Walking the Path of Cultivation Well

(Minghui.org) A practitioner was recently released from a long term in prison. Not wanting to fall behind in cultivation, she decided that she would study three lectures of Zhuan Falun every day and then clarify the facts.

This upset her family since she had been persecuted many times. They did not understand and refused to let her study the Fa teachings or do the exercises. So she rented an apartment and lived on her own. She had no interest in finding a job to support her family.

In the past she'd been a professional tutor with many years of experience. However, she thought that tutoring would require too much effort and take up too much of her time. She wanted to find an easy job and earn just enough to support herself. But she still couldn't find a suitable job after some time. Then she heard that it was easier to make a living and clarify the truth overseas, so she wanted to go. She spent a lot of money and energy trying to get a visa, but wasn't able to do so.

After all these false starts, she finally went back to tutoring. She decided she needed to support herself and her family instead of depending on other practitioners financially. She realized that only when she did well in ordinary society, would her family have a positive opinion of Dafa. Master said:

“The Dafa of the universe (the Buddha Fa) is coherent and complete, from the highest level to the lowest level. You should know that ordinary human society also comprises a level of the Fa. If everyone were to study Dafa and give up their jobs in society, ordinary human society would cease to exist, and so would this level of the Fa. Ordinary human society is the manifestation of the Fa at the lowest level, and it is also the form of existence of life and matter for the Buddha Fa at this level.” (“Cultivation and Work,” Essentials for Further Advancement)

Therefore, we must cultivate in this ordinary human society and conform to it. That is how our school of cultivation works. It is not easy to walk such a path well, but it is vitally important.

“Everything you're doing today is the actual practice that will be used as examples in the future, [including the aspect] of being able to cultivate while doing ordinary people's work. If you go to extremes you'll wreck this path, so you cannot go to extremes. You should just openly and nobly do well in what you should do in society, and then cultivate. Then you'll definitely be able to meet the standard that cultivators should meet, the standard for Consummation, because this is the path that the people of the future will take.” (Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference)

I was another example of going extremes in this regard. I was a lecturer at a college and was forced to leave my job when the persecution started. Initially I found another regular job. Then I heard from other practitioners that tutoring was easier and that I could make more money and have a more flexible schedule. So I became a professional tutor.

At the beginning it wasn't too bad when I tutored in subjects that I was familiar with. Later on, I started working at a tutoring company and realized that it really wasn't so easy. It wasn't enough just to know the textbooks. You cannot teach what you do not know yourself. I found myself staying up all night trying to solve some of the test questions, then teaching the next day. It was very difficult for the first three years, before I became familiar with all the material—I had hardly any time to clarify the truth. From the perspective of cultivation, I wasted a lot of time!

I've noticed that practitioners who go to extremes tend to have a hard time integrating into regular society. It is hard for them to interact with people casually and difficult for them to talk about Dafa and the persecution because they do not know the key issues that concern everyday people. On the other hand, when a practitioner is very busy with a regular job and treats Fa-study as a formality without truly understanding the Fa, it can also be difficult because his or her words do not carry the power of the Fa.

It is not a simple matter to walk our cultivation paths well. We need the guidance of Master and the Fa for every step, and we cannot go to extremes.

“Some students need to pay attention here: every time I mention that the evil is getting smaller and smaller, and becoming less and less able to carry on, a lot of students think, "Hmm, then I'm going to drop everything else and just do Dafa work." You can't do that. You can't go to extremes with anything Dafa disciples do. Just live a normal life and cultivate normally, and at the same time do what Dafa disciples should do. That's how it should be at present. In ordinary society, other than doing what Dafa disciples should do, there isn't any difference in form [from ordinary people], on the surface it looks the same as ordinary society, only you're a cultivator. That's how it should be. What you're doing today is establishing things for the future, and that's how this path should go. This is the most upright path and what cultivators of the future will follow, so you can't behave in an extreme way at all or go to any extremes, as that would create unnecessary obstacles and trouble for yourselves. Any and all extreme ways of thinking are not from what I've told you, and they could be a form of attachment and will cause trouble; we've already experienced a lot of things like that. I think that as Dafa disciples who have come this far today, you are supposed to be very clear on a lot of things and be more and more rational now, and you should know what's going on when you run into problems. So in these areas you should be very clearheaded now, and you should no longer be interfered with by certain things.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Western U.S. Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. V)

The only way to walk the path well is to study the Fa well and study more. Perhaps the tendency to go extremes is also part of Communist Party culture that needs to be eliminated. We must live and work among everyday people, cultivate ourselves in this environment, and save sentient beings!