(Minghui.org) I've had a great love of literature since I was young. My poetry and other writings were published before I started practicing Falun Gong. I made a living with my writing and I had a strong attachment to my writing skills.
After I started practicing, I wrote cultivation experience articles for fellow practitioners. However, when those articles were sent to the Minghui website, none of them were published. My mind was unsettled and I thought that the editors could not recognize my writing talent. I now understand that I wrote those articles with a strong attachment to showing off, and they weren't qualified to be published on the Minghui website.
Some fellow practitioners saw that in another dimension the special tool Master gave me was a divine pen. There were not many other practitioners who had this gift. I thought that I must use my tool righteously in order for my writing to be published.
A fellow practitioner was persecuted in prison for more than twelve years, and afterwards he was sent to a brainwashing center to be further persecuted. I wrote an article to expose the persecution and planned to send the article to the Minghui website. I started the article with parallels, summarizing the practitioner’s heroic past deeds, and I thought that my writing was concise with rhymes.
However, after practitioner A read it, he told me that the article would surely not be chosen for publication on the Minghui website. I was not convinced. After practitioner B read it, he told me even more frankly that the writing was full of Party culture and was not pure. He seriously criticized me.
I re-examined the writing and found that it did have the problems of showing off my literary talent and having a strong emotional attachment. I then deleted most of it but still kept the gimmicks that one would never cease the pursuit of outstanding words till his death. After the article was published on the Minghui website, the beginning part of the article was deleted without even one character left. I thanked practitioners for being honest and speaking up, and thanked the editor’s "big cut." I then sent righteous thoughts to discard my Party culture exaggerated style and show-off mentality!
After I discarded the above attachments, the articles I wrote became more plain, solid and clean, and they were more and more accepted and published on the Minghui website. In June I wrote an article for a fellow practitioner. The editor accepted and published the article with few changes. This article touched the local practitioners’ hearts and helped me further understand my mission.
Compassionate Master used various opportunities to expose my attachments. When I was writing an article, in the process of verifying details, the fellow practitioner’s attitude pursuing the truth without ambiguity made me see my shortcomings in meeting the requirement of truthfulness, and encouraged me to more strictly demand of myself to discard my habit of using untrue statements for convenience. Writing sharing articles is not "creating." The articles we leave to the future generations must be in accordance with Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and must be able to stand up to close examination.
I demanded of myself to revise my articles with a serious attitude and to strive to be simple and concise. I usually revise an article at least five times before I submit it, and also with an intention to reduce workload for the editors.
A fellow practitioner once asked me to quickly write a witness report on a court trial. I had planned to make truth clarification phone calls; upon receiving the request I gave up my original plan and wrote the article until deep into the night. However, this practitioner later thought that his original thought was improper and he decided not to submit the article, without giving me an explanation. I complained about him wasting my time. I did not have enough tolerance.
Practitioner A recently asked me to write a letter to residents and the police, and asked me to include the situations of the detained local practitioners in the letter. The letter was to be sent out by the Mid-Autumn Festival. I collected a lot of related material, took vacation days and wrote the letter at home. I wrote about 7000-8000 characters and revised the letter 7-8 times; the letter gave vivid and straightforward explanations to clarify people’s major misunderstandings about Falun Gong.
I then sent this letter in word document through email to the practitioner; he needed to compile the letter into the desired format for sending through multimedia messaging services. I heard that word document format had a security risk and I hoped that he could delete the email after he read the writing. He told me he would download the document on Sunday night. However, he still had not download it by Monday night. I complained about him in my mind, “You push me to write quickly. I spent four to five days and two of these days I wrote until 2:00 a.m., and I took two days off work, but you don't hurry anymore.”
I later looked inside. I found that it was because I had a mentality of fear that resulted in the practitioner’s postponing. Master used this so I could elevate my understanding.
Master said,
"If you are able to succeed in improving yourself this way, what you do then, with a pure heart, will be the best and most sacred." (“Further Understanding” in Essentials for Further Advancement)
During the Mid-Autumn Festival this year our fellow practitioners worked together and we sent large numbers of multimedia messages. I sent 20,000 in two days. Most of the responses we received were gratitude, goodwill and blessings. It seemed that people’s understanding was rapidly awakening.
While I was writing a letter to the police, my compassion emerged and I finished writing in tears. I kept thinking of how the people that are being used to persecute Dafa practitioners are pitiful, and I sincerely hoped they could give up their wrong doings so that they could be saved.
