(Clearwisdom.net) When I recently read an article I was very touched.
As a young woman, I read many novels. At that time, I wanted to experience falling in love at first sight. I often imagined myself in love stories, and indulged myself in love stories that had ups and downs. I spent a lot of time daydreaming. Now, thinking back, were those obscene thoughts? The idea of exposing an attachment to lust is embarrassing to a lady, yet, as a practitioner, I had to treat it seriously.
Master says in Zhuan Falun: "... matter and mind are one thing." I thought about this for a while. Also, I was still young; why did I have insomnia? It must have something to do with this attachment. When I later became a practitioner, I appeared to have a lofty attitude yet was moved by sentimentality from the human world, and even became muddle-headed sometimes as a result. It all came down to the fact that I was deeply covered up by my post-natal notions, which hindered me from telling right from wrong. Thinking about my past, I wondered how I had accumulated those biased notions. They might have come from novels or magazines that I read before, or some romantic TV series.
“Lewdness is the worst of all sins.” Obscene behaviour triggered by lust can easily have people lose too much of their precious matter, especially one's de, which is "a type of matter." (Zhuan Falun) Only by emphasizing one's virtue and accumulating de can one have good fortune. Any affair between a man and a woman will lead one to lose de and reduce one's good fortune. The reason one encounters misfortune in life can be a result of one having committed sins by indulging oneself in erotic matters. One might not realize it, but it all comes down to the fact that committing evil deeds will result in evil retribution.
On the surface, indulging oneself in obscene behaviour doesn't seem that important, yet "as mind and matter are one" (“Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference in Australia”), to have obscene or wild thoughts is the beginning of one's losing morality. I have carefully read stories about marriage and family life in traditional culture. They often point out the danger of indulging in lust, and if one wants to value de, one has to stay away from lust in order to have good fortune.
In Dream of the Read Mansions, a Taoist showed Jia Rui a mirror to have him see the skull at the back of it, in order to stop him from having obscene thoughts. However, Jia Rui only looked at the surface of the mirror, and couldn't resist the temptation of the beauties in the mirror. As a result, his soul was taken away and that's how he ended his life.
In the Ming Dynasty, Zhao Yongzhen secretly watched maidens with lust in his heart. He lured women in his neighbourhood to have fun with him. This led to the women losing their purity and having affairs with him. Eventually, Heaven punished him—the title he earned as a result of scoring high on an exam in his village was taken away. Fortunately, Emperor Wenchang warned Zhao in a dream, and he felt remorse for his wrongdoing. Later on, he wrote a poem encouraging people not to have obscene thoughts and not to indulge in prostitution. He built up virtue because of that and, four years later at the age of 26, he wrote the exam again, was selected, and achieved great renown.
No matter how society changes, as a woman, one should always treat purity as something beautiful. A woman's virtue lies in being faithful and loyal. In today's society, there is a lot of temptation to lust everywhere, i.e., TV, computers, advertisements, movies. In today's chaotic society, if one can really stay away from it, that is truly precious!
Nowadays, morality is very low. People do not have anything good in their hearts, and they treat lustful indulgences as something fashionable. Therefore, for women to be pure, they have to discipline themselves very well.
The beauty of a woman lies in her pure heart and innocence. For women who are faithful to their marriages and their husbands, happiness will surely accompany them all their lives.
