Some Enlightenment: “Children Are Common People”

(Minghui.org) The phrase “children are common people” originated with Yan Zhitui, the author of Family Instructions of the Yan and a famous educator of the South-North Dynasty. The first time I read these words, they shocked me and gave me an understanding at a higher realm. Now 20 years into cultivation practice, I have some enlightenment on qing (emotion or sentimentality).

I used to have strong qing when I was an ordinary person. I worried a lot about my parents, children, and relatives. After practicing Falun Dafa, I learned qing was not a good thing and that I had to let it go. From a cultivator’s perspective, a family is as if several people checked into the same hotel for a few days. They came from different places and will go to different destinations.

People struggle amid qing because they bring it upon themselves. No matter if you take it easy or try to avoid it through cunning, you can’t beat your fate. It is the same for your children. They have their own fate. An ordinary person has no power to alter the arrangement made by higher beings.

Master said,

“Everyone has his own fate, and no one can handle that of another person. Even if they are your family, they are your family in this life, but in the next life perhaps they will be the family of some other person; and moreover, in the last life they might have been someone else’s family, too. So everyone has his own fate. Then if we want others to be a certain way, it definitely won’t work, because human lives are not arranged by humans, but by higher beings.” (Teachings at the Conference in Houston)

The power to sever the ties of qing comes from the Fa. Studying the Fa does not necessarily mean understanding the Fa. When one understands the Fa, the power of the Fa can lift one above qing, where human notions collapse into rubble. There is no more qing to curtain one’s vision.

Seeing children as among the masses is an attitude a practitioner should have. With this mindset, one no longer suffers from worry. One’s heart has become free.

I remembered a couplet displayed at the ancient Chenghuang temple. It reads, “Sons and daughters are debts: either they collect the debt you owe them or pay back their debt; they come for the debt. Husband and wife are fate, either a good fate or a bad fate; you will not marry without a fate.”

Since marriage is part of one’s fate, what can you be so attached to? Sometimes practitioners complain about their husbands and children. I know it is because they can’t let go of qing.

My own experience is that your child will change quickly if you eliminate qing quickly. My son is quickly improving. I understand that my son and I have a fate in the Fa, so he became my son in this life. It is Master Li who turned him around and arranged a new life for him.