(Clearwisdom.net) After studying Master's new article "Be Vigilant", I feel a little upset inside my heart. I began practicing Falun Dafa in 2004 and I would like to share some of my understandings on learning how to cultivate as a new practitioner.
1. On Studying the Fa
Master often tells us to study the Fa diligently. How should a new practitioner study the Fa? A vital aspect for a new practitioner to study the Fa well is to change his or her human notions or the ways to study ordinary people's knowledge or technology. We should avoid utilizing the study habits formed in everyday life: highlighting, focusing on concepts and subjects, deducing and making judgments when we study the book Zhuan Falun and all other Fa lectures by Master. We cannot understand the Fa that way. How can we learn the truth of the universe with human notions and methods? Then, how should we study the Fa? By following Master's requirements and reminders, we should read the Fa with a calm mind. Master teaches us:
"It means reading it over and over again--reading the book through."( "Teaching the Fa at the Assistants' Fa Conference in Changchun" (July 26, 1998) ).
When we study the Fa, we shouldn't have any human notions in our minds, and then we will have new achievements whenever we understand a little bit of the book. Master has already taught us:
"All of the gong and Fa lie in the book, and one will naturally obtain them by reading Dafa. Those who learn it will change automatically, and they will already be in the Dao when they read the book over and over again. Teacher will certainly have Law Bodies (fashen) safeguarding them quietly." ("Seeking Discipleship with Teacher" in Essentials for Further Advancement)
When I started studying the Fa by myself at the very beginning, I also utilized ordinary people's methods of studying according to my human notions, such as remembering highlighted contents, writing down study notes and reinforcing my understanding by specifications. As time went by, I enlightened that every word in Zhuan Falun is a system and is like no other book. How can a human understand all of it? As human beings we can't understand all of it. Later on, when I studied the Fa again, I saw several times that there were very tiny black lives with human forms or sometimes just tiny black things running in front of my eyes. After that, I read an article by a young practitioner on Minghui.net (Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net) describing what he saw when his mother was reading Hong Yin: there was black Qi coming out of her hands. I suddenly understood what had happened to me.
Master has already taught us:
"As a matter of fact, studying the Fa more will in and of itself remove bad things." ( "Teaching the Fa at the Conference in the Midwest-U.S." (June 26, 1999, Chicago) ).
When we read the book, reading will in and of itself remove bad things for us. We should study the Fa like this. As long as we read the book over and over again, we will change naturally.
Master has already taught us:
"The Fa can break all attachments, the Fa can destroy all evil, the Fa can shatter all lies, and the Fa can strengthen righteous thoughts." ("Drive Out Interference" in Essentials for Further Advancement II)
Then, how can this be fulfilled? I enlightened that this can be fulfilled because all of the gong and Fa lie in the book. As Dafa disciples who recently began practicing Dafa, we don't have the experiences of personal cultivation as veteran Dafa disciples do, from the period prior to the persecution . Then, if we would like to cultivate ourselves well, we should follow all the requirements taught by Master, we should let go of our ordinary people's study notions and methods, and we should study the Fa seriously and rectify our actions with the requirements set out by Master. We should read the Fa over and over again. When we are studying the Fa, we should feel the existence of the Fa with our pure hearts, and we should experience Dafa's supernormal effects with our pure hearts.
2. Persistence in Reading the Minghui Website
Teacher said, "It is not that Minghui Net does not make mistakes, however, on important matters, practitioners must pay attention to the attitude of Minghui Net. The purpose of posting my photo and the article 'The Knowing Heart' on Minghui Net was to build a trustworthy website for practitioners." http://www.clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2000/6/15/8785.html
As new practitioners, we should especially focus on this point, since we didn't have the personal cultivation period in the peaceful time. As new practitioners, we have many of the ordinary people's attachments and human notions; meanwhile,we don't have strong righteous thoughts and the deepening understandings and experiences of the Fa. In order to walk a righteous way we should persist in reading articles published on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. Not only because it is the website for Falun Dafa, but it is also the most righteous website in the world. It provides Dafa cultivators with the most pure land. The cultivation experience articles written by our fellow practitioners encompass everything and leave out nothing in all aspects of our cultivation. They provide very good examples for practitioners of individual cultivation and validation of Dafa. Therefore, we should read all those articles with a pure heart.
