Gratitude for Master Li

(Minghui.org) Dear Master Li, dear fellow practitioners,

I obtained the Fa in September 1998. Twenty years have passed by so quickly. Yet, remembering almost any single day, so many things happened in a single day, so many attachments were hit upon and ground down, only to reveal more attachments. So many things were tried, moved forward, failed, or succeeded. New knowledge and wisdom were presented through cultivation, so that even though the time has passed so quickly, at the end of any day, these past 20 years have felt as if an entire year passed in that one single day.

I have moved from one house to another and from city to city more times than I can count. I have participated in truth-clarification projects from large to small in many fields that have started, blossomed, and transformed. Some have bloomed, others shrank, but all carried the purity of the hearts of the practitioners who started them and carried their weight on their determined paths to save sentient beings, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to them in some form.

I’ve witnessed birth, old age, illness, and death, and studied the depths of depravity of those consumed by the evil specter in the human world, trying to make sense of the senseless, to be able to use that to clarify the truth along my predestined path. I also study the depths of the faith, courage, and wisdom that Falun Dafa practitioners in the Fa-rectification period have to sustain themselves despite the persecution of their minds, bodies, and spirits, as well as the persecution of their loved ones, their society, and beyond. Their resilience and their dignity often leave me speechless and in awe. And when I share their stories with non-practitioners, it inspires them to have respect for Dafa.

In “On Dafa” in Zhuan Falun Master wrote:

“When people show the appropriate respect and reverence toward Dafa as it manifests here in this world, they, their race, or their nation will enjoy blessings or honor.”

If anyone had tried to tell me before I began this journey 20 years ago that I would see and experience all these things along this path of cultivation, I don’t know what I would’ve thought. I am sure I’d have been highly skeptical. Cultivation is just too broad and unfathomable for my human mind to comprehend, especially before I became a cultivator of Dafa.

Despite the vast diversity of experiences I've had on my cultivation path, the one thing that has remained ever constant, along every single step of my journey, is Master’s guidance. Master’s guidance has taken me out of situations that seem impossible to solve without negativity, anger, conflict, or resentment, and have always resulted in a harmonious solution, a harmonious solution that I couldn’t have conceived of on my own, that I couldn’t plan, that I couldn’t imagine. But again and again, Master showed me that what I thought was impossible was indeed possible.

Following Master’s path has shown me that harmony and righteousness are always a solution, that they are always achievable when we follow the path arranged by Master. Every detail, connection, conversation, thought, and act are intricately arranged and present themselves to affect the most wonderful outcome and miracles in the human world here. I only have to follow Master closely.

Master wrote in the poem “The Master-Disciple Bond” in Hong Yin II:

“...There is no affect between master and discipleThe Buddha’s grace remolds Heaven and EarthWhen disciples have ample righteous thoughtsMaster has the power to turn back the tide”

I only want to follow Master’s arrangement for me, I don’t acknowledge any other arrangement.

To think that Master Li Hongzhi, the Lord Creator, has a path for me. For me: one teeny-tiny little being among countless sentient beings, within countless planets and stars and galaxies, and even countless galaxies. Master has arranged a carefully arranged path for me to walk to carry out a divine mission, a divine vow that I can’t see with my human eyes or remember with my human brain.

While my human mind and body are full of attachments and emotion, full of shortcomings and impurities, Master still guides me. Even when I am full of fear and selfishness, anger and jealousy, Master still guides me. Even when my mind wanders all over the place during meditation, Master still guides me. Even when I doubt my worthiness to receive this greatest blessing and opportunity, even when I feel completely hopeless, or even doubt or question him, Master still guides me.

He asks nothing of me. And it has always been my greatest honor to follow him. He gives so wholeheartedly, so wisely, so unconditionally, so magnanimously. My human heart, language, and expression are so lacking in any ability to adequately describe the miracles and transformation I have experienced through Dafa cultivation by following Master.

In “On Dafa” in Zhuan Falun Master wrote:

“Dafa is the wisdom of the Creator.”

The more I learn and experience through cultivating Dafa, through studying Master’s teachings, and walking the path he arranged for me, the more I realize that any knowledge I have is so minuscule in comparison to this great Dafa. While my narrow human mind constantly tries to impose its limited thinking on my cultivation path, it is Master’s omnipotent wisdom that always brings the greatest results.

I don’t write these words because I feel any more special than any other Dafa disciple in the Fa-rectification period. I am simply one among millions. I write these words because, like all Dafa disciples, I know I am truly blessed and I need to remind myself of that because I am often too easily lost in the mundane world as I cultivate. Master tells us that He treasures us more than we treasure ourselves, yet too often my human thoughts cloud my righteous thoughts and I forget.

In the article “Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s)” from Essentials for Further Advancement II, Master wrote:

“The truth is, I treasure you more than you treasure yourselves!”

If Master, the Creator, treasures me and provides a divine path for me, then there is nothing more precious than I could ever imagine. It is something my gratitude can never, ever repay.

In “Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference 2003” from Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. III Master said:

“...study the Fa, study the Fa, and study the Fa well”

In “Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference” from Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. IV Master said:

“I’ve told you to study the Fa a lot, to study the Fa, study the Fa, study the Fa…”

In Explaining the Content of Falun Dafa, Master wrote:

“Study the Fa, obtain the Fa,Compare how you study, compare how you cultivate;Measure yourself against the Fa in everything,Putting into action, that is cultivation.”

Master has taught the Fa and provided an unimaginably divine path for every single Dafa disciple, no matter how different our pasts, presents, and futures may be. And however complex things become along my path in this human world, when I calm myself and follow his guidance to study the Fa and cultivate myself, then Master’s path is always clear and it is always the best.

This year we celebrate the 20th World Falun Dafa Day, and it is a precious time to reflect upon my shortcomings and my faith, and to remind myself of the blessings I have received by choosing to follow Master. And for as long as I am in this human world, I am grateful to be able to be reminded of Master’s blessings for me through the sharing of fellow cultivators, who have been a constant inspiration—another example of Master guiding me along this precious path of cultivation.

There is no greater joy or happiness I can imagine than being able to follow Master. No matter the weather, the hardship, or the tribulation, there really is true joy in every step of cultivation, because Master has laid out the divine path. I only need to keep striving forward along that path, with his guidance, one step at a time.

Thank you, fellow disciples. And thank you, thank you, thank you to Master Li.