(Clearwisdom.net) A few days ago my mother called me on the phone, asking me to make a trip home (my parents live in a rural area). She said there was some housework she needed me to do. So I had to immediately set aside the matters at hand to make the trip home. When I got to my parent's house, I saw it was full of messy debris and there was lots of trash near the garbage bin. It was autumn, and the leaves had fallen and were all over the backyard. I thought: "Our whole family is made up of practitioners; no matter how busy we are, we should also do a good job of keeping our surroundings clean and neat. We should not live in a dirty place! How can a Dafa disciple's home be like this?" I quickly tidied up everything while complaining about the situation.
By the next day, things were messy again. There was lots of trash near the garbage bin. So I launched into complaining again to my mother and sister. Before I finished, my mother hastily said to me, "Why don't you look inward?!" I immediately felt the weight of this sentence and I was deeply moved. So I became silent and then found it funny. My grievances and complaints were of course not right. Why in my heart was I so unbalanced? Was it because the results of my hard work had not been cherished? No. Was it because my standards were too high? No. While eating dinner, I kept pondering this matter: "Why did I feel imbalanced? Why did my mother ask me to look inside?"
After dinner, I was watching the NTDTV news as I thought about what my mother had said, "Why don't you look inward?" I said to myself, "You guys usually do not pay attention to keeping your surroundings neat and clean. You do not put the garbage in the trash bin. I made a point, although I complained, but my attitude was not too bad! How should I look inside on this matter?" When I recalled my thoughts and my starting point before and after I complained, I suddenly realized that, although I dealt with the garbage and cleaned up everything, I always stood as a third party--an outsider--as if I was helping them to do things. I did not consider myself a member of the family, and I was not being understanding about that fact that my mother has always been so busy. Also, I did not realize that those chores were a responsibility that I should take on as a family member.
When I thought of this, my heart all of a sudden felt much more relaxed. I shared my understanding with my mother. She said with a smile, "That sounds better." In fact, I found that I very often maintained this mentality during Fa-rectification while saving sentient beings. It seems I felt that I was always helping Master or helping fellow practitioners to do things, and I did not really treat saving sentient beings as my own responsibility. Consequently, a lot of things did not result in the desired effect. Recognizing that I had such thoughts, I felt that my heart was more balanced and more stable.
There was another situation. My son stays at his school and comes home once every two weeks. Every other Monday morning we take him back to school. One morning before we left home, I asked him, "Are you prepared?" My son nodded. So we rushed to his school. I needed to return home quickly because there were many Dafa projects waiting for me to do and I had already arranged them one after the other. My time was very tightly scheduled. When we got to school, I suddenly asked my son, "You haven't forgotten your meal card, have you?" (In my son's school, the students use cards to pay for their meals.) Right then he remembered that he had left the card at home. All of a sudden, I became very angry and bitterly accused him. I criticized him again and again as we walked home. My son listened in silence the whole time. We quickly got home, found his meal card, and got back to school in time before class started.
After I returned home, I sat on the sofa and thought that what I had just done was wrong. How could I have been so outraged over such a small thing? I repeatedly looked inside, and realized that I was too attached to my own schedule. On the way to my son's school the first time, I was only thinking about my schedule. That's why this unexpected situation happened. Thinking back on the past few years, particularly in the area of coordination, I recognized that, to a great degree, I had attachments to
my own arrangements or my own standards. This made lots of things temporarily look good but eventually caused problems. The reason was because I did not eliminate the attachments to myself. In other words, while doing Dafa projects, we need to be vigilant, pay attention our cultivation state, and correct our mistakes in a timely manner. Only when we pay attention to our cultivation while doing Dafa projects can good results be ultimately achieved.
January 1, 2008
