(Minghui.org) I am a 20-year-old university student currently studying in Hungary. In 2018, thanks to my mother’s influence I read Zhuan Falun for the first time, and I began to practice Falun Dafa.
Before even finishing Zhuan Falun, I remembered being moved by the profundity of the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. I became determined to follow Master’s teachings and conduct myself according to the standards of a Dafa disciple. Although my family began practicing around the same time, only my mother and I continued while my father and my twin brother seemed to give up on their cultivation. I am nevertheless grateful to have been born into an ideal cultivation environment where everyone is understanding of Dafa. Although my cultivation journey has had its ups and downs, I never gave up. I was able to push myself to become more diligent, and I would like to share with everyone my cultivation experiences.
Before I began practicing, like most teenage boys, I had countless pursuits and attachments which left my body in poor condition. With the intent of showing off and wanting to prove that I was better than most people, I started working out at 17. I consumed numerous supplement products while constantly going to the gym six to seven days a week. As a result, I was overtrained, and experienced severe back pain. On most nights, I could not get enough sleep or sleep soundly, due to muscle rigidity which made my body shake involuntarily. I was afraid and anxious of the consequences of overtraining my body, but my attachment to reputation was so strong that I kept at it. After the first day of doing the Falun Dafa exercises, these reactions immediately went away, and I had a good night’s sleep. However, I was not able to give up the attachment of having a dream body.
Master said,
“In the process of transformation, human cells will be gradually replaced by high-energy matter, and aging will slow down. One’s body will appear to gradually return to youth and experience gradual transformation until, in the end, it is completely replaced by high-energy matter. By then, this person’s body will have already been converted to a body of another type of matter. That body, as I said earlier, will have transcended the Five Elements. Since it is no longer confined to the Five Elements, this person’s body is now a body that will no longer degenerate.” (Lecture Five, Zhuan Falun)
After reading this section, I realized that the more one worked out, the more one enhanced the body’s metabolic processes and accelerated aging. This meant that I was going in the opposite direction from what Master was trying to do for us. I understood the principles and knew that I should stop training. However, my enlightenment quality was poor, and I still continued going to the gym. After a year of having my feet in two boats at the same time, I gained nothing. My muscles hadn’t gotten any bigger and I felt that I was hindering my cultivation. I had to decide for myself which path to take.
I was able to enlighten to the fact that the intention of showing off and acquiring an attractive body were both human attachments. Furthermore, humans have to go through birth, illness, old age, and death, so this body and life that I have, be it now or later, are not permanent. I decided to choose the path of cultivation and return to my original true self, instead of working on this mortal body. However, I still went back to the gym for a few days since my gym membership had not expired. The feeling and experience of going to the gym and working out afterwards was not like before. I did not get the excitement I had previously, and said to myself, “What’s the point of doing these exercises? Such a waste of time. Clarifying the truth or studying the Fa would be a better use of my time.” This time, it was easier for me to let go of the attachment.
It reminds me of what Master said,
“If you want to quit, it is guaranteed that you can do it. When you smoke a cigarette again, it will not taste right. If you read this lecture in the book, it will also have this effect. Of course, if you do not want to cultivate, we will not take care of it. I think that as a cultivator, you should quit it.” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)
In July 2020, the skin around my nose began to itch and swell. Initially I did not pay much attention to it because I thought I was a diligent practitioner and that Master was eliminating karma for me, instead of thinking this was interference from the old forces. I believed that if I just focused on my cultivation this tribulation would soon be over. However, a month passed, but the skin condition kept expanding and getting larger. It became extremely irritating until I could no longer bear it and started to cry. I looked in the mirror and started to wonder what happened to my face. I believed that I had cultivated very well by doing the three things, but in reality I had only cultivated superficially and rarely looked within in the face of conflicts. With this mindset, I was convinced that my tribulation was the persecutory arrangements of the old forces, and began to resent their interference.
I hated the old forces so much for this tribulation that I wanted to destroy them all by sending righteous thoughts, so I dedicated an hour every day doing that. After hearing my thoughts, my mother, who is a practitioner, helped me by showing me a passage from one of Master’s teachings:
“Disciple: Can we use righteous thoughts to contain the old force?Master: What you can do is to reject the old forces. You can’t really alter this system of things that they arranged. Master is able to, but I must not, because if I were to do so at this point, my destroying their things would destroy everything; each and every thing would be ruined. So I try to beat them at their own game—that’s the way to do it. They aren’t able to affect the fundamental things. So as Dafa disciples you should just firm up your righteous thoughts, and do well with what you need to do. If you can manage to really do well in all three regards, nobody will dare to touch you.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference”)
After reading this, I enlightened to the fact that I should look within and truly cultivate instead of seeking external solutions. Besides, it doesn’t matter if it is from the old force’s arrangement or Master’s purification, I should see it as an ordeal to test my enlightenment, and as an opportunity for me to improve. I realized that all hardships we meet on the path of cultivation are not unfair, and are intended for our improvement. After letting go of the feeling of being treated unfairly I was able to view my tribulation from the perspective of a cultivator. That night, instead of spending an entire hour eliminating the old forces, I instead sent forth righteous thoughts to rectify my negative thoughts and look within.
Through looking within, I realized that similar to my resentment towards the old forces, I held a lot of resentment towards my father, which was incorrect for a practitioner. Before I obtained the Fa, I had a lot of ill thoughts toward him because I suffered the same skin conditions he suffered, and I blamed him for the karma I had to endure. As a cultivator, I knew that it was wrong to have such negative thoughts toward my father, and that this strong resentment should be given up as soon as possible.
