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Looking Inward to Form a Whole Body

March 02, 2010 |   By a practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) A fellow practitioner in my area was recently arrested. This affected me greatly, as the fear of being persecuted arose in my heart. I recalled the times when I interacted with that fellow practitioner. When I saw a shortcoming in that practitioner, I only briefly pointed it out, sometimes like giving an order, as would a superior to a subordinate--telling the practitioner how it should be done. It is a pity that this practitioner didn't oppose what I said or express some different opinions. He completely agreed to my thinking and way of doing things. It was precisely for this reason that I became more relaxed about his prominent shortcomings and didn't deal with them seriously. This terrible phenomenon of worshiping someone and being worshiped appeared.

This problem that manifested in me was also a problem in our whole body in the local area. During our cooperation with one another, we didn't respect fellow practitioners and looked down on them. We thought we were superior, and we blamed other practitioners. Two years ago, I hurt another practitioner very deeply because of this. Because that practitioner took the wrong path, I looked down on her. She asked someone to tell me that she wanted to share experiences with her. As I didn't recognize the attachment I had, I refused her invitation.

Regarding those practitioners who dared not come out to clarify the facts, after exchanging experiences with them for some time with no results, I looked down on them and had a low tolerance of them. When I was eager to instruct other practitioners to do this and that, I didn't think about whether or not they could take it.

When sharing experiences with fellow practitioners, I had the attachment of showing off and my attachment of zealotry was also revealed in my speech and behavior. In order not to lose face, I hid my shortcomings and avoided revealing my innermost thoughts. Some fellow practitioners said, "You kept on saying only the good things you have done." During a recent Fa study, I read this paragraph in Zhuan Falun,

"He is afraid of losing his reputation. He would rather have this illness himself in order to keep his reputation. What a strong attachment to fame!"

I thought in my heart that this person was really silly. For the sake of his reputation, he didn't want his life. In fact, I was actually this silly person.

The skills that I mastered in ordinary society and the wisdom opened up for me in Dafa cultivation had become something I utilized to show myself off in front of fellow practitioners and a way to gain a good reputation and fame. When fellow practitioners didn't follow my orders, I felt uncomfortable. If someone didn't accept my suggestion, I ignored that practitioner. This kind of fake cultivation really just satisfied my own attachments of fame and vanity.

During my interactions with fellow practitioners, I had an impatient heart. I said I was worried about fellow practitioners and afraid that some would fall behind. In fact I was actually validating myself and showing off that I had cultivated well, and that I thought my cultivation level was higher. This in itself was a contradiction. It easily created barriers between practitioners and blocked the formation of a whole body.

Since I was a coordinator, such an attachment to reputation seriously impeded the formation of the whole body. Because I wanted the whole body to assimilate to my own perception, many practitioners were rejected outside the whole body by this strong barrier. It was not that practitioners didn't want to form a whole body, they all wished that everyone could communicate more and share experiences more. This required that practitioners who were coordinators look inward with pure hearts and really dig out the reasons that blocked practitioners from forming a whole body.

The attachment of seeking fame is ultimately a kind of sentimentality, a kind of feeling to be satisfied. While one enjoys this kind of feeling, they would forget their real self, and this would make them stray far away from their cultivation path. This was extremely dangerous. It is a lesson of life and death. Master said,

"...human beings don't actually have the ability to do anything significant. What usually happens is that a person's bad thoughts correlate with evil beings in other dimensions, and then those evil beings capitalize on his bad thoughts to go and do bad things, and this way those evil beings achieve their goals and his bad thoughts' desires are satisfied." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.")

If a whole body can't be formed or the cooperation for the whole body is not working well, the major responsibility lies with the practitioners who are coordinators. The relationship among coordinators, as well as the relationship between coordinators and other fellow practitioners, should be dealt with well. When I realized my own attachments, I happened to read Master's lectures, "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston," "Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference" in 2002, and "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A." My heart opened and I understood a lot. I sincerely hope that practitioners who do coordination work will gather as a group and study these three lectures. I also hope that every study group studies these lectures so that practitioners can form a whole body and improve as a whole body quickly during their cooperation.