(Clearwisdom.net) Although I started practicing Falun Dafa in 2003, I had not yet understood the magnificence of the Fa, as I had only truly cultivated for over one year. In today's Fa-rectification period, I would like to share the following insights of mine regarding how to be a true Dafa disciple.
Put into simple words, what is required is to listen to Teacher and do the three things well. However, doing these three things well is not as simple as it seems.
In my opinion, one needs to be truly focused and determined in order to do the three things well.
We need to be determined in studying the Fa; otherwise it becomes a formality and is useless no matter how much we study. If we do not put our heart into studying it, it is in vain no matter how much time we put in.
We need to be focused when sending forth righteous thoughts; otherwise we cannot utilize our mighty power maximally to eliminate all evils. In Zhuan Falun Teacher discusses the difficulty of capturing an evil being:
"You can't get a hold of it with your ordinary person's hands. When you flail your hand around over there, it ignores you and it even laughs at you smugly. It thinks your grabbing aimlessly is pretty funny."
Our hearts need to be calm and pure when clarifying the truth to others. When we clarify the truth, some practitioners keep looking around and are afraid of being reported, or they worry, "What if he doesn't believe me?" or, "What if he doesn't want to withdraw from Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?" When you have such impure thoughts and strong attachments, you are not clarifying truth to save people but are giving energy to the evil. The ultimate goal for a practitioner is to save sentient beings. Thus we need to cultivate well and emit an enormous amount of energy with our strong righteous thoughts. If we do not cultivate well and cannot clarify the truth from the angle of the Fa, we would exhaust ourselves without any good results. Sometimes, we can even get stymied by others' questions, and thus cannot achieve the goal of saving sentient beings this way.
In addition, I think we should pay attention to the following issues:
Saving sentient beings does not equate with how many flyers one distributes or how much one has done, or how much money he donates for making truth-clarification materials. Some practitioners think that they are doing well as long as they clarified the truth or distributed flyers or donated some money to help with making truth-clarification materials, while they subconsciously have the attachment of achieving consummation. Those practitioners really need to calm down and look within, in order to get rid of this attachment so that evil cannot take advantage of that loophole.
Being courageous and experienced is not the same as having righteous thoughts. Some veteran practitioners have practiced for a long period of time and have done many positive things for the Fa-rectification. They naturally think that they are very "experienced." Therefore they think that they are without fear, and righteous in their thoughts and deeds. As a result, they even talk about things regarding Dafa over cell phones, which is disregarding important safety issues. They talk loudly about Dafa issues regardless of their surroundings. They do not take others' advice when people remind them about safety, and even imply that others are not righteous enough.
Being clever is not the same as being wise. During our cultivation, we may have interference such as human notions, human mindset and the poisonous factors of the Chinese Communist Party's evil spirit and culture. Under this type of interference, being cunning, covering up the truth and making connections via underhanded means can easily be considered the same as being wise. They are different. In his article, "Sage" (Essentials for Further Advancement), Teacher tells us, "...he is full of great aspirations while minding minor details. With a broad knowledge of the laws and principles, he is able to unravel uncertainties. Offering salvation to the world and its people, he builds up his merit naturally."
In fact, it is not an easy matter to be a qualified disciple in the Fa-rectification period. We need to truly cultivate during the process of saving sentient beings, as saving people was our wish when we come to this human world, and it is our responsibility and mission that history has bestowed upon us. Let us remember Teacher's words,
"I don't want to leave behind even one single Dafa disciple, but you have got to improve yourselves through real Fa-study and cultivation! With validating the Fa, you should save the world's people and do well the three things Dafa disciples are supposed to do. Be diligent! Cast aside your human attachments. Godhood isn't far away." ("In Fa-Rectification Your Thoughts Have to Be Righteous, Not Human")