Practitioner C in my Fa-study group also has good writing skills, but I thought I was better. I had hidden jealousy. In June the Minghui website published both the articles written by practitioner C and me on the same day. I told fellow practitioners with happiness but practitioner C showed little reaction. I later saw three articles practitioner C wrote before for other practitioners. The writing was fluent, friendly plain and neat. I was humbled! From observing how practitioner C did not make a show out of his articles being published, I saw the difference between us. I had competition, showing off, vanity and jealousy mentalities which must be discarded.
When reading the Minghui articles that fellow practitioners wrote this year, I was impressed and humbled by both their writing skills and the content of the articles. My show-off mentality was completely gone and was replaced with humility. I was not moved anymore when other people flattered me about my writing skills.
In the process of writing, Master gave me wisdom. Originally I loved to write but my writing was confusing; I now write a lot faster with clear thinking. During Chinese New Year, I composed a lot of text messages. Master let me experience, “the inspirations and creativity flow out like a spring”; it was really that you could not stop it. To compose a dozen of short four or eight sentence poetry only took me a short while, and they were simple and catchy, and did not need much revision.
My niece went to a university in Beijing. One of my college friends was an associate professor and she was teaching graduate students. I asked her to give some guidance to my niece and she readily agreed. However one semester had passed but she did not meet my neice, saying that she was busy. My complaining mentality was brought up and I could not calm down and study the Fa.
I sent messages to her saying “not to bother you anymore” and so on, and the messages implied complaints. I knew I was not right but I could not control myself because my righteous thoughts were not strong. That afternoon she replied and said she was too busy for six months, and she apologized and wanted to take my niece to her home; but I still could not calm myself.
That night when I came home to write a sharing article for a fellow practitioner, my computer would not start. I suddenly came to my senses. I quickly apologized to the friend and I sat down and sent righteous thoughts. I found my emotions to my niece, my vanity of showing my college classmate off to my niece, my resentment thinking my college friend did not help me, and my self-esteem of feeling hurt, and my not being kind and tolerant.
I asked for Master’s strengthening and sent righteous thought to eliminate those evil beings that caused trouble to my computer. When I tried to start my computer again it started, and my computer has run well since then. It is really that everything has a spirit, and it showed me that cultivation is serious and we should not indulge ourselves.
Master said,
“Divine pens shock humans and demonsLike sharp blades, they excise rotten ghostsOld forces do not respect FaA flourish of brushes quells the wild surge”(“Shock and Frighten” in Hong Yin Vol. II)
I realized that it's my mission to eliminate the evil with my "pen blade"! I felt ashamed that I was burdened by my attachments before and could not elevate, and Master could not use me because of that. I was not able to fulfill my mission. I must cultivate myself well and record fellow practitioners’ deeds with a pure mind to validate Dafa.
Before I started cultivating, I collected a lot of books, oil paintings and other artwork, and I felt proud when others complimented me and said that I had good taste. These habits were persistent and hard to let go of. After I started practicing Falun Dafa, having these things around interfered with my cultivation. I was surrounded by distractions that disturbed me while I was doing the exercises and I could not focus on reading the Fa. In the morning I had a hard time getting up and felt as if I were tied up and I felt muddle headed.
I started by discarding anything with Party logos, publications full of Party culture, and the explanations of Party culture by the Chinese and foreign language dictionaries. But the interference was still significant. I later destroyed my own writings and paintings by tearing them up or burning them.
Master said,
"In an artist's work, everything about that individual and about the person being portrayed is attached to that painting. When an ordinary person paints just one stroke, I know what kind of person he is, what kind of illnesses he has, how much karma he has, his state of mind, his family situation, etc. And all the thoughts the subject of the painting has and all of the factors associated with his body are fully displayed as well, including how much karma he has." ("Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Creating Fine Art" in Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Writing Music and Creating Fine Art)
“Although cultivation matters are discussedAttachments of the heart must be discardedWhat is given up is not one’s selfIt’s all foolishness in the maze”(“Discarding Attachments” in Hong Yin Vol. II)
I became determined and I gave all the expensive oil paintings and artworks to others or threw them away.
I sent righteous thought for long periods of time several times to clean up my field. Before I started cultivating, I had touched all the varied cultures Master mentioned in "Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Creating Fine Art". I followed the Impressionist school when writing poetry, followed Abstractionism when I learned to paint, and I deliberately relaxed my main consciousness.
After I started cultivating I tried my best to disintegrate these toxins layer by layer. Worshiping those intellectuals was also the product of jumbled cultures and Party culture. I tried my best effort to eliminate those attachments as well as my vanity. With all these things in my field, how could I write something pure? After all my efforts, my field has been cleaned up a lot. But I still have a lot of thought karma. I will study the Fa and send righteous thought more often to disintegrate these elements.
This is my personal understanding, please point out anything incorrect.