(Clearwisdom.net) My parents are cultivating Falun Dafa, and although I am also cultivating, I gradually fell behind because I was away at school, where the environment there was not conducive to cultivation, and I became lazy. My parents cultivate themselves very diligently, and in 2004 they established a truth clarification materials site at home. Usually my father produces the materials and my mother is responsible for distributing them to practitioners. During the summer and fall breaks I took charge of all the work.
This summer I took over the job as usual. At first I was working with a Canon IP1600 printer. Although it was a bit simple and crude, after we worked together for several days we finally became good friends. Whenever I found that there were faults or abnormalities in the truth-clarification materials produced I would "chat" with it for a while: "Little Dusheng (My mother gave the little printer this name, it means "saving sentient beings"), are you lazy and falling asleep? That won’t do. You don’t know how many sentient beings are anxiously waiting to know the truth of Dafa! Your thoughts must be righteous enough, otherwise you might let the evil take advantage of you and cause unnecessary losses. You are also a small particle helping our Master in the Fa-rectification period." Every time we had these conversations the quality of the printing improved and became normal. We worked with each other like this for more than twenty days, and we were very good friends. One day a practitioner arrived carrying a new Canon IP4200 printer in his arms. He wanted to replace little Dusheng with the new one and take little Dusheng somewhere else. From that point on I began to cooperate with the new printer.
The quality of the printed materials produced by the new printer was really good, especially the pictures. Unfortunately the superior quality only lasted for two days. After that, troubles came. When the ink cartridge was empty I injected some more ink into it (refilling used cartridges is much cheaper than buying new ones). Soon afterwards, there always appeared to be parts missing from the printed truth-clarification materials. In just one piece of printed-paper there would always be five or six faint or missing lines scattered across the page. I first tried my usual method to solve the problem, that is to "chat" with it, but it didn’t work. Then I cleaned the printer, but that didn’t help either. It still didn’t work right even after I sent forth righteous thoughts toward it. I was concerned that the ink I’d injected into the cartridge might deposit inside it because I’d switched to a different brand. I asked my father to clean the ink cartridge and inject new ink into it. I tried again, and this time the printer worked normally for a while and produced more than a dozen pages. Then it stopped working properly and had the same problems that it had before. I became irritated and shouted, "What a machine! It couldn’t run smoothly for three days without becoming a troublemaker. It can’t even compare with the old one, little Dusheng. I worked with little Dusheng very well, why did you bring this new one to me?" Every day there were a lot of practitioners coming to our house to get new truth-clarification materials, and my mother always apologized to them. Unfortunately the situation lasted for almost a week. Every day I grumbled to my father and begged him to bring back the old printer—"little Dusheng." I didn’t want to work with this new printer any longer, because it was so inconvenient to use. Very quickly another Friday was coming, time for the practitioners to come and pick up the weekly publications and weekly news. What should we do?
At noon on Friday I grumbled again. Suddenly, my mother said in a firm tone, "It will be fine. You go ahead and check it again. I’ll send forth righteous thoughts to help you clean out all the evil factors." Upon hearing this I became very serious and checked the printer. My mother was sitting beside me and sending forth righteous thoughts. I said to the new little printer from the bottom of my heart, "Since you’ve come to our family your predestined karmic relationship with us must be quite strong. The most noble thing in the whole universe is to do something for Dafa. If the quality of the print work is good and the truth-clarification materials you produce are pleasing to the readers’ eyes they’ll want to read them. Then the readers will know the truth about Dafa and they’ll be saved. They’ll be saved because of your work and for your sake. If I’ve done something wrong I want to look inward and correct it. Please don’t ruin all these truth-clarification materials just to punish me." Sure enough the quality of the printing was again very good. I kept printing like that all afternoon. It was terrific! It was wonderful that the printer worked smoothly again.
Later on I began to look inward to see if I had some character flaws. I realized that since I hadn’t studied the Fa carefully and thoroughly I didn’t have a clear understand of Dafa, so I lacked righteous thoughts. Besides, I had attachments to showing off, I was hotheaded and irritable, and I lacked compassion. In the past when the ink cartridge was short of ink, I always dealt with it like that. This was the first time it had caused a problem. Why hadn’t my righteous thoughts been able to wipe out the evil interference with the new printer, yet the printer was immediately fixed after my mother sent forth righteous thoughts toward it for only five minutes?
"Good or evil comes from a person’s spontaneous thought, and the thought at that moment can bring about different consequences." (Zhuan Falun).
First I thought the printer was broken, then it seemed as though it really was broken. If at that time I had thought that it would be okay then it would have. Because I hadn’t conducted myself well the evil factors took advantage of my loopholes and caused unnecessary losses. When I was typing these words several large Chinese characters suddenly appeared in my mind,
"When disciples have ample righteous thoughts, Master has the power to turn back the tide."("The Master-Disciple Bond" from Hong Yin II).
I felt very ashamed of myself. I was so lazy and couldn’t meet the standards and requirements at different levels of Dafa. I thought that staying at home and making the truth-clarification materials could be counted as cultivating oneself. As for the three things required by Master, I didn’t do even one of them well. Even worse, I sometimes hindered my parents from advancing diligently. From now on I must rectify myself and do well, study the Fa well, do the three things well, and conduct myself well according to the requirements of Dafa and Master. I should never disappoint Master.
I know there are still many things that I don’t do well. I hope my fellow practitioners will please kindly help me and point them out for me.
