(Clearwisdom.net) Fa-rectification will soon be coming to an end. Our Fa study group wanted to discuss how we could better cultivate ourselves in the short time that remains and thus better save sentient beings. We started to have intensive Fa study sessions so that we can truly assimilate to the Fa and through the repeated study of Master's articles "Solid Cultivation" and "True Cultivation" ( Hong Yin (The Grand Verses ) and "Further Elimination of Attachments" (Essentials for Further Advancement). Through our study we gained a deeper understanding of the vast and immense Fa. This has greatly helped us and given us guidance at our different levels of cultivation and helped us to truly look inwards.
After cultivating for so many years, we all felt that we knew how to look inwards. Through intensive Fa study (focusing on quality of study more than quantity of study), we realized that the practitioners within our district did not really know how to truly look inwards. After all this time, we suddenly understood that we had been only eliminating our surface attachments, but we were stubbornly hanging on to our more deeply hidden ones, those at the micro levels. Once those attachments were provoked, we would flare up. These human attachments were still very strong and their manifestation are more difficult to detect, especially for those practitioners who were not diligent in their Fa study.
Master mentioned that those that are not truly cultivating will be exposed. Thus during the path of cultivation, everything happens for a reason. We can learn from and improve ourselves from any experience. What is true cultivation? As a Falun Dafa practitioner who is truly cultivating, shouldn't we cultivate "truthfulness"? Shouldn't we make our every word and every action into effect? We should practice cultivation of speech and speak only the truth. In Hong Yin (The Grand Verses) Master wrote:
"Real Cultivation
Cherish Zhen, Shan, Ren,
And in Falun Dafa shall you succeed;
Cultivate your xinxing without
a moment's pause,
To taste the wonder,
so immeasurable, at Consummation."
As for solid cultivation, have we been seriously cultivating ourselves in a down to earth manner? Many practitioners say that they have been doing the three things required by Master every day. But when they do the three things - Fa study, sending righteous thoughts and clarifying the truth, from what perspective, and in what state of mind do they do them?
Master has said that; "Ordinary people can do Dafa work too" ("Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York"). If you studied the Fa today but you did not truly improve yourself based on the requirements of the Fa, then you are equivalent to an ordinary person. An ordinary person doing Dafa work will only receive ordinary blessings, but it then will not be a Dafa disciple receiving mighty virtue! Falun Dafa practitioners should not just hope for ordinary blessings!
Thus we must look inwards in order to raise our levels. When we encounter unpleasant events or hear criticism, we must thank the person giving us the tribulation. This is what it means to assimilate to the Fa; this is precisely it! We should not avoid an unpleasant situation and thus miss the chance to look inwards to search for omissions. Otherwise, how can we cultivate ourselves, and how can we raise our levels? We will never be able to achieve that. When the tribulation comes and we avoid it, this is not displaying the behavior of a true practitioner.
Through this period of solid cultivation, I felt that I have improved a lot. The situation is really like Master's words "With a preoccupied human heart, crossing the ocean proves arduous" ("The Knowing Heart," Essentials for Further Advancement II)! When we can truly eliminate our deepest, fundamental human attachments, truly look inwards and cultivate ourselves with the utmost priority, then we can better save sentient beings.