(Minghui.org) I experienced both joy and sorrow in my cultivation over the past year. I’d like to start with my greatest realization.
Identifying Good and Evil
Many people in China have a distorted understanding of good and evil. My understanding of good and evil has been constantly changing with Fa-study.
At first, I understood good and evil from the basis of “self.” I progressed slowly, stumbling along, until early this year when I still believed that compassion meant that, as long as I myself understood something was good, I would let others know it was good and then expect myself and them to follow it.
I wouldn’t be happy if others didn’t do what I expected of them. I thought it was for their own good and that I was defending the Fa.
But, on second thought, I realized that this notion of imposing something on others was not compassionate. How, then, could it validate the Fa?
Looking back at the articles I’d written in the past, I saw that many opinions presented in my articles were not based on compassion. So I started to reconsider what compassion is, how to eradicate evilness, and what is a state of compassion.
I struggled to figure it out for months.
A lot of bad thoughts popped up in my mind just a few days ago. I could tell it was not me and so I kept rejecting them.
They made me irritable and gave me a headache, but I suppressed them. I realized that sentimentality comes from selfishness when I read “Upgrading Xinxing” in Lecture Four of Zhuan Falun.
It is an evil thought if one wants to achieve something with selfish intent. It is a good thought if one wants to help others without selfish intent.
So I asked myself whether I had reached an unselfish state in my daily thinking, speaking, and behavior. Had I harmonized the Fa at my level while doing things with others?
I felt sorry for myself after thinking about those issues, as I knew I had a lot to improve on. Recently, whenever bad things happened or bad phenomena surfaced around me, I always reminded myself not to generate bad thoughts.
At the same time, I searched inside to see if I had any attachments I needed to let go of. Then I tried to eliminate any bad substances in my dimensional field.
I reminded myself: “Sentimentality is nothing; it can't touch my heart and is lamentable and self-destructive.” Gradually, the interference lessened.
But that didn't mean that I had done well, as I knew I hadn't cultivated solidly enough in this regard. I had only talked about improvement and also had regrets about not studying the Fa well.
Master has given us this most precious Fa. Dafa is more precious than our lives, but I hadn't studied the Fa well, and I really should improve in this regard.
Thank you again, Master!
Being Straightforward Is Not Inconsistent with Compassion
I was tactful before I started to practice Dafa. After I began to cultivate, I worked hard to finally get rid of this facade of tact, and I felt that my heart was crystal clear.
However, I inadvertently went to the other extreme. I thought that, as long as something was what I called “the truth,” I should say it, no matter how others felt about it.
If others lied, I should correct them. I felt that was defending the Fa.
That meant I wasn’t balancing the relationship between speaking the truth and compassion. This puzzled me for a long time, until the beginning of this year.
Now I know this was caused by selfishness. I was short of wisdom, misunderstood compassion, and didn’t understand the profundity of Dafa.
Everything has its root cause. Most people are concerned about “true words” and “true things,” but this might not be the truth judged by a higher Fa. People are just following the principles in the human world.
For example, an ordinary person might say that a pen holder looks pretty. However, a cultivator might not want to comment after he looks at the life composition and historical origin of that pen holder.
So he only smiles because he knows that most people would not understand what he says.
Looking back, I know that I was neither truthful nor compassionate. After realizing that, I started to correct myself.
For example, if my husband did something wrong, I no longer complained about him or told him what he did wrong and what would be right. If he asked for my opinion, I would tell him, but I would not impose my opinion on him.
If he didn't take my advice and continued to do it his way, even if I could predict that he would fail, I would not think about it too much. I knew that the outcome was the result of his karma, so I wouldn’t interfere. If he really suffered a loss later, it might not be a bad thing, and he might pay off some karma.
Of course, I did not take pleasure in his misfortunes. At that time, compassion filled my heart, because I knew I shouldn’t impose anything on anyone.
People's own experiences are what they have to face. I knew it would be out of jealousy, sentimentality, or selfishness if I had any unbalanced feelings. I should not have any of them, as those are not me. However, I still need to work on it, because sometimes I'm not so stable, and my compassion isn't strong.
Dafa Removed the Depression in My Cultivation
I was depressed for more than three years before last summer. I was in a melancholic state, as if my life was shrouded in darkness.
I experienced endless tribulations and could not see a glimmer of hope. That might have something to do with the environment in China, but it was caused more by my poor xinxing and my karma, in particular, by my inadequate cultivation of compassion.
In the past, I misunderstood tribulations. I thought that good things would naturally come after we had suffered hardships and gotten rid of some attachments.
In fact, this is not exactly true. It's not true cultivation if a practitioner only thinks about suffering hardships and removing attachments on the surface.
If a practitioner doesn't assimilate to the Fa and truly cultivate himself, it's like doing gymnastics in one spot. A practitioner can only improve himself and upgrade his level while letting go of attachments and assimilating to the Fa.
I felt that I suddenly understood this. I realized that my misunderstanding of the Fa was the main cause of my melancholy.
Of course, some objective factors also contributed to my melancholic state. For example, the way that the old forces arranged for practitioners to remove attachments pushes us onto a desperate and hard path.
The more a cultivator is attached to something, the more the old forces will strengthen his attachment, until, finally, he gives up cultivation in overwhelming despair.
“Helping Dafa disciples cultivate” has become an excuse for the old forces to achieve their goal. These are the things I enlightened to last summer.
Subjectively, I must really improve myself, and, objectively, I must completely negate the old forces’ arrangements.
Sometimes thoughts popped up, and I couldn’t tell if they were subjective or objective, so I first looked inside myself, and then negated the old forces’ arrangement. In this way I was able to fully assimilate to the Fa, leaving no room for evil to take advantage of me.
Gradually, my world was not that dark in my dreams, and my life started to get bright. The interference of sentimentality was also no longer intense.
It is the power of Dafa that has guided me to achieve this state. Everything in our cultivation process is precious beyond words.
No matter what the future holds, I will definitely practice in accordance with Dafa.
Dafa is so good! Thank you, Master!
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Category: Improving Oneself