I immediately told Master that I was wrong and told myself that resentment was not part of me. I realized that although on the surface, my tribulation appeared as a hereditary skin condition, it was still my own karma to eliminate.
However, after three months my skin had not gotten any better, so I continued to look within. I saw that I was desperate for the tribulation to end, and this stemmed from a deep attachment to my appearance. Although I had stopped going to the gym to work out, I had not truly given up my fundamental attachment to appearance. Before the symptoms of my tribulation developed, I frequently looked in the mirror while wishing for more perfect facial features, and these thoughts were the pursuits of ordinary people seeking fame and reputation. When I read what Master said,
“Haven’t I mentioned that the purpose of going through hardships is to eliminate your attachments and improve?” (Teachings at the Conference in the Eastern U.S.)
I started to realize the reason why the tribulation was prolonged to this extent. It existed as an opportunity for me to truly give up my fundamental attachments. With regard to physical appearances, I enlightened to the fact that the human body is subject to aging, so no matter how good I look now, beauty won’t last forever. It is about the inner beauty - my xinxing that truly makes me a beautiful person. After I removed this fundamental attachment, my skin condition finally began to disappear and everything returned to normal.
At the beginning of my cultivation journey, I was strongly motivated, and aspired to be diligent in my cultivation. I managed to wake up early every morning to do the exercises and study the Fa every day. I was proud of myself for the first four months of cultivation, that I was able to start doing the three things required for Fa-rectification disciples, and within the first six months I was able to finish reading the first round of Master’s Fa lectures.
However, over time the yearning of finding my original true self began to fade. The attachment to comfort led me to seek stimulating and exciting issues among ordinary people’s society and I drifted further away from Master’s arrangement. I started to realize that the more I indulged myself in watching videos and scrolling on social media, the more I became like an ordinary person. The more I watched, the more I felt like it was okay to continue to watch as I measured myself with the standard of everyday people. I did not take cultivation seriously and even had thoughts like it was alright to fail during cultivation because I could get back up quickly. I felt that taking a detour in cultivation was something that should happen and I allowed my attachments to lust, desire, and the competitive and show-off mentalities to control my thoughts and actions.
Consequently, no matter how much I studied the Fa, the Fa couldn’t reach my heart and mind, let alone allow me to further enlighten to higher principles. Furthermore, while doing the exercises, studying the Fa, and sending forth righteous thoughts, I often dozed off, and I had many negative thoughts which disturbed me. I also had an unbearably severe stomach ache for three months straight, which occurred due to the old forces’ arrangements to test me to see if I still wanted to cultivate. I once thought that giving up these attachments was too hard, that cultivation was too difficult, and that reaching consummation was impossible. Still, I remembered Master’s teaching.
Master said,
“Actually, none of the bad thoughts are you. If you can do it, you will distinguish them and see: “Oh, this thought isn’t good and should be eliminated. I should get rid of it. I shouldn’t think like that.” That in itself is your eliminating it.” (Teachings at the Conference in the Western U.S.)
I immediately discarded the thought as it was not mine and resulted from the old forces’ arrangements. That night, I thought it over, “Why am I so weak? So weak to the point that I cannot decide which path I am going to take. Following Master or the degenerated beings? Why am I letting Master down? Has what Master done for me been for nothing? What is the point of coming here? Just to get deluded then be destroyed in the end? How brave was I to come down here to take up the task of saving sentient beings and assist Master in rectifying the Fa? But now I have become like this?” I became very regretful and even wept for my pitiful self and my sentient beings. I was determined to change and stop myself from indulging in entertainment on social media.
The next day, using an app on my laptop called “SelfControl,” I blocked the websites that I frequently visited, since I knew that I could not restrain myself, as they were easily accessible.
Within a week, my righteous thoughts emerged again, my stomachache miraculously disappeared, and I sensed that I was in full control of every thought and action.
However, after a week, I could see that the attachment to scrolling on social media and watching ordinary people videos in my thoughts still existed, and it seemed to emerge again. I went back to the old habit within a week or two, so negative things like bad thoughts and stomach aches re-occurred. I thought, “If I truly want to eliminate this attachment, I have to look inside and rely on myself. The effort had to come from me, and I needed to be responsible to myself. I needed to be in the position of controlling myself, not the app controlling myself for me.” I was startled when I read Master’s teaching in 2016 when he said,
“All the same, I wanted to tell you that as Dafa disciples you must realize how enormous your responsibility is. It’s not to be taken lightly. This affair has progressed to the end and I am extremely anxious, yet you’re not taking it seriously. In the end it will be too late for tears! Everything in this world was designed as such with a purpose, and it is designed to lead to attachments; there are so many things that try to keep you from being saved. And yet you are forgetting that you’re a cultivator, and are just going along with it?! You are the hope of a multitude of beings—the hope of your domain’s lives!” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2016 New York Fa Conference”)
I realized that I had taken cultivation too lightly and that not only did I have to be responsible to myself, but to the multitude of beings in my domain as well. Through this tribulation, I was able to see the seriousness of cultivation as well as the danger of the attachment to comfort and ease which led to my attachment to social media. By changing my view of social media from seeing it as something for entertainment to seeing it as an impediment to my cultivation, I was able to relinquish the attachment fundamentally. I am now determined to be more diligent on my cultivation journey and to walk a more righteous path in assisting Master to rectify the Fa.
Thank you, Master! Thank you fellow practitioners
Above is my sharing. If anything is inappropriate, please kindly point it out.
(Presented at the 2021 Online International Young Practitioners Experience Sharing Conference)