(Minghui.org) I obtained the Fa in August 2023, about a month before my 26th birthday. Recalling the first several months of my cultivation, I see how everything in my life led up to my obtaining the Fa, for which I am immensely grateful to Master.
Born and raised in Hawaii, I had a mostly secular upbringing, aside from family encounters with Pure Land Buddhism. As a child, I remember watching my family members, prayer beads wrapped around their hands, chanting Buddha Amitābha’s name amidst the intricate, scintillating gold backdrop of the Hongan-ji. I felt like an outsider and wondered what it meant to be inside a spiritual experience rather than a mere onlooker going through ritualistic steps. Although I was curious about what the temple and chanting meant, I nevertheless navigated the world through a purely materialistic lens.
This attitude worsened when I became addicted to social media in my early adolescence, which agitated attachments I already had to reputation, social status, and obsession with my physical appearance. During my undergraduate studies in New York City, awash in the modern university culture of atheism, empiricism, self-censorship, and liberal political ideology, my morality and belief in the divine hit an all-time low. Lacking the spiritual and psychological resources to know where my restlessness was coming from, I was drawn to classical oil painting and became a student at an atelier where skill and tradition were valued and passed down.
It was at the atelier where I first encountered Falun Dafa, although it had been on my radar peripherally from seeing practitioners clarifying the truth about Falun Dafa in Union Square. Slowly waking up to the realization that I had been living amidst fear and censorship, unconsciously imbibing modern notions without question, I applied to an intensive master’s program at a new college whose foundation is built upon truth, beauty, freedom of speech, and the fellowship that enables the first three values to flourish. The MA program is a revival of the traditional university, teaching ancient and modern Greek and classical works of philosophy and literature from the Western canon.
In Greece, where the master’s program began, I obtained the Fa. From the outset, my pursuit of earthly love flared up as an attachment directly connected to my cultivation. Amidst the beautiful and romantic setting of the Greek island of Samos, the frenzy of meeting my master’s cohort, the intensity of the Greek classes, and the overwhelming generosity and richness of the experience of which I was a beneficiary, I developed an extreme desire for one of the practitioners in my cohort.
In Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference in Australia, a practitioner asked and Master answered:
“Student: I often share experiences and understandings with those whose understandings of the Fa are relatively close to mine and have the same enlightenment on certain issues. Is this an attachment?
Teacher: That depends on whether your desire of being close to those students with whom you can converse easily contains any other human desires. If it doesn’t, it’s not a big deal. If it contains any incorrect element, it is very likely to become a barrier that prevents you from cultivating diligently.” (Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference in Australia)
From the moment I obtained the Fa, I wrestled with my attachment to the pursuit of love, often covering it up with clever rationalizations that involved justifying time spent with this practitioner, doing the exercises, or studying the Fa together.
Inextricably bound to my pursuit of love were a cocktail of other attachments, such as jealousy, desire, and lust. The intensity of the program meant that those of us enrolled spent most of our days together: dining, traveling, living, practicing Greek, hiking and swimming, and many other activities. This constant exposure to the practitioner who was the object of my attachments stoked my attachments that were connected to him, making it nearly impossible for me to perceive reality in a rational way. I felt as if I was moving around in a haze, a beautiful lucid dream where I passed from moment to moment in survival mode, floating along on my attachments, letting them direct my motions in the world. At this infant stage of my cultivation, my understanding of Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Dafa, was shallow and limited: I thought of it simply as a didactic, moral book that resonated with me more than other spiritual texts.
Master said:
“Usually when a person reads the book the first time, he will find that it teaches the principles of how to be a good person. When he reads it a second time, it won’t be the same; at that point he will see that it’s a book about cultivation. When he reads it a third time—when you are truly able to read it three times in a row—he probably won’t want to put the book down thereafter. He will pick it up and read it whenever he has time, and see that it is a divine book.” (“First Fa Teaching Given in the United States,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume I)
Exactly as Master described, in Greece, during the nascent phase of my cultivation, I had no capacity to perceive the immensity, profundity, or depth of what I had stumbled upon. Of course, as time passed, I came to understand that I had not stumbled upon the practice. To the contrary, Dafa’s presence was in my peripheral vision while I lived in NYC, my meeting practitioners at the atelier, and my predestined relationships with practitioners in my master’s program were all reminding me of the vow to Master I made in prehistory.
For my first few months of cultivation, my studying the Fa and doing the exercises were mixed in with my attachment to pursuit. I could not properly discern if I was practicing because I wanted to, or if I was practicing to spend more time with the practitioner who was the object of my attachments. With my materialist mindset, I would sometimes have doubts about the reality of the practice, especially when I was alone. Whenever I would waver, I would return to Zhuan Falun and find my relationship with the book changed.
