Take Hardships as Blessings, Cultivate Inside

I have been in the United States for more than one year. Now, when I look back, I realize that I have experienced more hardships during this one year, since I started practicing Falun Dafa in 1995. I feel fortunate to have encountered these difficulties, because otherwise I would not have been able to improve. Just like what Master Li said: í If you do not experience any hardships, I would not be happy, instead the demons would be pleased.í

I am a technician in my company. My responsibility is assembling and testing different kinds of micro-thermal equipment. In the early days, everything in the company was new to me, and I had to learn from my colleagues. I felt like I was being treated as an apprentice. I was ordered around to do all kinds of trivial work that no one else liked to do. I had to endure impatience too. Whenever I ran into something new, I had to ask others. When I asked too much, they would get impatient, or if they happened to be in a bad mood, they would easily got impatient, too.

Different products have different assembling procedures. If the procedures are not well followed, some problem may occur when the products are tested. Thus, this might bring the company a big loss.

For a certain period of time, I made mistakes very often. Something always went wrong, even in an absurd manner. Sometimes, although I obviously followed procedures very well and even got the green light from my colleagues, the results were still frustrating. Not surprisingly, I got a lot of harsh words from the lab supervisor, which made me very sad. I thought to myself, í I'm merely trying to do my best. Is there anything wrong with that?í To make it worse, one of my colleagues always reported to the supervisor upon spotting even the tiniest mistake of mine. The supervisor then got restless immediately and shouted, í You can't make mistakes all the time. Otherwise, I can't keep you here any more.í Then I would get furious too and thought, í All human beings make mistakes. Do you think I did them intentionally?í At those times, my mind would be occupied by one idea, í Fire me, then. If worst co!mes to worst, I will go home. That's it. I'm fed up with this kind of life.í This situation continued for a long time, until one day I made an error when the supervisor happened to pass by me. He asked me what happened. I told him I made another mistake and expected his explosion of complaints. To my surprise, he went away without saying anything. All of a sudden, I felt awakened from a dream. So many days of reprimands and arguments all came out of one attachment: Every time a mistake occurred, I always remained silent and tried to cover it up. When someone came to inquire, I promised that everything was fixed and fine. I always held the belief that so long as I ended up with a good result, everybody should be happy. They shouldn't bother asking what happened in the process. On the surface, my argument sounds reasonable. But to a cultivation practitioner, it is not. A practitioner should be following the principle of "Truthfulness", doing things in a n!oble way, willing to admit to any mistakes and crystal clear in every matter. Isn't that attempting to cover up mistakes a big attachment? Surprisingly, after that event I seldom made mistakes. Consequently, the supervisor never complained again, and no one bothered to report to him any more. Just as Master Li teaches: Whenever you encounter some trouble or feel inharmonious with your environment, you are in fact in discord with the universeí s characteristics. Once you achieve accord, however, you will find that all trouble will be gone.

Probably because no one in my family creates trouble for me, I'm destined to encounter more trouble in my company. A colleague seems very aggressive in every single matter. He has a habit of preempting the company's equipment, even foreseeing no immediate use. Therefore, when the time comes that I need to use it, I cannot, and my work will be delayed. Besides, I'm a person of discipline and order and always make my tools and equipment well assorted. He is just the opposite, leaving every equipment messy, greasy and sometimes broken after he uses it. At times when he could not find his own, he used mine and occasionally lost mine too. My work would then be heavily affected. Similar kind of things happened to me almost every day. Several times I could not control my temper and burst into anger. Afterwards I regretted what I had done. On the issue of improving Xinxing while there was a conflict, I felt that I was moving up very slowly. Why couldn't I feel in me !a heart of compassion and kindness? As a trivial matter could hurt me, I was far from being firm and motionless in the practice. Master has said:" It will all occur in the form of ordinary people's situation such as someone may irritate you today, or someone may suddenly upset you or say something bad about you. It is all up to you how you react to these issues. Why do you run into these problems? They are all caused by your own karma. We have already eliminated many pieces of it for you, except for that tiny bit which is left and arranged as obstacles in different phases for upgrading your Xinxing, testing your mind, as well as removing your various attachments." ( Zhuan Falun p149-150). Master has made it so clear, cultivation is just to cultivate myself, so if there is a problem, it must be something wrong with myself. I thought to myself, í My heart is so fragile. It must be tempered three rounds in the boiling soda water and then three round!s in the boiling salt water until it's coated with callus. Then probably it won't be moved by anything.í Some days later I watched the videotape of Master Lií s Fa lecture in Australia. When a practitioner asked him, "Why is it so hard for me to remove selfishness from my heart? Does that mean I'm a slack practitioner?" To my surprise, Master Li answered, "You are doing not bad, because you have become conscious of that." Master does not praise disciples very often. His answer deeply touched me and set me to meditate. I was suddenly enlightened to an attachment. Master has told us, í From now on, whatever you do, you should have first consideration for others so as to attain the right enlightenment of selflessness and altruism.í ( Buddha-Nature Is Free From Omission). I had been reading these words without really giving them serious attention. It was until that moment that I discovered the meaning of the words. !I used to complain why I could not feel in me the heart of compassion and kindness and why I could not be tolerant enough. Now I understand why. It's because in the first place I had adopted a biased attitude toward others. I looked at them as selfish, rough and unorganized in working. I always had perceived things around me from my own angle. When others did not fit my perceptions, I felt uncomfortable with them. Why had I become furious? It was because they disturbed my work and created trouble for me. Every bit of my thinking had been about myself only. Was that not selfish? If he had been making trouble for others, disturbing others' work, I would not have become angry.

