(Minghui.org) In the final stage of our cultivation in Falun Dafa, some practitioners continue to strive forward diligently no matter what happens in society, while others have slacked off after feeling lost not seeing the end of the persecution.
While some practitioners may say it’s just a reflection of different cultivation states, I feel this is in fact a test of whether we can truly let go of the attachment to life and death.
I remember reading a novel many years ago about an official who was diagnosed with cancer and was told that he had a few more days to live. Suddenly, many of the things he couldn’t let go of before, such as who treated him badly, his official title, his personal gain, and his children, all became ephemeral to him.
But when the doctor later found out that the cancer was misdiagnosed and he still had many years to live, he became attached to all the worldly things again.
There is some similarity in our cultivation. If Master really told us the end time for the Fa-rectification, we may find all kinds of hard-to-abandon attachments easy to let go of. When consummation and the return to the incomparably beautiful heavenly abode is upon us, will there be still anything hard to let go of? But will that count as real improvement? Certainly not.
On the other hand, what are we attached to? It is nothing more than reputation and profit in the world. Letting go of those is similar to letting go of life and death. There is the story of Taoist Master Zhang Daoling testing his disciple Zhao Sheng. When Zhang asked Zhao to jump off a cliff, Zhao listened and followed him. He let go of everything and consummated. While we won’t be asked to jump off a cliff in Dafa cultivation, the tempering of our hearts and our ridding ourselves of the attachments to life and death are nevertheless the same.
If we can manage to let go of everything even with no end time for the Fa-rectification in sight, that would be real improvement. Just as the idiom goes, “As distance tests a horse's stamina, time reveals a person's heart.”
The ancient scholar Mencius said:
“When Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will first exercise his mind with suffering, toil his sinews and bones, expose his body to hunger, subject him to extreme poverty, confound his journey with setbacks and troubles, so as to stimulate his alertness, toughen his nature, and eventually bridge his incompetence gap and prepare him for the task.”
We have gone through such tests in history in order to become Dafa disciples today. It has been a difficult journey, coming this far. In the final stage of history, whether we can do well and fulfill our historic vows in this society becomes the ultimate test in our cultivation.
Editor’s note: This article only represents the author’s current understanding meant for sharing among practitioners so that we can “Compare with one another in study, in cultivation.” (“Solid Cultivation,” Hong Yin)
Views expressed in this article represent the author's own opinions or understandings. All content published on this website are copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
Category: Perspectives
