Falun Dafa Minghui.org www.minghui.org PRINT

The Mentality of Pursuit vs. Faith

June 11, 2004 |   By a Practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net)

Many of our fellow practitioners have heard the story about Jesus crossing the sea. Jesus once took his disciples to cross the sea, and many disciples were in the same boat. Then Jesus fell asleep. A storm arose when disciples were rowing the boat, and it was as if the boat was sinking. The disciples were waiting for Jesus to hurry and wake up; however, Jesus did not wake up. Some disciples were terrified, so they woke Jesus up. After Jesus got up, he walked to the front of the boat commanding the wind and the sea to stop the storm. Then, the wind and the water became calm and tranquil. With a very serious look on his face, Jesus turned and said to his disciples, "Where is your faith?"

Now, we are the Dafa disciples, and Teacher's Law Body and Fa-guarding righteous gods are watching over us. Our standard of conduct and morality should be higher than that of the disciples of Jesus. The disciples in this story who woke Jesus up were the ones who had the least faith. Jesus was just by their side, yet, they were still worried and feared that the boat would sink. They wanted to wake Jesus up to solve their problems.

In "Lecture at the Conference in Singapore", Teacher says,

"If you call your master every time you run into a problem, isn't that another attachment?" For the past few years I have seen on our website practitioners' experience in asking Teacher for such-and-such as they had the mentality of pursuit. For example, when practitioners clarified the truth, were in tribulation or sick, or when their family members were not doing well, etc., it was because of their mentality of pursuit that they asked Teacher for help. On the surface, this is not having a strong confidence in our righteous thoughts. Fundamentally speaking, this is not having a strong faith in Teacher or Dafa. Teacher's Law Body is just by our side, and Teacher's help does not come about through our pursuit. Isn't this our mentality of dependence? Truth-clarification materials of Dafa definitely have the inner meaning and power of Dafa, and as long as practitioners' righteous thoughts are strong, they will be able to display the power they are supposed to have.

I remembered seeing an ancient story on the Pure Insight website. A person by the name of Yuan Zishi had a vicious thought of killing a friend. A cultivator with his Third Eye open saw several dozens of wicked ghosts following him. Yuan Zishi thought about the consequence of killing his friend who owed him money. If he killed him, there was nobody to provide for his wife and elderly mother so he set his vicious thoughts aside and he harbored thoughts of kindness. The cultivator then saw hundreds of gods of good fortune following him. Think about it, when an everyday person has a kind thought without seeking to gain, the gods went to protect him, imagine how much more this would apply to practitioners.

Of course, Teacher says,

"The Fa has different requirements for cultivators at different levels." ("Non-Omission", Essentials For Further Advancement). For certain practitioners who are being persecuted, they have strong attachments and fear which leaves them very little righteous thoughts so they asked for Teacher's help under those circumstances. This shows that their Buddha nature has come out again. It is not that the mentality of pursuit is in sync with the standard of Dafa practitioners, instead, this is a transitional process of improving one's character. Therefore, the standards are different. Under general circumstances, however, we should not seek Teacher's help unless we are facing very serious, special problems.

The above is just my own personal understanding; please correct me if there is anything improper.