(Clearwisdom.net) I am 26 this year. I am from Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province. When I was a sophomore in college, I saw a flyer for Falun Dafa outside a park, so I went into the park and met with practitioners who were practicing the exercises there. The assistant taught me the Falun Gong exercises. I had suffered from migraine headaches for some time. When my head hurt again, I called for Teacher's help and the headache became much less severe.
On July 20, 1999 (when Jiang Zemin started to persecute Falun Gong), I was confused. Why did the Falun Gong that I learned sound so different from what was on TV? I was very confused. So I stayed at home to read Falun Gong books. I didn't communicate with other practitioners or look inward for my own attachments, yet I thought I was cultivating. In August 2003, I received an email from another practitioner and learned how to get onto the Minghui website. I downloaded Teacher's lectures, and started to seriously study the Fa and truly cultivate myself. During my cultivation, I found a lot of attachments in myself. I went through cultivation to get rid of these attachments. Here are some of my experiences.
Altruism vs. Egotism
What is altruism and what is egotism? I think it depends on the perspective from which you look at a specific issue. Teacher gave us an example in his lecture. A senior practitioner was hit by a car. The first thing that came to her mind was the driver. She thought, "The driver didn't hit me intentionally." So she said she was all right. I think this is a manifestation of altruism at one level. If the practitioner thought, "Well, he hit me. I will not stoop to his level and argue with him," then she was thinking from the point of herself, because she thought "I" would not mind and "I" would do so and so. We see this quite often when we do things. For instance, when you talk to others, do you think about "What to share with other practitioners," or do you think about "What I want to say." These different thoughts represent different levels of cultivation. However, some practitioners find it hard to recognize the difference.
Showing Off
If you feel you have something to be proud of, if you feel you are extraordinary, if you feel great about doing something, or when you talk to someone, either at home or in other places, you say, "Oh, I can comment on this without even thinking about it." These are examples of unconscious showing off.
Sometimes we are enlightened to the law of higher levels from Teacher's Fa, so we tell others our understanding because we feel our understanding is right. This is also a kind of showing off. Personally, I feel that "Truthfulness" has different manifestations at different levels. When we are enlightened to certain laws, sometimes we are attached to the way we understand it. In doing so, we are actually attached to ourselves, instead of doing something for the sake of Dafa and putting ourselves in the Fa.
The attachments of competitiveness and jealousy tend to stay together. I get rid of these two attachments by studying Teacher's article "Realms" in Falun Dafa: Essentials for Further Advancement,
"A wicked person is born of jealousy.
Out of selfishness and anger he complains about unfairness towards himself.
A benevolent person always has a heart of compassion.
With no discontentment or hatred, he takes hardship as joy.
An enlightened person has no attachments at all.
He quietly observes the people of the world deluded by illusions."
Attachments to competitiveness and jealousy are such that one feels jealous if others have something better, rather than following the universal law and letting things happen naturally. He feels it is unfair and fights for things. But actually, the universe treats everyone fairly based upon its nature. Many times, one suffers because of his own problems or because of karmic retribution, but he refuses to pay back what he owed.
Your Master Consciousness Needs to be Strong
For example, when I meditate, my mind can't become still. I start to think about something else. That "something else" that I am thinking about are those things formed in the human world and they are trivial. If I feel glad or angry about something in the world, impressed by something, furious about something, or if I have formed a strong concept about something, or I want to emphasize my own opinion about something, I am attached. I need to get rid of all of these in my cultivation, layer by layer. After I get rid of the attachment at one layer, when I look inside myself deeper, I may find it again at a deeper layer, so I have to get rid of it again. I believe this process is the process provided for us to attain selflessness and altruism.
Attachment to Money and Profit
In Zhuan Falun [1], Teacher gave us the example of a qigong master. When the company was assigning apartments to employees in need, he didn't say anything. When the management decided to give the apartment to him, he took it lightly, because he didn't care much about comfort or enjoyment among ordinary people. When you are an altruist, your heart feels relaxed, and you are not bothered by material things. If something is yours, nobody will take it away, and if something isn't yours, you won't want it, even if it is given to you. Then you are following the law of the universe. But sometimes it is very hard to let go of the attachment. You may just want to do it wrong, to get something that does not belong to you, and refuse to pay back what you owe. Then you are doing bad things and not following the law of the universe.
