(Clearwisdom.net) I am 28 years old, and my life is smoother than that of most people my age. In my career, study and marriage, it seems that whatever I have wanted to do, I always succeed. These advantages in my ordinary life mostly came from the benefit brought by my Falun Dafa cultivation.
During my cultivation, I have traveled a great winding road. I started cultivation when I was 12 years old. However, for a long time, I didn't have a deep understanding of Dafa, and there were all kinds of attractions in human society that lured my attention. Facing the sudden persecution in China on July 20, 1999, I gave up practicing Falun Dafa. During a long period of time afterward, there was only a belief in Dafa buried deep in my heart. This is why when years later I suddenly saw Dafa flyers again, I burst into tears and I read them without missing a single word. After I returned to cultivation, I suddenly realized the many mistakes that I had made before, so for a while I was full of regret and became depressed. Thinking about my life in the past, I felt that I wasn't worthy of being saved by Dafa.
I was in a very bad mood for several days. While studying the Fa, I read a question that Master answered for disciples,
Question: Looking back at the early half of my life, I have regret and I blame myself. As a Falun disciple, how should I handle this problem?
Teacher: "Don't worry about anything--let bygones be bygones. I only look at your heart for cultivation. Your Master will take care of the rest. If you keep thinking about things that happened before, it will become yet another obstacle and attachment. So don't be concerned about them anymore. Just change yourself fundamentally from the inside out, and you'll be a new person. That's what you should do." ("Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Singapore")
It seems that every word in the lecture was referring to me. I determined that I would start all over again to catch up, and make up for what I had lost during these years.
Just a few days later, one night while I was half asleep, I saw a little Taoist child in a red outfit sitting on a lotus petal. I woke up with surprise and realized that it was my immortal infant. Since I didn't study the Fa enough before, I didn't know the details. I just remembered that in the book Zhuan Falun it was mentioned that an immortal infant is shining golden. Later, after I studied the Fa in depth, I realized that the time and dimensions are very complicated, and no matter what I saw, the color could change. Also the immortal infants only appear after the cultivation reaches a high level. It was not likely that I reached such a level after only a few days of cultivation. These things indicated that Master never gave up on me, and he had been taking care of me all the time.
Regarding the issue of marriage, practitioners have different understandings, which is normal. As a young practitioner, I think that marriage should not be strongly pursued nor strongly denounced. Of course, this is obvious, because we should not strongly pursue or denounce anything in our lives. As cultivators, we all know that marriage happens due to predestined relationship, either reward or retribution. If we forcibly escape from it, isn't it like refusing to pay the debt? Of course, some people have no marriage in their fate, and they cultivate peacefully, which is also good. However, Master also mentioned,
"As for the professional cultivators in the future, they'll take up bowls and go begging for food, travel on foot, and wander about. Only by experiencing all kinds of hardships in the world will they be able to reach Consummation. Monks will cultivate this way in the future." ("Teaching the Fa in New York City" from Lectures in the United States)
This also indicates that human society is our cultivation environment.
Some practitioners claim that they are afraid of marriage interfering with cultivation, so they decided to cultivate alone. However, they didn't let go of the attachment, and sometimes have very bad thoughts. The biggest difference between Dafa and other cultivation ways in the past is that we cultivate ourselves in the most complicated environment, human society, which none of the cultivators in the past dared to try. Since Dafa gave us the opportunity to build up such mighty virtue, why not do it well? What we let go of are the bad attachments, instead of the material things. Of course for those practitioners who are unable to let go of the attachment, the more they want to get married, the more unlikely it will happen. It could be a kind of hint that life can only change after one lets go of the attachments. Sometimes when I have time to be alone and think, I ask myself, "If tomorrow I have to leave the human world, is there anything that I can't let go?" This is one way to look inside to search for attachments. When we can own everything but be able to let go of everything peacefully, there are no more attachments.
Finally, in our lives, work, and cultivation, we are young and strong, so we should carry more responsibility. Of course, as cultivators, age is not a problem. Many older practitioners are very healthy. However, in principle, as young people, we should do more. For example, when we go out and see older practitioners distributing newspapers, it is easy for us to help. The older practitioners always consider the young practitioners. Usually, after the morning exercise, young practitioners go to work, and older practitioners remain to distribute newspapers. One day when I was free, I saw two older practitioners facing a big pile of newspapers, so I went to help. Soon, another older practitioner came over and saw me distributing newspapers. She urged me to leave. She probably thought that they had lots of time and they could do it, while there were more things for the young practitioners to do. This is just an example to show how the older practitioners always consider us first. Should we not consider them more?
There is a lot more to say, but all my words talk about one thing. I hope more young practitioners, including myself, can do better. We suffered huge hardships coming to the human world, so we shouldn't return in the future with regret. Since we are here, we should carry out our duties. Once we are determined to do something, we should achieve the goal. Everyday people say that there is a way as long as you are determined. To us, with Master and the Fa, there is no reason that we cannot succeed.
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