(Minghui.org) In the course of human life, my understanding is that different stages of life often come with different tribulations to overcome in cultivation. For elderly practitioners, perhaps it could be an attachment to comfort and grandchildren; for middle-aged practitioners, perhaps it’s about workplace issues or their spouses and family. For young practitioners, one of these age-specific tribulations is the attachment to lust and romantic relationships.
For many years, this attachment posed a huge obstacle to my own advancement in cultivation. I made mistakes because of it and have done things that I deeply regret. It was only with the help of fellow practitioners, more intense and consistent Fa-study, and Master’s ever-present guidance and compassion that I was able to overcome this attachment.
I have recently heard that some other young practitioners are struggling with this attachment and even getting themselves into difficult situations because of it. I’d like to share some of my understandings based on my own experiences in the hopes that it can help other people avoid taking the same path that I did.
Like many other young practitioners, I grew up reading Zhuan Falun. I knew what Master said in Lecture Six about lust and demons, and so I knew that lust was a bad thing for cultivators. At the same time, I felt like I could never reconcile this properly with the fact that Master said,
“Young cultivators should still form families.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun).
For a long time, I gave my attachment to lust an excuse because “young cultivators should still form families.” I had mistakenly thought that if I was to form a family, it wouldn’t be bad to think about dating or relationships, or even to consider potential partners. How was I supposed to form a family if I didn’t think about all of these things?
This manifested especially strongly when I was in high school and college. During that time, compared to many of the ordinary teenagers around me who’d engage in premarital sexual relationships, I thought that I was still doing well. I even thought that perhaps if I found a suitable partner, it would just be an issue of telling them that I was waiting until marriage. In reality, my thinking had already deviated greatly from the realm of a cultivator. I was obsessed with my looks and how I was presented to the opposite sex; I was extremely sensitive to even casual glances from the opposite sex. Sometimes, I’d even fantasize about male classmates that I’d never even spoken to before. I read romance novels and listened to love songs. It felt like I was only trying to do the bare minimum to still be considered a practitioner.
With some help from older practitioners, I eventually realized that my understanding of “young cultivators should still form families” was incomplete. In Zhuan Falun, Master actually makes it very clear as to why young practitioners should still form families.
In Teaching at the Conference in Switzerland, Master explains this point in even more detail:
“We’ve said that we should cultivate while conforming to ordinary people to the greatest extent possible. Now there are tens of millions of young disciples who cultivate. If none of them gets married and has children, wouldn’t that be a form of harming ordinary people’s society? At the very least, I can tell you that you wouldn’t be conforming to the way of ordinary people’s society in your cultivation. Then again, some people say, “In this lifetime, I simply don’t want to get married. I’ve made up my mind.” I’m not against that, either. You can cultivate that way. As long as it doesn’t cause any additional burden or problems in your life or in other respects, I won’t do anything about it.” (Teaching at the Conference in Switzerland)
So it’s not that we form families to enjoy the human experience of it, but so that we do not disrupt the norms of human society as more and more people cultivate Falun Dafa. In fact, just like everything else in our lives – whether it be the friends we make, the jobs we hold, or the difficulties we meet in life – forming a family is simply another avenue for us to meet with tribulations that will help us improve our xinxing. Our cultivation way stresses cultivating directly within the format of a normal human life. In other words, forming a family (or not) is simply another facet of the cultivation path that Master has already arranged for us. As such, it is nothing for us to chase after or get too attached to.
Looking at this from another viewpoint, it’s also my understanding that if we form a family and manage those relationships well according to the standards of the Fa, it can also be an opportunity to validate the Fa to ordinary people. It’s an opportunity to show people that the principles of Falun Dafa are indeed good and help people live better, and can inspire ordinary people to return to the path of righteousness and traditional values.
After coming to these realizations, I was finally able to fight back effectively against the lust attachment. Previously, when it had tormented me and I knew it was bad, I’d try to reject it, but it wouldn’t work. The attachment would use the excuse of “young cultivators should still form families” to try to protect its existence. Now, with its excuse removed with a more complete understanding of the Fa, I could eliminate the lust attachment with more confidence.
Although my struggles with the lust attachment got much better after I came to a better understanding of “should still form families,” they were far from over. This came to a head one summer when I took an internship at one of our Dafa projects.
By this point, I had decided that if I were to marry, I would only consider other practitioners. There just so happened to be many other young practitioners in this project. It was the first time that I had encountered so many young practitioners all in the same place, and naturally, in the course of working, I had interactions with practitioners of the opposite sex.
