized him in front of me. I was annoyed when he increased my workload. I started feeling disfavor toward him. Later, during a meeting, I publicly pointed out that he did not fully accomplish his work. He was upset too. The month after that, we kept arguing with each other about work. Later, I tried to avoid having any connection with him when it came to work.

I then had a dream that I went to another country and felt everything was new and refreshing. I took pictures everywhere. As I was excited about all the pictures, the camera burned up. Apractitioner later reminded me, "Do not always take pictures of others. Your camera is broken. You should start cultivating yourself." In the meantime, several other practitioners heard about this and reminded me, "It's time for you to upgrade and improve your xinxing."

I started calming myself down and looking inward: Which of my attachments was this dream pointing to? I found it related to my attachment of admiring this practitioner. I am a newer practitoner and feel that veteran practitioners must all cultivate well. So when I had issues, I usually liked to discuss them with him instead of trying to understand them myself from the Fa's standpoint. Master made us become coworkers and let me see his shortcomings. The purpose was to get rid of my attachment.

Master said,

"Everything has its karmic relationship. Why can human beings be human? It is because human beings have sentimentality. They live just for this sentimentality. Affection among family members, love between a man and a woman, love for parents, feelings, friendship, doing things for friendship, and everything else all relate to this sentimentality. Whether a person likes to do something or not, is happy or unhappy, loves or hates something, and everything in the entire human society comes from this sentimentality. If this sentimentality is not relinquished, you will be unable to practice cultivation. If you are free from this sentimentality, nobody can affect you. An everyday person's mind will be unable to sway you. What takes over in its place is benevolence, which is something more noble." (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)

Fellow practitioners strive to cultivate a pure environment. Dafa gives us predestined relationships to save more sentient beings. Being coworkers is just a work relationship. It is necessary for living in an ordinary society. Therefore, at work, we are coworkers and have the relationship of manager and subordinate. The subordinate should follow the manager's arrangement and do the job as best he can. Treating practitioners as friends and mixing sentimentality into a practitioners' environment will bring unneccessary troubles, because inpureness easily gives the evil something to take advantage of.

Master said,

"What is a 'heart of great forbearance?' As a practitioner, the first thing you should be able to do is to not fight back when you are beaten or sworn at--you must be tolerant. Otherwise, what kind of practitioner will you be? Someone says: "It's really hard to be tolerant, and I've got a bad temper." If your temper is not good, you should change it, for a practitioner must be tolerant. Some people will lose their temper in disciplining children and yell at them, making quite a scene. You should not be that way in disciplining children, and neither should you, yourselves get really upset. You should educate children with reason so that you can really teach them well. If you cannot even get over a trifle and lose your temper easily, how can you expect to increase your gong?" (Lecture Nine, Zhuan Falun)

Getting angry is demon nature. It is something that a practitioner needs to eliminate. Later, I went to apologize to practitioner A and told him that I found my attachment. I said to him, "In the future, I will look more at your strengths." He smiled.

Half a month later, I changed my job. An opportunity that seemed to be incidental removed the coworker relationship between me and practitioner A . The whole arrangement was made to expose my attachment after all! I am so grateful for Master's saving grace.

This is my first time writing a sharing article. Please kindly point out anything inappropriate.