(Minghui.org) Many different types of interference can occur on our cultivation journey. We should always stay in the Fa and remain clearheaded.
Attitude Toward Dafa
An elderly practitioner experienced memory loss recently and sometimes couldn't find her way home. After studying the Fa with her, I noticed small black specks on the pages of her copy of Zhuan Falun. When I looked closely, I saw more specks of dirt and other substances on the book. Apparently, she didn't pay attention to this.
This reminded me of a dream I had earlier where this practitioner was cooking with waste water from the sewer. I didn't understand the dream at the time, but I now saw it as a hint about her situation. In fact, she had copies of other Dafa books scattered on her table, some stained with water or food residue. She also kept some Dafa books under her pillow.
This practitioner goes out to distribute Falun Dafa materials. She had folded some of the booklets in half, making them less attractive and more difficult for people to read. After I brought up the issue with her, she tried to press them flat, but it wasn't easy because they had been folded for a long time.
On her table she also had ordinary booklets that were not from Minghui. One of them had stories about monks and I suggested she get rid of it. She was hesitant and said she planned to give them to other practitioners to read.
Staying in the Fa
This practitioner's situation worried me. Why did a practitioner, after 20 years of practicing Falun Dafa, become so disrespectful of Dafa books and not serious about cultivation?
I remembered when I went to another city several years before, practitioners there recommended an article to me written by a person named Xie. I took a quick look and saw that the first section of the article was titled “What Is the Fa?” I stopped right there and told practitioners that I could not read that book. “Only Master knows what the Fa is—nobody else does,” I said.
I entered this person's name into a search engine after I got home and found articles and blogs related to him, one of which contained “lecture videos.” I contacted those practitioners and told them about this. They stopped reading the articles.
Fundamental Attachments
What are the reasons behind these issues? Looking into this further, I noticed many human notions among practitioners, including an anxiousness to know something new, attachments to showing off, following practitioners as examples instead of following the Fa, not being clear on the issue of “no second cultivation way,” and being attached to seeing things in other dimensions.
Some practitioners are very interested in gossiping about politics and some like to consult clairvoyants to find a lucky date for their children's weddings. These are inappropriate behaviors for practitioners and can easily distract us from doing the three things.
Sentimentality
I used to like watching videos of children playing and spent lots of time on my children. I knew this was a manifestation of the sentimentality that I was attached to.
In Lecture Four of Zhuan Falun, Master said,
“Cultivation practice must take place through tribulations so as to test whether you can part with and care less about different kinds of human sentimentality and desires. If you are attached to these things, you will not succeed in cultivation. 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. Of course, it is not easy to abandon this sentimentality right away. Cultivation practice is a long process and a process of gradually giving up one’s attachments. Nonetheless, you must be strict with yourself.”
If we are unwilling to let go of sentimentality, we will be unable to let go of human notions and it will be difficult for us to act as genuine practitioners.
A practitioner that I know said that she studies the Fa, sends forth righteous thoughts, and looks within, but does not understand why she still meets with so much interference. My understanding is that we need to maintain a pure heart regarding Master, the Fa, and our cultivation practice.
I would like to conclude my sharing with two sentences from Lecture Six of Zhuan Falun:
“In fact, it does not matter who the person is—there is only one Fa. Only by observing this Dafa can one meet the genuine standard.”
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Category: Improving Oneself
