(Clearwisdom.net) Recently, I saw that our coordinator was being stubborn about his own opinion, and that caused me to think about other things that he did not do so well. I often wondered why he was like that. I constantly analyzed his shortcomings and even felt a little bit angry about them. I don't want to comment more on this coordinator, but when I looked inside as to why I was always focusing on his shortcomings, I was surprised to find the attachment of jealousy.
If one is always looking at others' shortcomings, analyzing others' shortcomings, one's thought is always hoping that others do not do well, especially not better than oneself. The fundamental cause is jealousy. Looking inside further, I found that my jealousy made it so that I could not let go of myself, and I was over confident. If others surpassed me, my self-esteem would be imbalanced.
The attachment of showing off is a similar attachment, for in this case, one is showing off how much better one is than others. The same goes for the attachment of competition. All of these are generated from jealousy.
Master teaches us in Zhuan Falun, "If jealousy is not abolished, everything that you have cultivated will become fragile."
Jealousy is harming cultivators greatly, not only affecting personal cultivation, but directly interfering with Master's Fa-rectification and saving sentient beings. We must make a point to cultivate away jealousy, based on studying the Fa well.
Master never looks at our shortcomings, only our sincere wish to assimilate with the Fa. The cultivated part of practitioners are the parts of our higher selves that we normally do not see. The shortcomings that are so visible belong to our uncultivated part. Why would we feel that our own human side might be "better" than another's?
This is my personal understanding, please correct any mistakes.
December 25, 2009
