(Clearwisdom.net) I began to practice Falun Dafa as a fifth-grader. I matured as a Falun Dafa practitioner and have experienced severe persecution since 1999. I was interfered with by qing and witnessed the persecution of other practitioners. As I grew older, I began to realize that we had to be able to cultivate in any kind of environment. This was fundamental to the practice and no excuse could change that.
Watching TV may not be a problem for many practitioners, as they rarely watch it. But there are some practitioners who watch TV, and I was one of those who developed an attachment to it. I believed that as a student, who was under strong pressure to study well, that I watched TV for relaxation. Therefore, watching TV was a minor issue and thus it was perfectly all right. Sometimes, I would watch TV on the weekend for the entire day or daily during holidays. It interfered with my Fa study and affected my validating the Fa. I became depressed and felt miserable, but did not realize it. Today, when looking back, I feel deep regret. I would like to tell fellow practitioners about my lessons learned from watching TV in the hope that they would learn from my experience. And I will eliminate this attachment while writing about it.
Some attachments appear minor at first, but over time they become bigger and bigger. The attachment may control you without your realizing it. It is just as I used the excuse of taking a rest when watching TV, which then became my priority. Therefore, I would take a rest whenever I thought I was tired. Another excuse was that I was in need of entertainment. I believed that people would get bored if I talked about Falun Dafa too often. I thought I could find some topics from watching TV that I could use when talking to ordinary people. My excuse was that I was conforming to everyday people in order to clarify the truth better. But in writing this article, I realized that all these excuses were to cover my fundamental attachment of pursuing comfort.
Why did I enjoy watching TV? I could sit back on the sofa and select whatever program I wanted with a click of the remote control. I did not have to think about saving sentient beings and how to validate the Fa. I was completely relaxed and even my primordial spirit no longer was in charge of my body. My thoughts immersed themselves with the plots. When I watched TV, I had no righteous thoughts and was controlled by my notions. I would burst into tears, get excited or angry, laugh, or daydream along with the story of the TV program. I had a feeling that since I could not pursue fame, personal interest, sentimentality and so on, I could satisfy my sense of loss through watching TV. At those times, I did not act as a practitioner.
Looking back with a calm mind, I now realize that TV is a dangerous tool that can bring back the attachments that we eliminated through diligent cultivation. It brings chaos to people's mind and thoughts. It took a long time to calm down after watching TV. Sometimes I had to study the Fa for a long time to again achieve the mental state of a practitioner.
I thought watching TV was an addiction, like drinking or smoking. When we watched TV, all that we had cultivated left our body, and even the main spirit did not want to be in charge of the body, because it didn't want to see the programs produced by people's demon nature. Although some programs seemed to be righteous, they were produced according to today's declined moral standards and ordinary people's standards. Only when looking at it through the standards of Falun Dafa and the principle of "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance," can we recognize this. For example, almost all TV shows revolve around love. We could even say that most topics were about love and love was the basis of the plots. But sentimentality, the basis for love, is exactly the attachment that practitioners should eliminate.
There were many myths about angels falling in love with an ordinary person. They did not want to return to heaven and stayed in this human world to live with that person. In the end the angels were punished by heaven. The evil CCP changed the content and added atheism to these legends. It twisted punishment from gods and the heavenly principles into something human and made people feel that gods were merciless. It is evil to destroy the traditional culture. This also had another effect on us, which was based on the attachment to sentimentality. The angel would rather be an ordinary person instead of an angel for the sake of sentimentality. They were moved by sentimentality in the human world.
From the perspective of a practitioner, this is interference from the demon of lust, and it is really very serious. Maybe we cannot experience these things in our real life. But the demon of lust has something common with the true nature of the communist evil spirit. It spreads through the TV to everyone, day-in and day-out, around the clock. We all know that the personal lives of the evil Party members are degenerate, and these degenerate things are spread through the TV programs; they flood the environment. Maybe some practitioners may think that it is not so serious. But just think about it, did your heart not beat suddenly because of a person in the TV program? Or did your heart move a little bit because of a certain scene? If so, it was the interference from the demon of lust. But you could not resist at that moment when you were watching TV. Of course there were exceptional times when the righteous thoughts were very strong. You could not resist at that moment because all the righteous beings left your body and only left your body in a drunken state. Then how could you tell right from wrong? The TV programs control people easily.
Actually, sentimentality and lust are just one aspect. When you watch TV, you will see programs related to your attachments. What you watch will be just what you are attached to. For example, today's students worship some stars, then when you turn on the TV it will tell you that the star you worship has produced a new film or will produce a new special, or will visit some place. Then, one thinks about this all day long and is oblivious to anything else.
If you are attached to money or other personal interests, when you turn on the TV you will see money, houses, cars and it will show how wealthy the rich people are and how to make money, how to hurt others for money and how to enjoy luxury after you have money.
That is to say, TV can bring back and enlarge all of our attachments. The bad elements come into people's bodies when they are in a numbed state. Smoking and drinking hurt practitioners' bodies, so practitioners should quit smoking and drinking. TV can shake practitioners' firmness and interfere with the righteous thoughts as well as hurt practitioners' bodies. I had to quit watching TV just as other practitioners quit smoking and drinking.
When it comes to today's music, especially popular music, we find that the tendency towards lust, sentimentality and love go to the extreme. It is a far cry from real human culture, in which one viewed the appearance of the singers and listened to the content of the songs. But these things are interfering with people, especially students everywhere. In my family, a school age child will listen to these songs, talk about them and learn to sing them. In my personal understanding, as practitioners we should quit watching TV.
Please kindly correct me if there is anything inappropriate.
2006-01-02
