(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings Master, Greetings fellow practitioners!
This is the first time I've stood up before so many of my fellow practitioners to give a Fahui speech. It's not because I haven't tried writing speeches before. In fact, I've been trying to write this since the 2005 Canada Fa conference. At its peak, it was 26 pages long in a size ten font. I eventually scrapped that one and started over, and within a week or two, I was back to nearly 20 pages of experiences and understandings that I wanted to incorporate into a speech. But I was never successful. This time, I am not writing about my work in Fa rectification, about my achievements and shortcomings in cultivation, and so on. Instead, today I hope to share on letting go of my attachments to all of that.
Ever since I was a new practitioner, I made Fa study the single biggest priority in my life. I thought I needed to catch up with the pace of Fa-rectification, and was selfishly worried about whether there would be enough time for me to reach the standard for consummation. Every day, I read a lecture of Zhuan Falun, a new lecture, and a pre-1999 lecture. By the time I'd been practising Falun Gong for a year, I was reading three or four lectures of Zhuan Falun per day. I felt that I had a very clear understanding of the principles at my level, and often thought that my understanding was more on the Fa than that of many other practitioners. At that time, I often used to ask a practitioner I was close to, "Have you read a lecture yet today?" To which he would always respond, "Yes. Have you clarified the truth today?", trying to imply that I put too much emphasis on my own cultivation. I knew that deep down, I was always worried about how well I was cultivating. I often worried that I didn't meet the standard. I strained to think of how I could do better, of how I wanted to let go of this or that attachment, of how I could do things for Dafa, of what roles I could take in clarifying the truth, and so on. A practitioner once told me in no uncertain terms that she understood that this was actually like an old force mentality. That is, the old forces want to use this Fa-rectification to save themselves and reach their aims. And I was also in a state of wanting to use the Fa to save myself and reach consummation - this was even at the root of much of my truth clarification work.
That was over three years ago. I spent a long time trying to root out this attachment wherever I saw it, and for the couple years or so, I actually thought that I'd beaten it. But some recent experiences made me realize that I had not. After all, this is a fundamental attachment, and something formed deep in my bones for millennia. In "Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland" in 1998, Master says the following:
"Actually, you don't yet know that this selfishness reaches all the way up to very high levels. As a matter of fact, for cultivators in the past to say, 'I'm doing such and such,' 'I want to do such and such,' 'I want to obtain such and such,' 'I'm cultivating,' 'I want to become a Buddha,' or "I wish to attain such and such,' none of that was outside of selfishness. But what I want you to do is to truly, purely, and unselfishly Consummate with the real righteous Fa and righteous Enlightenment--only then can you achieve eternal non-extinction."
In Washington DC, about three months ago, I had a few weeks off school beginning at the time of Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S., so I came to the east coast for my vacation. I live in a city that doesn't have many practitioners--let alone English-speaking practitioners, so I've always really enjoyed coming to bigger cities and spending time in the cultivation environment of those places. The first time I attended Washington's Monday night group Fa study, immediately after Hu Jintao's visit and the incident with Wang Wenyi. When the discussion started, several practitioners started talking about their understandings of the incident. Yet in my mind, I was thinking "I have a better understanding of all these things than the people who are talking." Or "I have nothing to gain from listening to these practitioners share. I should say something; my understanding would be more beneficial to others." On seeing these thoughts reflected in my mind, I was horrified and repulsed. But it wasn't a new thing; as I mentioned above, for a long time I've thought that I had better understandings than most practitioners, and this notion has often prevented me from actually learning anything during group discussions. I knew this, and tried hard to suppress these thoughts, and asked Master for help in doing so. Just when my mind started to calm down, a practitioner stood up and said something to the effect of "Why are we talking so much about how we understand this incident? Why aren't we talking about how to use it to clarify the truth?" This simple question shook me to my core. For all my arrogance and thinking that I had a good understanding, I hadn't done anything to use the Wang Wenyi incident to clarify the truth. My priorities in cultivation were--just as they had been three years prior--still completely mixed up. I was still thinking of myself, and not of saving beings. And, just to make sure I got the point, a couple days later, one of my fellow Canadian practitioners in New York told me point blank that I was unbelievably self-centered.
