Selfishness Revealed While Doing Project Work

(Minghui.org) I was asked to translate an online article about forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners into Portuguese. The article was long, and another practitioner assisted me by reviewing the article after I was finished.

After the article was published, I noticed that another user had marked the article for deletion. This moved my heart, and I did not know what to do.

One of the thoughts that passed through my head was, “How much time did I lose translating this article only to have it eliminated? It's just not worth staying with this truth-clarification project.” I then denied this thought, along with the attachment to gain and loss, and especially the desire to receive rewards and recognition for my efforts put into the article. After all, I knew that translating the article was the right thing to do, and I was at peace, even if the article was to be eliminated.

However, I maintained a negative opinion about the person who proposed eliminating the article, believing that he was evil or had malicious intentions. He wrote an argument about why he thought the article should be deleted and I replied, but I still had the attachment of rejecting criticism, and I looked down on him, thinking that he was not really worthy of my consideration.

Looking Inward

His response made me feel bad, not because of what he said, but because I realized that I had not acted well as a practitioner, and I had failed to have a compassionate heart.

Soon after, another website editor rationally and logically argued against removing the article.

This entire process provided me with valuable examples of responses and arguments to use against the proposed article elimination. However, the most important of all was that the process made me look inside myself.

Understanding Forgiveness

I recently started learning Chinese, including written Chinese – learning the characters and their meanings. I was learning the word “forgiven” (恕), which is composed of the characters “similar” and “heart,” which implies that our hearts are similar; that is, when someone does you wrong (or in my case, when someone does something that I do not agree with), I should try to view the situation through their heart, and perhaps through this process learn to forgive.

That same day, a Chinese practitioner helped me understand my attachment. When I showed him the character I was learning, he said that in Chinese, the phrase “to forgive” (宽恕) means that only those who have an expansive heart know how to forgive. He said that a jealous person, with a narrow heart, does not know how to forgive. That's when I became aware of my bad attachments of selfishness, guilt, and looking down on myself and other people. I had to learn to forgive myself and others, and to cultivate a broad, understanding, and generous heart.

Master said:

“So what's their state of mind? It's tolerance, an extremely immense tolerance, being able to accept other beings, and being able to truly think from other beings' perspectives. This is something a lot of you haven't achieved yet in your cultivation, but you're gradually catching on and achieving it.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.”)

I realized that the person who proposed eliminating the article also had a purpose in life, and I valued his existence as much as the other person who defended the article. Both taught me to deal with a problem, and both were important. The experience made me aware of my xinxing loophole, which I was able overcome. I was finally able to appreciate my own virtues, and cherish my own qualities and those of others, by valuing virtue and being forgiving.

I also thought that if I was not able to eliminate my attachments, and unable to let go of the attachment to selfishness–the nature of the old cosmos–the things that I did to clarify the facts about the persecution would be doomed to be eliminated, along with the old cosmos.

The article has not been deleted. Instead, it will shine all the more, to continue exposing the persecution of Falun Gong, and to save more people.

Finally, I would like to share the poem “Real cultivation” from Hong Yin as a reminder to guide my cultivation:

“Cherish Zhen, Shan, Ren,And in Falun Dafa shall you succeed;Cultivate your xinxing withouta moment’s pause,To taste the wonder,so immeasurable, at Consummation.”

The above is my limited understanding of the Fa. I ask my fellow practitioners to please point out any deficiencies in my understanding.