There was one particular colleague whom I worked with during this time; sometimes, we had to work one-on-one with each other. In the process of working together, I realized that we had personality traits in common and looked at things in similar ways. Thoughts crossed my mind multiple times that perhaps this was the person that Master had arranged to be my other half, and because I thought this was an “allowed” relationship, I began letting my old habits run free again. I often thought about him in my spare time and daydreamed about what it would be like if we were together. The more I thought about things, the more it seemed to me that he must also feel the same way about me. I even told my non-practitioner friends to try to get their confirmation that this colleague was interested in me, and any communication from him was enough to make me anxious and excited.
We kept a working relationship even after my internship and chatted with each other often, but this colleague never responded the way I was hoping for. I’d get excited and disappointed; my emotions were constantly in flux when it came to the ambiguous relationship it seemed we had. After a few months of this emotional turmoil, I decided to tell one of our mutual friends about the situation, only to discover that he’d had a girlfriend the entire time.
I looked inward to find where I had gone wrong. I realized that I had gotten too attached to this relationship and did not rationally approach this situation. I was caught up in my own delusions and imagination the entire time, which was not the state that a cultivator should have at all.
Master tells us:
“Thought karma mostly manifests as going off into flights of fancy or indulging in wild imagination, which is human attachment. Most of the time, those are wild thoughts of wanting to get things that one desires, things that one wants but can’t get. That’s why they are called “wrong thoughts”—thoughts that are useless, futile. (Master chuckles) That’s the idea.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2004 Western U.S. Fa Conference,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume V)
Later in the same teaching, Master addresses a student who asked about the lust attachment by saying:
“All those who don’t remove that attachment and make excuses for their behavior are fooling themselves and trying to fool others—it’s not like I’ve made any special arrangements for you.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2004 Western U.S. Fa Conference,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume V)
There was no way that Master would have planned for me to take the path that increases these flights of fancy and encourages this thought karma. If I had approached this situation rationally, I would have seen this and avoided embarrassing myself. And even if this person and I were arranged to be together, I can’t imagine things ending well if I had gone into it with this mindset. I realized that I had let myself go in terms of this attachment, precisely because I had thought that this was a kind of “special arrangement” that Master had made for me, and this was the reason why I couldn’t eliminate the attachment even though I intuitively felt like my state was wrong.
This time, like so many others, I got the opportunity to re-learn one of the most basic lessons in my cultivation: the best outcome always comes from listening to Master.
My only saving grace during this experience was that I never made my feelings clear to the colleague in question, and I’m grateful that I did not disrupt the cultivation and workplace environment in the project in that way. But after enduring this mishap, I told myself that I really needed to figure out what it meant in practice to face qing (emotion) with a rational mind. I couldn’t keep getting stuck at the same level.
My search for answers began within the Fa. I began to pay more attention to all the places where Master has spoken about this attachment. I realized that while Master doesn’t mention it much, when he does, he’s very stern.
From Master’s teachings, I knew that we had to get rid of the lust attachment, but at the same time not be attached to it if we do decide to form a family. An older practitioner I shared with recommended that I read Minghui articles on the topic of lust and relationships to find out how other practitioners were finding the balance between these two things. Many of these articles were very insightful. I remember one practitioner mentioning that he thought that we should treat the situation just like how Master tells us to treat the issue of eating meat. Master said,
“If it is not cooked at home, you will not miss it. If you eat it, it will not taste delicious” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun).
What also helped me a lot were articles where practitioners saw manifestations of lust in other dimensions: some saw snakes that would wrap around practitioners and cause physical reactions; others saw the substance of sexual attraction appear as black and pink powder that demons would throw upon practitioners; still others saw lust-bound practitioners strapped to torture devices in other dimensions, and what they perceived to be physical excitement from attraction was actually demons enacting torture. Still other practitioners shared stories of cultivators in the past, and how they were rewarded or punished based on their performance against this attachment. These articles were invaluable for helping me see past the notions of ordinary people and recognize lust for the attachment and burden that it truly was.
The same older practitioner also told me to look into traditional Chinese culture and how the issue of male-female relationships was handled in ancient times. I also found much inspiration from the wisdom and customs of the ancients. In that society, male-female relationships and the formation of families had strict rules of engagement that mitigated the influence of desire and lust, while increasing the possibility of a compatible match. For instance, men and women were very reserved with each other, eschewing casual encounters unless there was an established familial or business relationship. There was decorum that dictated how unaffiliated men and women were supposed to treat each other, which is in stark contrast to today’s society, where men and women regularly mingle with each other and form ambiguous relationships.