In the very beginning when I obtained Dafa, I didn't know what genuine cultivation was. Soon after that, I began to read the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. By reading the cultivation experiences written by my fellow practitioners and by learning and thinking carefully and seriously, I finally knew what "looking inward" was about. Also, I found out what it meant to improve myself by catching "each and every thought" that didn't conform to the Fa. For example, a fellow practitioner talked about his relationship with his wife in an article. Once his wife became unreasonable, he felt upset right away. He became alert immediately and thought, "Why do I feel upset? What was hiding behind my feeling upset? What is inside me that is touched by her actions?" He continued to look inward, and he found out that he didn't like his wife's temper. Why didn't he like his wife's temper? He found out that he had the attachment of having a spouse with a gentle and rational heart. However, that should not be an object of pursuit by cultivators. Later on, he traced it to the very end and he gradually found out his other attachments. After that, he began to focus on repressing those ordinary people's desires of his in his daily life. After a period, those attachments gradually became less and less, and disappeared later on. By learning from my fellow practitioners, I knew how to cultivate myself little by little and I knew that this is cultivation.
I always compare myself when I read articles written by my fellow practitioners. Master taught us: "Examine each and every deed, Accomplishing is cultivating." ( "Solid Cultivation" from Hong Yin) This is also a method that helps us to improve ourselves promptly. In the process of following Master's teaching: "Compare in studying, compare in cultivating " ( "Solid Cultivation" from Hong Yin), I understood the true meaning of righteous thoughts and what counts as cultivating oneself according to the Fa, how to solve a problem on the viewpoints of Master's rectifying the Fa, and what is "believing in Master and the Fa", and "righteous actions with righteous thoughts", and how I should deal with all kinds of situations. I felt that I had obtained so many things. The Minghui/Clearwisdom website was validated by Master and serves us as a tool of communication among Dafa practitioners every day and helps them share their cultivations' experiences and strengthen their righteous thoughts. When I recall my cultivation for the past five years with a clear mind, my heart is always full of boundless gratitude towards Master and the Minghui website.
3. Looking Inward
"Looking inward" is a treasure that Master imparted to Falun Dafa cultivators. However, many Falun Dafa practitioners (even including those practitioners, who have cultivated in Dafa for a very long time) haven't grasped the meaning of "looking inward" and don't know how to look inward by themselves. A very important method to look inward is exactly like what many practitioners described in their articles published on Minghui.net; that is, when we meet with conflicts or problems, if we feel unhappy or upset, we should ask ourselves first, "Why do I feel so unhappy? What attachments of mine are being touched upon? Are they human notions or ordinary people's attachments? Do they agree with Dafa?" If they don't agree with Dafa, then we should definitely get rid of them. Our cultivation in Dafa includes a very important aspect of improving our Xinxing. The loopholes in our xinxing can only be exposed when there are personal conflicts occurring among us. Under these circumstances, we can find them and get rid of them in further steps and thus improve ourselves. No matter what situations we meet with, we shouldn't use ordinary people's criteria to judge the rightness and the wrongness of things; instead, we should examine ourselves to see whether there was something for us to cultivate and get rid of. Recently, after the situation with the "Qingxin Forum" occurred, some fellow practitioners studied Master's new article, "Be Vigilant" and looked inward immediately. Although I was not involved in the "Qingxin Forum" directly, I found out that I had done something else that didn't agree with Master's Fa.
Last year, after I finished distributing a whole bag of truth-clarification materials, a veteran practitioner gave me another bag of truth-clarification materials, hoping that I would distribute all of them for her. At that time, I had certain opinions about her. From superficial reasonings, it was obvious that the veteran practitioner was at fault. However, the following day when I was doing the sitting meditation, I suddenly felt a huge feeling of terror overwhelming me. I couldn't start my car on my way to distribute those truth-clarification materials. My eyelids had twitched many times [It indicates bad luck in Chinese culture if a person's eyelids twitch]. At that time, I held a conviction that I would die and never come back if I distributed those truth-clarification materials. However, I still went ahead and finished handing out all of them. When I came back safely, I began to look inward at myself. As a result, I found a total of eight kinds of different human attachments. One of them was that I had the attachment of fear, even though I seemed to cultivate myself very diligently. After I found all my attachments, I got rid of them, and I felt that the sky above my head and everything inside my personal field became clean and clear again.
After all, cultivation is extremely arduous and very serious. We, as new Dafa cultivators, have the opportunity to enter the gate of Dafa cultivation in this late stage of the Fa-rectification period. All that results from Master's benevolent compassion. I hope that all of us can understand everything from the perspective of the Fa very soon, that all of us can assist Master to rectify the Fa, and that every one of us can become mature as soon as possible.
