(Clearwisdom.net) Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
Master said, “To tell you the truth, the entire cultivation process for a practitioner is one of constantly giving up human attachments.” (Zhuan Falun). I knew this Fa principle from my early cultivation days. But I always held onto my attachments using the excuse of saving people. Because of that, I fell down constantly during eight years of cultivation. I understand deep in my heart that Master's tremendous efforts and boundless mercy are incorporated into every bit of progress I have made. I dedicate this article to Master and want to share my experience with other practitioners. Please point out anything inappropriate.
Remove the Mentality of Self-Importance
I have clarified the truth regularly to Chinese people face-to-face over the years. I accumulated many successful experiences. I started to consider those experiences “keys to success” and developed attachments without knowing it.
Several months ago, I asked our local coordinator to update the bulletin boards at our truth-clarification site at Chihkan Tower. In my mind, there was nothing wrong with the content of the old bulletin boards. All the materials were of interest to Chinese people and what they should know. It was just that the bulletin boards were somewhat old, dirty, and bent. The new bulletin boards arrived in a short time. However, I noticed that lots of important content was missing. I quickly discussed the issue with another practitioner while the last batch of the bulletin boards was still in production. The practitioner didn't agree with me.
During those days, I became very worried whenever I thought about sentient beings. I was thinking whether or not to consider all my past successful experiences. The fellow practitioner must have thought the new bulletin boards could save more sentient beings. I knew I should let go of my thoughts of self and cooperate with fellow practitioners. However, every time I tried to let go of self, a thought would emerge, “Given my years of experience, I know what is right. It isn't the personal cultivation period. It's more important to save sentient beings than to remove attachments!” I wasn't sure what to do. I was alternately calm and upset. Master saw that I wasn't enlightening to it and guided me to read several reports. In those reports, every truth-clarification site that didn't accord to my own opinion had proved to work great.
In fact, I understood from my early cultivation days that even though the bulletin boards and the banners were important and could help sentient beings understand the truth, I shouldn't be attached to these material things. The outcome of saving people would be different at the same truth-clarification site but with different Dafa disciples working there. The difference might be quite great because the key is Dafa disciples' compassion and righteous thoughts. I developed the mentality of self-importance through many years of successful experiences. Even though I always said that all things were done by Master, deep down, I still thought I was doing great. I realized that a person would be attached to his/her own experience and understanding if this person thinks he/she is doing well in this regard. My understanding is that Master arranged this incident in order to help me to remove the mentality of self-importance.
I also discovered that the more positive I was towards the new bulletin boards, the more receptive my fellow practitioners became. I finally understood that all things that happen during the process of saving sentient beings are for me to improve. Why can't I be humble? I always thought that I had saved those people, and I developed an attachment for those experiences. I was wrong. I cannot save anybody without Master's arrangement and support. In fact, the whole process of saving sentient beings is a process Master arranges for me to rectify and purify myself and head towards consummation.
Remove the Mentality of “Being Anxious for Quick Results”
We cannot pick and choose which sentient beings to save. This principle seems easy enough to understand, but I always failed to follow it in practice. I would be moved every time a tourist guide or a law enforcement official came to interfere with our truth clarification. My compassion disappeared in an instant. It always took me several seconds to shift back into the state of righteousness. Why did this happen? I found that I had the mentality of being anxious for quick results. Because of that, I regarded anything that stood in the way of my saving people as interference. My mentality of competition would emerge once I saw the tourist guide or law enforcement official as interference. At that instant, I didn't have any compassion towards the guide, the officer, or the Chinese people.
Thoughts of differentiating who should be saved and who shouldn't is not compassionate. You become an everyday person once you have thoughts of differentiating. Cultivation is serious. I thought I had conflicts with the guide or the officer because my intent was to save people. I thought I had compassion for sentient beings. I didn't know that I became an everyday person with the mentality of competition when I had conflicts with the guide or the officer. No wonder those Chinese people didn't want to get near me when there was a conflict.
