(Clearwisdom.net) When the Chinese new year arrives, we are surrounded with many people who are only interested in revelry. How should a Dafa disciple, shouldering immense historic responsibilities, pass the new year?
I had to leave my home to avoid persecution, and for ten years I've traveled from the city to the countryside, and back to the city, going through a lot of hardship-filled cultivation. But lately my living conditions and the circumstances of doing what Dafa disciples should do have undergone a big change. The environment has become much better. But this has brought out the human attachment of pursuing comfort and ease.
On the first day of the new year, I didn't want to go out and validate the Fa. I figured that the previous year I had already done a lot, and it would be better if I stayed at home and studied the Fa. As I studied the Fa in the afternoon, suddenly Master's words came into my mind: "cultivating as if you were just starting"(Fa Teaching at the 2009 Greater New York International Fa Conference). It immediately shook me: Am I doing as Teacher requires? What kind of heart is it that makes me not want to validate the Fa, to be lazy and relax? This is something cultivators have to avoid!
Cultivation is like paddling against the current. If we're not improving, then we must be going backwards. In these past ten years of cruel persecution by the communist party, I was able to keep a clear head with Teacher's constant protection. I always remembered Teacher's compassionate, arduous salvation and a practitioner's vows and mission. This inspired me to be diligent in true cultivation.
Fearing to take a single step wrong, I always took advantage of the new year as a good chance to save more sentient beings. Without the desire to pass the new year like others did, I was able to come through to today.
Conditions for validating the Fa have now undergone a great change. As we near the end, Teacher has eliminated the evil factors and scarcely any remain. The communist party's persecution has gone underground, the world's people are waking up one after the other, and a great cultivation environment is slowly surfacing. The pressure is much less than before. But if we haven't cultivated our human hearts, the remaining attachments will surface in different ways, like pursuing comfort and ease, wanting to suffer less and so on. If we aren't aware of them, we think we're doing pretty well. But the moment we see them clearly, it is a frightening sight!
I deeply thank Teacher for compassionately reminding me. I immediately jumped off my bed and put up six banners, each a meter-long, and other materials. In the evening after sending righteous thoughts, I went to the university accommodation area and put up six more banners, and handed out more than 50 pieces of truth-clarification material. In a relaxed and easy state I returned home. After that, for seven days I steadfastly kept doing the three things that we must do. I handed out more than 300 truth-clarifying booklets and talked to a number of people. Looking back, I haven't wasted the new year period. "Cultivating as if you were just starting" - this will forever inspire me to do better.
