Young Practitioner: Eliminating Jealousy and the Attachment to Comfort

(Minghui.org) I’m a young Falun Dafa practitioner. Thanks to Master’s compassionate salvation, I have the predestined opportunity to cultivate myself and be a part of the Fa rectification. The following are my recent experiences regarding eliminating jealousy and the attachment to comfort.

Seeing My Problem from a Fellow Practitioner’s Perspective

Over the past year, I have often made truth clarification calls to China. After receiving training, I learned the content and skills and was able to help fellow practitioners who joined the project after me. 

A young bilingual practitioner who makes calls with me doesn’t speak Chinese well, because he primarily speaks English in his everyday life. He told me several times that he was jealous of me, because I was able to converse with people well and persuade them to quit the communist organizations. I thought it was candid of him to expose his own jealousy, which I would have had trouble admitting to, especially in front of the person I’m jealous of. To make him feel better, I told him that I had many things to improve on, such as having more compassion, sense of urgency, and diligence, and my phone calls weren’t actually as successful as he had thought. The fellow practitioner replied, “The fellow practitioner who collects signatures with me also said the same thing. Those of you who do well tend to talk in a similar way.”

At this moment, I really thought that this fellow practitioner had acted out my jealousy of others. I completely understood these words triggered by jealousy and his frame of mind. All my successful phone conversations seemed to have been heard by my fellow practitioner, but my unsuccessful calls weren’t heard, as if a false appearance had been created in order to strengthen his jealousy. Though I didn’t know how to help him get rid of his feeling, I could clearly see as a bystander how jealousy was created through a distorted perception. If he could see through the false appearance, he would find that the reality wasn’t like what he has heard or seen, and there was no point in getting jealous of me. I thank Master for allowing me to observe jealousy from a different perspective.

Root of Jealousy: “I’m the Best”

Falun Dafa has blessed me with a lot of wisdom. However, as time passed, I gradually drifted away from Dafa, and validated myself instead of Dafa. As a result, jealousy, resentment, attachment to showing off, zealotry, competitive mentality, feelings of inferiority, loftiness, etc, began to surface. 

I used to identify my jealousy, resentment, and other human notions on a certain matter, and rejected them one by one. It dawned on me one day that all these notions had originated from one thing, selfishness, and shared one prerequisite, “I’m the best.” That’s why I didn’t want to hear anything negative about myself, and couldn’t accept the fact that others were better. I became sensitive when other people showed off and took it to signal competition. When I won, my zealotry and attachment to showing off manifested. When I lost, my resentment and feelings of helplessness and inferiority manifested. I had been stuck in this vicious cycle. 

I hated to see anyone brag about themselves, especially when I didn’t agree with their opinion, or when anyone accidentally downplayed my opinion. Though I didn’t say anything strong in disagreement due to my personality, I usually held a grudge, and stopped paying attention to the person.

As I gained a deeper understanding of the Fa, I realized that I have all the behavior that I disliked to see in others. I didn’t speak much, but all of my words were carefully thought through and were meant to validate myself. This was the reason that I had often found my words failed to express what I meant to say, or sometimes were misunderstood by others. I realized later that it was because I cared so much how others viewed my opinion, and I couldn’t be flawed in others’ eyes because I thought I was the best. I only said whatever I wanted without hesitation in front of those closest to me, because I knew that they wouldn’t disagree with me. 

I pondered my own mentality when I had been showing off. I meant to show that I had seen through the whole issue and mastered the essence of the current situation. Since I thought I was right, I had to tell others, otherwise they wouldn’t know. I didn’t express my opinion to receive feedback in any modest manner, but unknowingly downplayed others to build myself up and to gratify my vanity. I started to consciously look within for my wrongs when others downplayed me. If I didn’t find I had done anything wrong, or if I knew others wanted to save face, I wouldn’t argue, but would happily choose to let them gain the upper-hand, which could be an opportunity for me to dissolve my karma.

I often reminded myself that the purpose of communication was to exchange opinions with others, not to validate myself, so it’s unnecessary to pay attention to other people’s assessment of me. I told myself that what people say in this earthly world might not be their genuine opinion, and everyone’s opinion of others depends on his own realm. 

The notion “I’m the best” has a deep origin, but it has no root. It’s simply what ordinary people go after according to modern people’s notions, but it runs counter to the principle of following the course of nature. 