It became clear that I needed to remove the mentality of “being anxious for quick results” after an experience in Hong Kong. There were many Chinese people and I was the only practitioner there. What should I do? I was worried. I started to urge them to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations without going into matters deeply. It wasn't very successful. Then I decided to let go of my worries and not be concerned about whether or not they would quit the CCP. I needed to make sure the person truly understood the truth. Once my mentality changed and I started to do it that way, the sentient beings became more righteous. I spoke a lot at first. Later on it was so easy that they quit as soon as I mentioned it, and every one of them quit. I came to a better understanding of the following Fa principle. Master said, “If you're asking how you could possibly talk to all those people that you want to save, then I'd say just do your best--do as much as you can. When Dafa disciples do well with what they are supposed to, things change.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2009 Greater New York International Fa Conference”)
This August, we got criticisms from the Culture and Tourism Bureau in Tainan regarding the bulletin boards at our truth-clarification site at Chihkan Tower. They asked us to reduce the display area, lower the boards, and take out the “bloody” pictures. I learned from the Hong Kong experience that we shouldn't worry and that only our compassion would solve the problem. We wrote letters to officers. We told them that many people learned the truth through those bulletin boards and we were willing to make some changes considering their feelings. We also included some truth-clarification materials about the organ harvesting in the letter.
“When you take a step back in a conflict, you will find the seas and the skies boundless.” (Zhuan Falun) There's always a reason if an everyday person reacts poorly. Maybe we have the mentality of competition, maybe his mind is controlled by the evil, maybe there's a problem with his notions. Therefore, we shouldn't keep pushing forward when there is a conflict. We should rectify ourselves first, send more righteous thoughts to disintegrate the evil, and tell him/her the truth. Things will change for the better if we truly want to save the person with compassion. In the end, the bulletin boards at our truth-clarification site at Chihkan Tower remained just as they were. They have helped many passersby to understand the truth and also helped the officers to position themselves well.
Remove the Mentality of Seeking Affirmation
I found that almost all my attachments were related to this mentality of seeking affirmation. Wasn't being anxious for quick results seeking affirmation? Wasn't “self-importance” a form of seeking affirmation? I found that my last attachment was seeking affirmation. It didn't matter where the affirmation came from, others or myself, I would be happy regardless.
Why did I have such a strong mentality of seeking affirmation? I figured that it was because I had felt inferior since childhood and had very little self-confidence. In fact, I had found the mentality of seeking affirmation in my early days of cultivation. I was always happy back then. Once a Chinese person was rude to me, but I was still happy. I was shocked when I realized that I should feel sad because that person was not saved. I looked within and realized that I was happy because I thought I was doing a meaningful thing and it proved the value of my existence.
The mentality of seeking affirmation would sometimes emerge when I was doing media work. Whenever fellow practitioners praised my writing skill, I felt pressure beside happiness. I worried about the quality of my work. I tried to protect my reputation, so I was fearful as I worked. It took me a long time to finish my work. Dafa work is so sacred. The Fa's enormous power will not manifest if my starting point is not righteous. I was an everyday person working hard at that time.
For a while, I was distressed that I couldn't remove the mentality of seeking affirmation. One day I realized that, while I was distressed about removing this mentality and my own troubled cultivation state, I wasn't distressed about sentient beings not being saved. Why not? It was as if I had only been trying to remove a single layer of a greater selfishness. This wouldn't effectively remove selfishness and would instead develop a new attachment – becoming attached to the attachment itself.
I still remember one thing very well. I was once jealous of a fellow practitioner. I knew it was wrong and I worked hard to get rid of it, but it was always there. Later, I learned that they needed help at the truth-clarification site in Hong Kong, so I went to Hong Kong. I only had sentient beings in my heart during those days. I came back to Taiwan ten days later and I was no longer jealous of that fellow practitioner.
To my understanding, we should deny all bad thoughts firmly and disintegrate attachments with righteous thoughts. Besides that, studying the Fa well and saving sentient beings is the key. The attachments will disappear naturally when we ourselves become less and less attached to self.
Thank you, Master! Thanks, fellow practitioners!
