(Clearwisdom.net) After watching "Master's Lecture to Australia Practitioners," I was deeply moved by his compassion. Many of us watched the video with tears in our eyes. Master gently reminded disciples about important issues over and over, like a father talking to his children. Master cares about Dafa disciples very much and worries about us a lot. Master's speech was given to Australian practitioners, but I feel that the issues Master talked about also apply to practitioners in China. Recently, practitioners in our area shared our experiences in a small meeting. We talked about Master's lecture and shared our understandings on why some practitioners were arrested recently. We looked for problems within ourselves and looked at the incident from the Fa's perspective. Our goal was to improve as one body.
1) Issue of Validating Self
Master emphasized the issue of practitioners validating themselves. This issue manifests in many aspects of cultivation. For example, when we have a group discussion, some practitioners talk non-stop and they have no focus and no idea about whether their input can do anything to resolve the issues. On the surface, they are trying to solve a problem, but in reality, they are showing off. Sometimes when we see problems with another practitioner, we do not think about how to help him. Instead, we try to impose our own opinion and understandings on him. We then fail to consider whether he is capable of accepting our input. Sometimes, our input revolves around our own human notions.
Master knows exactly what's in our minds, but he still talks to us in a tone of suggesting things, rather than giving orders. Can we consider doing it this way? Master told us at the "Lecture at the Conference in Singapore:"
"... if a person is free from any personal notions, isn't motivated by his self-interest, and is genuinely looking to benefit others, when he points out another person's shortcomings or tells the other person what's right, that person will be moved to tears."
Let us ask ourselves: Have we followed Master's teachings when we point out fellow practitioners' shortcomings? We have a very serious problem in this respect, which has compromised the communication between fellow practitioners. We can all quote Master's words, but we often forget to follow Master's teachings and to cultivate ourselves during a conflict. Master reminded the Australian practitioners with caring advice before he left the meeting. He worried that we may forget to cultivate ourselves when facing problems, no matter how clearly we feel we all understand his teachings from this meeting. One typical self-validation behavior is when we attempt to clarify the truth to people, we do not bother to understand the root cause of their confusion, and we eagerly dump our thinking onto them. This kind of communication often pushes people away. People may not understand us and think that we are weird. Master told us that we should follow people's attachments when saving them. The purpose of clarifying the truth to people is to save them, not to show them how smart we are.
2) Unconditionally Looking for Our Own Problems
In this lecture, Master re-emphasized the importance of looking for our own problems unconditionally. When we have a conflict with everyday people, we practitioners must be at fault, because a cultivator should never have a conflict with an everyday person. When a conflict arises among practitioners, everyone should look inside for his own shortcomings. During cultivation, when part of our body reaches the cultivation standard, Master separates it and stores this good part away. What's left in the human world requires further cultivation. The bad and ugly thoughts will be exposed in order to eliminate them. Because of this surface expression, it seems that what we see in each other are often negative things. In fact, that's not true. We just cannot see the matured part. So when there is a conflict, we should all look at ourselves for hidden attachments and eliminate them. Only in this way can our cultivation environment be improved.
Another common issue is that many practitioners know we should look for our own problems, but they do not know how to find them. Sometimes, we try to find problems using ordinary people's methods. Some of us even use "self-criticism" from the Communist Party culture, while other practitioners look for attachments on the surface, but not deep inside. Some may say, "I should not have said this, or should not have done that." This is not the requirement Master laid out for us. Cultivators should look for attachments in their own hearts, judged by Dafa principles. We should see what caused the turbulence in our heart. If we do not have any attachments, then we should be calm under all circumstances. If we cannot meet that requirement, then it must be that our hearts are burdened. If our hearts are not calm, then there must be some stubborn attachments hidden within. By searching in this way, it should not be too hard to find the attachments. Once we find them and eliminate them, we can serve the real purpose of cultivation--to help save sentient beings. Looking for own attachments should be unconditional. If we attach any conditions, then our effort is not genuine. No matter what happens, we must look for our own problems. Even if we are not involved in a conflict and just happen to witness an event, we still have to think about what might be wrong with ourselves. If everyone can do this, and we collectively form an environment of self-cultivation, then we can achieve a big improvement.
3) The Mentality of Relying on Others
Master also talked about the habit of relying on others. Master said that some practitioners always expect that the Falun Dafa Association will take care of their cultivation. The mentality of relying on others has manifested itself in two ways:
First, some practitioners are not able to view things based on the Fa principles. They do not know how to cultivate in everyday life by following Master's teachings. They cannot take on the responsibilities given to all Dafa disciples during the Fa-rectification period. Rather, these practitioners like to see how "better practitioners" do before taking action. They like to hear the "more mature" practitioners' experiences. Master told us that we have no role models in cultivation, and that every practitioner will have to walk his or her own path, and establish his or her own mighty virtue.
Second, during Fa-rectification work, some practitioners claim, "Since I do not have technical skills, I will rely on fellow practitioners to provide me with materials." Some even refuse to do work within their capabilities. This kind of mentality creates a huge work load for other practitioners. They are too busy to even study the Fa. In the long run, this mentality will harm our fellow practitioners. We have read about many such lessons on the Minghui website. Master told us that we should think of others first. Why do we not think about these busy practitioners? This type of reliance not only harms fellow practitioners, it also brings damage to our own cultivation. Now is the time to eliminate it.
We now have many new understandings from Master's lecture. The above three points are common issues among fellow practitioners. We invite fellow practitioners to comment and correct anything inappropriate.