Another serious issue is my negative thinking patterns. I had ill thoughts about others out of habit and focused on others’ shortcomings. Even when I tried to help others, I rarely encouraged others, but pointed out their problems, or blamed them. For example, the Minghui website called for experience sharing articles a few days ago. I used to think I didn’t do well in cultivation and had nothing good to share, but I switched into a positive thinking pattern this time, and found several examples of cultivation I could share. I’m trying to apply this positive thinking to sentient beings, fellow practitioners, and myself. As soon as anything triggers my negative thinking, I catch it, reject it, and convert it to righteous thoughts, because everything we run into is a good thing. 

Jealousy manifests itself as vicious and negative thoughts. If I follow it, it will do everything possible to strengthen my negativity, create many false appearances, and spare no effort to pull me down. The notion of “I’m the best” is extremely selfish and in my understanding, it’s the origin of jealousy. It’s an-eye-for-an-eye principle of the old universe. However, the new universe is completely altruistic and harmonious.

Master has told us, 

“All of the future beings will be selfless, while the beings of the past were selfish. (Applause) Some beings have no regard for others as they pursue the things they want, and that has been demonstrated in this world thoroughly. For the sake of proving a point or to save face, some people in the world go to any length to harm others and never consider others' welfare. Some people's selfishness surfaces in a very vicious way--some of them deliberately seek out people to push around and always look down on others. Who gave them the right to do that? Nobody. You shouldn't be like that, nobody that cultivates in Dafa should be like that.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York”) 

Sneaky Attachment to Comfort

When it was time for lunch today, neither my husband nor I wanted to go warm up lunch. I said causally, “We are both really lazy. One monk fetches water to drink, two monks carry water to drink, but three monks have no water.” As soon as I finished the last sentence, I realized that I had exposed my reliance on others.

My parents rarely asked me to do any housework when I was young. After I got married, I relied on my husband for many things. I gradually realized that behind my reliance was my attachment to comfort. 

Being lazy is the appearance of my attachment to comfort, which makes me unwilling to do housework or do the exercises. I lack perseverance in doing the daily exercises, and skip the exercises using excuses like I am reading experience-sharing articles. I even miss the time for sending forth righteous thoughts, and sometimes doze off while sending forth righteous thoughts. A lot of my time has been wasted on sleeping in. I could have done more, but didn’t, due to my laziness.

My attachment to comfort tells me, “I’m not able to do it.” It continuously strengthens these thoughts, making me shy away from my responsibilities and rely on others. The attachment to comfort also surfaces as a negative notion about my own brain power, making me give up on harder things and choosing simple tasks. Whenever I plan to make phone calls to China, my attachment to comfort makes me imagine the people with disparaging attitudes, and makes me rely on fellow practitioners to call with me. It often takes a while for me to persuade myself to place calls. 

My attachment to comfort is cunning. It hides itself behind my over-reliance, my fighting mentality, or my jealousy. I had not realized how enormous I had allowed it to grow. Just because I was a hard-working and self-disciplined student did not mean I didn’t have the attachment to comfort. It was simply because my pursuit of fame and fortune was stronger than my attachment to comfort, which conveniently hid itself from detection. Now that the pressure is over, my attachment to comfort openly came to the front stage, and took me by surprise. 

The best way to get rid of my attachment to comfort in the current situation is to participate in group Fa study, group exercises, truth clarification projects, and sending forth righteous thoughts. 

While writing this article, I had a dream one night about my problem of withdrawing myself in the face of difficulties. A thought came to my mind during my dream: “You aren’t part of the difficulties. They look huge, but when you step in, and start to intervene, they are changed structurally, and are no longer huge difficulties.”

I woke up from this great dream, care-free, and filled with confidence.

Master said,

“When I was cultivating in the past, many men of great character told me this: even though you may find something to be very difficult, when it’s hard to endure, try to endure it. When you encounter something impossible or hard to do, maybe it can be done. That is indeed the case, and you might want to give it a try when you go back. When going through real tribulations or tests, give it a try. When something is hard to endure, endure it for a bit; when something looks impossible or hard to do, give it a try and see if it’s possible to do after all. If you can truly do that, then you will find that there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’” (“Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Jinan,” Zhuan Falun Fajie - The Law of Zhuan Falun Explained)

Thank you, Master, for your compassionate salvation!