(Clearwisdom.net) Sometimes one attachment looks similar to another. Attachments can also cover each other up and confuse us. For a long time, I was an honest and nice person according to other people's comments. Sometimes I certainly had the attachments to fame, self-interest, and zealotry. But, in general, I was calm, and my attachments usually did not show up very apparently.
I have been working for my current employer for nearly ten years. I already have a lot of qualifications and am also a department head. According to everyday people's rules, I should get a promotion after being in the industry for so long. Some people in my office even joked to me, “You have not moved up for such a long time. You are really stable.” Even when I talked with my father over the phone, he always said, “Your cousin just got promoted again. Why don't you try to move up?” I thought what he said was to help me get rid of my attachment to pursuing fame and that I should not do that as a practitioner. I even had doubt regarding the advancement of my career. I wondered, “The younger people all got promoted, why not me?” Whenever I had these kinds of thoughts, I always needed some time to calm down. I studied the Fa and recited Hong Yin. Over time, my agitation gradually faded away.
In my workplace, when people reach a certain level, they are assigned a separate office. However, people like me, who are just the heads of regular departments, had to sit together with the other employees in the big office. Every time I walked away from the private offices, I often felt pain in my heart. But the pain soon faded away. I also looked inward and found some other of my attachments. I had the attachment to saving face and seeking fame. I was also annoyed that even the younger employees already had separate offices, but I still did not have one even with my qualifications and experience. I also had the attachment to comfort and a longing for a spacious office, as well as other attachments.
Even after finding so many attachments, occasionally when I passed the private offices, I still felt that it was unfair. If I needed to communicate with them regarding business, I tried to solve the problem with a phone call instead of walking to their rooms. Sometimes I even thought, “I have senior level qualifications. If I walk into their office, what if they feel embarrassed?” When they came to my desk to discuss things, I felt good in my heart. When I had to go to their rooms to discuss things, I always felt a little awkward.
Whenever those thoughts came to mind, I thought, “I still haven't totally gotten rid of the attachment to saving face.” For a long time, I had many attachments, such as the attachments to lust, fame, self-interest, showing off, zealotry, and eating food. During different levels of my cultivation, I could let go of those attachments and find the root cause. At each level, it repeated again and again, but it became lighter and lighter.
However, the Minghui article “Sharing My Experience with Jealousy - Pink Eye,” published on April 8, 2011 (http://www.clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/4/23/124584.html), really got my attention. It said, “I found that some practitioners like to pry into other people's news and spread gossip, especially the other practitioners' unfortunate news. They may have heard that someone talked about a practitioner's tribulations, such as he passed the test of illness karma, or even passed away. They really wanted to hear it and spread it around. I think that this is not just the attachment of showing off, but the attachment of jealousy.”
This article was like a clap of thunder that woke me up. For a long time, I had had the bad habit of feeling weird about myself. When I talked with others, I always wanted to know the details of the things that happened to them. Sometimes the other person also thought this was weird: “Why are you asking about this?” For example, when I met a person selling vegetables, I wanted to know how much money he or she earned. When someone got divorced, I always wanted to get to the root cause of the issue and ask why the two got divorced. Sometimes it even embarrassed the other person. When this happened, I felt silly, but I could not get rid of this bad habit.
This is not curiosity. This is “pink eye” For the same reason, my attachment to a separate office in my workplace looked like the attachment to saving face and seeking fame, but it was actually jealousy. Before, however, I had always thought of myself as “having all kinds of attachments except jealousy.”
Before I started to cultivate, I did not like to fight with others and I did not care about honor or fame. How could I have the attachment of jealousy?
Teacher taught us in Zhuan Falun,
“You see them behaving like nice people in day-to-day life and out in the ordinary world, and they take their reputation and their own gain lightly. But once they stand out a little among their peers, they tend to be affected by reputation and gain. They think that they still have a lot of living to do, and they still want to try to go after some things and get ahead a bit, and reach some ordinary-people type goals.”
I understand that when people's situations and qualifications change, their attachments also change. A nice person who took his power and personal interests lightly before could start to pursue those things when the situation changes. He might still look nice and calm on the surface, but his mind has already lost balance and he has started to compare himself with others. When he looks inward, he thinks that it is the attachment to fame, to looking good, or to being competitive, but he never thinks it is the attachment of jealousy.
I immediately understood why I had that weird habit of wanting to get to the root of other people's things, which I could not figure out before. The attachment of jealousy that was hidden deeply inside my mind immediately melted away, just like snow melting in the sun.