The Attachment of Laziness
Everything in the world is actually a delusion. We live in this world with a human body, and we have to eat and drink. We can't take it when it's cold, or when we're hungry, so we suffer. However, because we have this human body, we are able to pay off our karma by suffering. We are able to rectify ourselves in this dimension of delusion, and we can choose to go back. We can obtain the realm of unselfishness and altruism in our daily acts. However, many people are lazy. They allow the old forces to take advantage of the selfishness and laziness that we have formed in this dimension of delusion and interfere with our cultivation. This is disrespect for the Buddha Fa. I am lazy sometimes, and I am actually committing a sin. I hope that practitioners don't have this attachment.
Desire
Everyone has a pair of eyes and all kinds of senses in this dimension of delusion. These senses can be our attachments. For example, if I eat a pear, I feel it is delicious. Then people form two concepts. The first is that a thing of this shape is a pear. The second is that a pear tastes good. From my understanding, a cultivator should "see as if seeing nothing." In other words, you see something but you don't even think about it. You just know it, and that's it. Another attachment is desire. A child doesn't have the attachment of desire. He is pure and innocent, but grown-ups lose it. This is because when we grow up, we gradually form sentimentality in this world. When we are controlled by sentiment, we regard it as ourselves. Because of sentiment, people are unable to live rationally. They do a lot of bad things and create a lot of karma.
Is My Heart Lost among Ordinary People?
I once dreamed of someone who said I was dependable. He said I did my work responsibly. Actually, the so-called "being dependable" or "being responsible at work" is just an expression of our cultivation state that we leave for others. We should put our hearts into diligently returning to our true selves, instead of getting praise from ordinary people.
In addition, when we tell people about the persecution, our minds should be on saving people. We should illustrate our point with something that happened among ordinary people, but we should not put our hearts on those things. Whatever happens among ordinary people is just like that, and it happens for a reason. We don't need to think too much about it. We are cultivating among ordinary people, and we just illustrate our points with some ordinary people's thoughts or dealings to save people.
For example, I feel happy when I make a basket when playing basketball, and I feel embarrassed when I miss a shot. This is sentiment, and it also shows that I put my mind on attachments instead of on cultivation.
Telling People about the Persecution
When Falun Dafa is undermined, if we don't go out to tell people what's going on, we are not true cultivators. If you cultivate Falun Dafa, you know Dafa created everything, and you respect Falun Dafa from deep in your heart. It's a rational respect and it's an understanding of Dafa from the Fa. If Falun Dafa is persecuted, and we don't go out to let the world know what's going on, everything we are created from is on the line, because we are created by Dafa. We should respect Dafa from the Fa. In other words, we are saving people with compassion and mercy. We should not treat people without compassion just because they have sometimes said something that they shouldn't have said or did something they shouldn't have done.
In "Beyond the Limits of Forbearance" in Essentials for Further Advancement II, Teacher said,
"[Dafa disciples' Forbearance] is tolerance for the purpose of upholding the truth; and is mercy toward and salvation of beings who still have human nature and righteous thoughts."
A lot of people do not know about the truth of Falun Dafa, so we should treat them with compassion, to let them know what's going on and to save them. That is true respect for Dafa.
It's very important to send forth righteous thoughts. My understanding is that it is a process of assimilating to Dafa in the dimension we are at. When we send righteous thoughts with our true thoughts, aren't we assimilating our dimension to the law of the universe? Another issue is, when we send righteous thoughts, we should not have the attachment of competitiveness. The old forces that shouldn't have existed should just not exist, and we weed them out. We just do what Teacher has told us to do.
[1] Zhuan Falun: a book by Mr. Li Hongzhi that explains the main principles of Falun Dafa.