This was the easy part. I resolved at that time that I would stop being so selfish about my cultivation, and would really make a priority of saving sentient beings. One pattern I've noticed in my cultivation path is that, after enlightening to something significant and making a resolve to do better, in almost all cases I will immediately meet with a very difficult test to see if my resolve is actually firm. That's exactly what seemed to happen this time.
As I mentioned before, I live in a city without many practitioners and in a fairly remote area in Western Canada. Although it's a large city with a substantial Chinese population and a consulate, in terms of activities in Fa rectification, the relative isolation and apparent "unimportance" of my city leaves me feeling like I've dropped off the face of the earth, and I often feel a little detached from significant events or movements in the course of Fa rectification. Worse yet, as I realized only a couple months ago, my poor enlightenment quality and inadequate understanding of an issue led me to feel detached even from Master. In spite of the countless miraculous things I'd experienced in cultivation, I had the kind of poor understanding Master described in Essentials for Further Advancement, where some people think that they need to actually see Master in person in order to be counted as true disciples. Now, I had seen Master in person many times at Fahui's, but never in more personal or private settings. For the most part, this never really bothered me. I laughed to myself, wondering why Falun Gong disciples would be so attached to seeing Master. It reminded me of the type of people described in Zhuan Falun who shake Master's hand and don't let go, thinking they can get some messages.
But on my last trip to the Eastern U.S., and especially after I resolved to let go of the attachment to self described above, it finally started to bother me in a big way. Most of the practitioners I spent time with both in New York and in DC liked talking about seeing Master, or about what Master told them, and so on. Perhaps they talk about these things because they think that, if they see Master in person, it reaffirms that they are cultivating well and are true disciples, or that they are better or more special than others. I had the exact same attachment, only it manifested in the opposite way. On hearing the practitioners around me discuss such experiences, I started to think that I wasn't a true disciple, or that perhaps my predestined relationship with the Fa was not strong, because I hadn't seen Master in a private setting.
I knew that this way of thinking was groundless. I had previously come to the understanding that there simply needs to be practitioners who never see Master, because that's something the Fa needs, and that kind of path needs to be blazed; it has absolutely nothing to do with one's level in cultivation. But at the time, I just couldn't bring my mind under control, and I thought that all these practitioners in New York and DC were better than me, were more special than me, and had stronger predestined relationships than me. This state lasted for about three or four days. My attachment to my own personal cultivation was so strong that, when external circumstances led me to believe I was a bad practitioner, I was so depressed that I almost completely forgot about saving sentient beings and validating the Fa. It got even more extreme: I even started thinking about trying to get closer to Master, or moving to the east coast. It's exactly like what Master describes in Zhuan Falun, in the section on showing off:
"The sensational hearsay that you have invented may even lead to conflicts or stir up a practitioner's attachment to getting closer to Teacher in order to hear more things and so on." ("The Mentality of Showing Off" in Lecture Six of Zhuan Falun)
One morning, when I was back in Washington after a brief stint in New York, I woke up with an especially heavy mental burden over this issue. I continued struggling with this attachment. Seeing my state, one of the practitioners whose home I was staying at came to talk with me. I painfully recounted how lost, directionless, and unimportant I felt now in my path, and mentioned that I'd been considering moving again to get away from my city and into a "better", more "important" environment. This practitioner patiently listened, and then said encouragingly that I should think about what kind of environment I could best thrive in, and move there. I broke down in tears and told him that that wasn't the point--that my cultivation wasn't the point. I told him that the thing that was bothering me most was simply that I could be so selfish. I said, after so many years of cultivation, it's utterly shameful that I would even be thinking about what kind of environment I want to live in, or what kind of conditions I would cultivate best in. After so many years of cultivation, why isn't my only thought about how to save sentient beings and harmonize Master's arrangements?