When it came time to find a match, the ancients emphasized following “the wishes of the parents and the consultation of matchmakers.” (“父母之命，媒妁之言”) This was something that would happen pretty much automatically once a man or woman came of age, and was not something they had to spend time obsessing about. After the parents and matchmaker had vetted a match for character, compatibility in family background, and other factors, a set of rituals ensured that both sides were committed and gave them time to renege if necessary.
In the Ming dynasty educational volume, Augmented Collection of Wise Sayings (《增广贤文》), children learn that “Of ten thousand evils, desire is prime; of one hundred deeds, filial piety is the best.” (“万恶淫为首，百行孝当先。”）From this, I realized that this was a great reference for how to balance the relationship between starting a family and controlling desire; marriage and family were just a natural part of life and nothing to obsess over, and it was best if I made the decision that sits right with my family and the community around me as a whole. And as a cultivator, I realized that this also extends to my cultivation environment, the practitioners around me, and most importantly, what Master’s plans were for my cultivation path. After all, in Chinese, there is the saying that “one day as a master, one lifetime as a father.” If filial piety were truly the best thing, then isn’t filial piety toward Master the most important factor in deciding my match?
From that point on, I made an adjustment in my thinking. I decided I would let go of the issue completely and just focus on my cultivation. Whatever outcome Master planned for me – whether it was a partner I got along with, a partner I didn’t get along with, or no partner at all – I would be ready to accept it. I stopped seeing a partner as something I absolutely had to have, despite what the older adults or non-practitioner family members around me would say. Surely, whatever Master’s plan was for me would be the best.
Throughout this cultivation process, I made several changes in my behavior that helped me a lot.
One thing was that I stopped consuming lustful content. As a woman, although I wouldn’t watch pornography, some of the books that I read or the movies I watched featured love stories and even sexual content. I got rid of those. I also forced myself to stop listening to popular music, which often contained romantic or sexual themes. I even stopped reading some classic novels that had a strong emphasis on the romance between men and women, because the scenarios between the characters would get stuck in my head.
I also became more careful about how I interacted with the opposite gender. I used to go out of my way to form friendships with men and sometimes have long conversations with them, but only after studying traditional culture did I realize that this was a hotbed for lustful thoughts to build up. I cut back on these relationships and became more polite and reserved when it came to men that I had to interact with in my daily life.
I also began to dress more conservatively. Back in college, I followed many of the trends that my ordinary classmates were following, including wearing heavy makeup and somewhat revealing clothing. I gradually realized that these were all manifestations of lust. I began to dress more modestly and also adopted more natural and muted makeup.
On the cultivation front, I also increased my Fa study and exercise time. One realization I had was that since lust often emerges from bodily functions, doing the exercises was a great way to purge this matter, since it helps convert the body into high-energy matter that is no longer subject to the same human reactions. During this process, I was finally able to complete all five exercises each day over the course of two hours.
The process of cultivating away the lust attachment took many years for me. But gradually, I felt it get lighter and lighter until it could no longer dominate my thoughts anymore.
Something interesting then happened. A few months later, my mother got a call from another practitioner who wanted to introduce a male practitioner to me. After we met, we got along pretty well and eventually got married. Our respective families, including our non-practitioner family members, were happy with the match, and we continue to help each other improve in cultivation and maintain a harmonious family relationship. What was interesting was that we both discovered that several years before we met, a different practitioner had tried to introduce us to each other, but our parents didn’t react to their offer back then. Looking back, it’s clear to see that Master had a plan for me all along; it’s just that my attachments got in the way.
I’m actually quite embarrassed at many of the things I did while under the influence of the attachment of lust. It’s an incredibly destructive attachment for both myself and the people around me, and also intensifies other attachments to get what it wants, such as pride, competitiveness, and jealousy. Given what Master has said about the seriousness of this issue, I’m extremely grateful that Master did not give up on me, even as I kept getting stuck in various notions and misunderstandings.
Everyone’s cultivation path is different, and everyone’s correct answer will not necessarily look like mine. I hope that my experiences can be of help to other young practitioners. Many of us may still feel young, but the Fa’s standards for us are not any lower. In this final period of time during the Fa-rectification, let’s break ugh our last human attachments and do all that we can to help Master save sentient beings.