After the intensive two-month language fellowship portion of the program concluded, the philosophy and literature segment of the year began in Savannah, Georgia. Our entire group lived together in one house, which proved especially challenging for my attachments to jealousy and reputation. With those to whom I was particularly attached, I felt as if a thread connected us like an umbilical cord connects a baby to its mother; if they moved, I would feel a tug in my navel. My attachment to my phone intensified, and I would constantly check to see if I had messages or if there were events I was missing. I deeply feared rejection and being forgotten, both of which were recurring themes in my life from my earliest relationships. In our philosophy seminars, my competitive mentality would sometimes emerge, and I found myself trying to overcompensate for my insecurity about having nothing worthwhile to contribute.
There were many moments in the shared house in Savannah when some of my colleagues’ faces would transform into faces of demons in front of my eyes. When this happened, I would work to temper my will and move through the social situation without friction, which required forbearance. I would repeat to myself that whatever demonic or wicked expression I was seeing on my friends’ faces was only a reflection of my inner state.
During the Savannah portion of the program, I began to experience many sensations in my body. The warmth of qi that I would feel during the exercises would permeate my body, particularly my hands and face, while I would go about my day. My temples and cheekbones often felt as if they were being pressed or pulled, and I experienced heartbeat-like sensations pulsating throughout my body. When doing the seated meditation, a sweet fragrance would envelop my face, and I would sometimes catch the scent of the aroma floating around my hair.
Obtaining the Fa in this program has been a test because many of the books we read and discuss in class are sacred Christian texts, and I naturally think in terms of associative connections. As someone who had no prior exposure to texts of this nature, I would sometimes make the error of conflating theologies and bringing human things from another theological system into my understanding of Dafa.
Master said:
“That is, the principles of the Eight Trigrams that today’s society knows, as well as many technique-type things, do not go beyond the Milky Way. This universe, on the other hand, is large beyond your imagination. Three thousand universes like the one we are in constitute a larger universe. Three thousand of the larger-boundary universes constitute a universe with an even larger boundary, and there are countless Gods and Buddhas within. What can the Milky Way account for? It’s very small. For those learning the practice, consider that such an expansive set of teachings has been passed on to you.”(Lecture Given at the Conference in Sydney)
Thus, in this environment where I am being given a key to the West’s theological, philosophical, artistic, and literary canon, it has been a test to remember how Dafa is something all-encompassing and supernormal. While the texts I’ve encountered in class are profound and enriching, and certainly help lay the cultural foundation for humans to understand the divine, they cannot directly save people; only Dafa can.
When I went back home to Hawaii during winter break, I resolved the important questions of who I was practicing for and whether the practice was aligned with my design. It was my first time since obtaining the Fa that I was outside of the context where I was unsure whether I was practicing for myself or using the practice as a way to justify spending more time with that one practitioner, which was itself my greatest attachment. The first thing I wanted to do when I got home was to study the Fa. It was just like Master said—I did not want to put the book down.
In January, after a period of diligent in Fa study and doing the exercises during winter break, I experienced an acute period of karma elimination and purification through a menstrual period that lasted for several weeks. I regard this as yet another test, where I could have viewed myself as either an ordinary person or a cultivator.
Master said:
“That’s why I’ve told you that when we cultivators feel uncomfortable somewhere in our bodies it isn’t sickness. Yet what everyday people consider a sick state, and the state that’s reflected in a cultivator’s body when his karma is being reduced, are the same.” (“Fa Teaching Given in New York City,” Teachings at Conferences in the United States)
While my first thought upon getting my period was that it was karma reduction, I did waver for a moment when it went on for a couple of weeks. However, rather than see a doctor, I understood that I must view myself as a cultivator rather than an ordinary person and that seeking a solution for my surface manifestation would not touch the origin of the sickness, which lives in another dimension.
In February, I began to work remotely for a Dafa media, an opportunity which I was so grateful for. I also took the opportunity to mean that I was making progress in cultivation, that Master had arranged for me to contribute to a Dafa project. So, when I asked to work in the brick-and-mortar office over the summer and my request was denied, I immediately took it as a rejection and felt that I had cultivated badly and was unworthy of being a Dafa disciple. This, of course, revealed attachments I hadn’t previously known were there, particularly an attachment to human approval for my sense of self-worth. I now see this as a test of faith. My faith in Dafa should be unwavering, independent of any affirmation I might or might not get in my vocation. If I rely on people affirming me as a Dafa practitioner, that would mean my heart and mind are not in the right place. I have now moved to a place of full trust in Master’s arrangement for me and know that I will encounter the proper trials for my cultivation at precisely the right time.
This encapsulates what my first eight months cultivating in Dafa have revealed to me. In moments of suffering, when my attachments are being unearthed and aggravated, my faith in Master and the Fa only grow.
(Selected from submissions for World Falun Dafa Day celebration on Minghui.org)
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