In every matter we must be thoughtful of others! After I started adopting such an attitude, I no longer felt annoyed by them. On the contrary, I start to feel that they are suffering from the bitterness of life.

In the latter half of last year, a friend of mine made several unexpected calls to me from Los Angeles and asked to borrow $3,000. We got to know each other back in China and had been seldom in touch after arriving in the United States. He had a car accident and had to pay a handsome sum for the damage claim. Learning my situation, my colleagues advised me against lending him the money. They reminded me that if he does not pay me the money, I had no way to get it back. They also said to me, í One more friend, one more source of trouble. No one minds you when you are not needed. Once they start contacting you, they are either asking to borrow money or getting you into trouble.í I understood that those were ordinary people's perceptions and did not take them seriously. But the problem came when I discovered that he was not telling me the truth. Should I lend him the money or not? I knew it was not accidental and was a chance for me to put down m!y attachment for interest. But on the other hand, an ordinary person is paying for what he owed for wrongdoings in the past in the form of karma payback, whenever he encounters any trouble. If I help him, would I be doing right or wrong?

In those days, he called me almost every day to push for a result. I sensed his urgency and guessed the true reason might be that he lost his job and stumbled into an economic crisis. He might worry that his landlord would soon throw him out of the house. He did not want to tell me the truth for fear that once I knew the truth, I would doubt his ability to pay me back and would not lend him the money. Finally I told him that since I had been in the U.S. for only half a year and didn't have much savings, I could only lend him $2000 and hoped that he could borrow the rest from another friend. He agreed and promised to pay back the money this February. I sent him a check but did not expect he would be able to pay back that soon. I took it as a gift to him and pinned no hope on getting it back.

This experience involves the question of how to balance the principle of Wu wei (non-attachment), that is, not meddling in ordinary people's affairs, with the principle of always being thoughtful of others. My understanding is that Wu Wei means not to intentionally meddle in affairs in ordinary human society that are unrelated to cultivation practice. But in our normal work and daily life, we may deal with different types of people--relatives, friends, bosses, colleagues, customers, etc. They interact with us due to some reason: they may have some predestined relations with us and provide us a cultivation environment. They may have conflicts of interests with us, create emotional clashes with us, or put us into great trouble. Some may come and ask to borrow money. Master Li says, "During cultivation practice in the ordinary human society, we should respect parents, guide our children, and be kind and considerate to others including your relatives under any circumsta!nces. One should treat everyone the same and be nice to both parents and children, as well as be thoughtful to others in every aspect. Such a mind is unselfish, kind, and benevolent" (p 205, Zhuan Falun). Master Li also says, "You should always display compassion and kindness toward others and think of others before doing anything. There will not be any problem, if the first thing you will think of, whenever encountering a problem, is whether others can put up with this matter and if it will hurt anyone" (p 140, Zhuan Falun).

The "others" talked about here, as I comprehend, refers to all types of people that we interact with in our work and daily life, not those that are excluded from our life circle.

As cultivation practitioners, we should be good people in the first place. If someone hits upon a big trouble and asks for help from us, yet we are reluctant to give him a hand within our ability, I don't think we are living up to the standard of being í kind and considerate to others in every aspect.í On the other hand, if it had been my relatives, parents or siblings who came to ask for help, I might have helped them with no hesitation. Is that not sentimentality of the ordinary people? But, if we can treat even strangers as nice as we treat our relatives, then, in some sense, we have shaken off ordinary people's sentimentality. It's benevolence. That mind is unselfish.

Only by getting rid of selfishness through cultivation shall we be able to remain untouched by ordinary people's sentimentality. Selflessness is the state of cultivation completion. "When it is difficult to endure it, you can endure it. When it is impossible to do it, you can do it." Let's bear Master's teachings in mind and diligently make advances on the path of cultivation practice.

Ye Ping 9/18/99