(Minghui.org) Many people enjoy having a pet. Falun Dafa practitioners, however, might incur serious consequences by keeping a pet. And those consequences might even affect others. Some practitioners adopt stray animals, a common practice for everyday people. This doesn’t mean that we lack compassion if we choose not to care for these animals. Taking in a stray is driven by human emotion.
There are no trivial matters in cultivation. Master Li explained this in “Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Zhengzhou” in Explaining the Teachings of Zhuan Falun.
“Student: Can those that study Falun Dafa have pets?
Master: The Buddha school goes by not killing and not raising, and perhaps the Tao school thinks this way too. But there are features of the Tao school where they have animals with abilities, turtles and the like. At extremely high levels, they have one or two to protect the Fa, but they have to pick exceptionally good ones. Since these things are with a person when he practices, as a person’s level increases, it’s easy for them to attain some special abilities. Once they attain special abilities, because they don’t care about xinxing, they will do bad things and turn into demons.”
My wife and I learned a serious lesson when we didn’t abide by Master’s teachings. We bought our grandson a pet turtle. The turtle quickly grew large and ate a lot of meat. It opened its mouth very wide when we fed it. Fearing that it might accidentally bite our grandson, we released it into a river.
One day, my wife and I and six other practitioners were arrested while we were out clarifying the truth about Falun Dafa. All of us were given sentences ranging from three to five years.
In prison, I met a practitioner whose celestial eye was open. He told me that our arrests were a consequence of raising that turtle. The turtle had transformed into a human form with a hunched back and it could run very quickly. It could divide itself into several entities. It followed the practitioner around inside the prison from a distance, always staring at him. The practitioner eventually destroyed it, disintegrating it into a puff of black smoke.
In “Teachings at the Conference in Houston,” Master shared a story about a cultivator who protected a deer fleeing from a hunter. The cultivator decided to keep it because he felt lonely. When the deer died, it pained the cultivator so much he couldn’t stop thinking about it, which prevented him from making diligent progress in cultivation. Ultimately, the cultivator died and reincarnated as a deer. He lost the precious human body that would have enabled him to cultivate into a divine being.
We are not everyday people; we should follow a higher standard and refrain from keeping pets.
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Category: Cultivation Insights