This attachment to seeking reassurance in one's own cultivation also manifests in doing Dafa projects. For example, some practitioners seem to believe, whether consciously or not, that doing Dafa work equates to cultivating themselves, and that as long as they're doing the work, it means they're on the right track. For the last year and a half, I've been involved in the work for the newspaper. It's very involved and time-consuming work, usually occupying over 30 hours a week. Ever since I started doing this work, I found that cultivation became more difficult. The time I spent studying the Fa each day dropped from an average of five hours a day to an average of one or two hours a day. I also found it more difficult to concentrate, and many ordinary attachments, such as to following politics and international news, reappeared. I never understood why this was the case. Then, a few weeks ago, I realized that I had been using this work to reassure myself that I was cultivating and clarifying the truth. In fact, there were some weeks when I would do virtually nothing to clarify the truth, but I would tell myself it was okay because I was doing this work. This kind of attachment of wanting to use something as precious as Dafa work to try to advance one's own cultivation is an extremely selfish and rotten one, and one that Master wouldn't allow me to get away with keeping. I realized that that was one of the main reasons why my cultivation had become worse and more difficult after taking on this work--it was to have me recognize that attachment. The poor cultivation state I often found myself in is also reflected in the quality of the paper, and diminishes the paper's effect in saving people. Ever since I realized this, I have actually found the paper's production to go more smoothly and painlessly, and I've retained a better cultivation state through it.
The whole process of cultivation is one of letting go; that improvement comes from giving up, not from gaining. In the last few months, I realized that, on a certain level, I actually lacked faith in this principle, as though I thought there were some exceptions to this rule, like seeing Master, to give one example. But actually, this principle of 'no loss, no gain' is an absolute one in the cosmos.
In "Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland", Master says:
"I can give up to the greatest extent possible everything of mine, and that is why I can resolve all of it."
Master also says in Lecture 8 of Zhuan Falun:
"Why is it called the Pure-White Body? It is because this body has already reached the absolute purity of the highest degree. When it is seen with the Celestial Eye, the entire body is transparent--just like transparent glass. When you look at it there is nothing, as it will exhibit this state."
This section always reminds me of the standard I have to reach. I am still often quite far from this state of being transparent, from having nothing. In fact, to draw an analogy, I sometimes catch myself clinging to my abilities and accomplishments in Fa rectification, unwilling to let go of the joys and fame they bring me, and thus making myself unable to break through to higher levels.
In the recent article, "Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles," Master talked about the importance of taking criticism, and said,
"From this point on, whoever can't take criticism is not being diligent, whoever can't take criticism is not displaying the state of a cultivator, or at least on this issue."
"Even if you have done well in all other areas and are lousy only in this one regard, you are still not a cultivator."
Master also said,
"Be mentally prepared, you might run into these things as soon as you return home."
After I walked out of the lecture hall in LA, I was anxiously hoping to be criticised. All the practitioners I was spending time with shared experiences about how they were tested in this regard after the Fahui, and I felt left out. "Why isn't anyone criticising me? I want to be tested too," I thought. Actually, it took about two weeks before the next time I was criticised. But I did come across an unusual number of compliments after the Fahui. I later realized that this was a test too; it was testing the exact same attachments that are hit upon when one is criticized, only it's reversed. This is to say that in my understanding, becoming happy, elated, or self-gratified when one enjoys good things is just as serious as not being able to take criticism; both reflect that on a fundamental level, a person has not let go of their ordinary human pursuits and desire to obtain good things.
I hope that, from today on, you will all keep a close eye on me, point out my attachments, and not go easy on me when I fail to seize every opportunity to clarify the truth and harmonize Master's wishes.
Thank you Master. Thank you fellow practitioners.
