What Is Sentimentality?

(Minghui.org) What is Sentimentality? Master said, “Emotion is an element within the Three Realms.” (Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference in Australia)

I understood from Master's teachings that all beings within the three realms are immersed in sentimentality and not able to escape it. Sentimentality can easily control all beings within the three realms, and we all have sentimentality.

I would like to analyze this from the perspective of a Dafa disciple.

Many Sides to Sentimentality

In my personal understanding, sentimentality is not a righteous god. Instead, it is a being that is both compassionate and evil. Its compassionate side, such as virtue, honor, and loyalty, can help maintain morality so human society does not degenerate too quickly. It can be turned into a variety of beautiful images, things, and scenes that fascinate people.

However, its evil side can be dark, and it accelerated the moral decline of today's human society.

Why do I say sentimentality is not a righteous god? It is because many attachments such as lust, jealousy, competition, resentment are associated with it.

Master said, “Qing is the fundamental source for the breeding of attachments.” (“Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Guangzhou” from Zhuan Falun Fajie –The Law of Zhuan Falun Explained)

So, sentimentality can manipulate a practitioner's attachments and strengthen them. It can initiate a vicious cycle that is difficult for practitioners to extricate themselves from. Without realizing it, they then walk the road arranged by old forces until they are dragged down.

I have also understood that sentimentality does not just manipulate a single attachment. Several attachments are intertwined and bundled together, like tangled snakes. The arrangements are vicious and evil, and hard to distinguish.

Sentimentality interferes with practitioners with the excuse that they have attachments. We cultivate in ordinary society, and our attachments can easily be affected by it. However, as long as we follow Master's teachings, study the Fa, cultivate ourselves, and keep our thoughts righteous, we can gradually get rid of our attachments.

If practitioners cannot keep their thoughts righteous, sentimentality may interfere with them. Thus, some practitioners waste lots of time and lose the opportunity to save sentient beings. Sentimentality uses the excuse of helping practitioners improve, but the real purpose is to interfere with Fa-rectification.

Sentimentality is a most unreliable and capricious being. Friendship, love, and promises are untrustworthy, no matter how wonderful ordinary people think they are. Those who are attached to sentimentality are willing to be its victim. Sentimentality is selfish from this perspective.

I personally think a practitioner's greatest weakness is the attachment to sentimentality. It can easily be latched on to and used by the old forces.

Master said:

"Those who are attached to affection for family will definitely be burned, entangled, and tormented by it. Pulled by the threads of affection and plagued by them throughout their lives, they will find it too late to regret at the end of their lives." ("Cultivators' Avoidances" from Essentials for Further Advancement)

Removing the Tangles

I suffered a lot because of my attachment to sentimentality. I recently enlightened to this issue so I would like to share it with fellow practitioners. We all came from different heavenly worlds and have reincarnated many times. We have also played different roles in creating human culture.

We reincarnated this last time and now assist Master in Fa-rectification. In the past, we have played many roles we did not want to play, but we had to because of the old forces' arrangements. Throughout history, there has been love and hatred, and we have accumulated so much karmic debit. We would never be able to repay it and escape from it if Master had not saved us. I would like to remind fellow practitioners not to be fooled by the appearances in ordinary human society.

In order to get rid of the attachment of sentimentality, we can only study the Fa with a calm heart, do the three things well, and use Dafa to measure what is right and wrong. We should look inward, eliminate attachments, and keep a clear head. We should control ourselves and deny the old forces' arrangements. This is the only way we can walk well the road that Master arranged for us and fulfill our vows.

Please correct me if there is anything inappropriate.