Looking at Tribulations and Suffering in Cultivation as a Good Thing

(Minghui.org) Yesterday I visited Kang, a 78-year-old practitioner. It had only been a few months since I saw her last, but I was shocked to see how quickly she had declined during that time.

Kang was in bed. Her hair was very short and her face was haggard. I asked her why she didn’t sit up and listen to Master’s Fa teachings. It wouldn’t do just to lie in bed like that. She told me that it had been several months since she’d listened to the Fa or done the exercises.

I saw an MP3 charging on her table, so I turned it on. I was shocked to hear it wasn’t Master’s lectures but Buddhist music that her daughter had recorded for her. Kang’s housemaid said Kang had been listening to it for several months. I asked Kang where her MP3 player with Master Li’s (Dafa’s founder) lectures and exercise music was, and she said she didn’t know, that maybe her daughter had put it away.

Kang began to suffer physically after she returned from visiting her daughter in Beijing a few years ago. Back then, she’d just been released from an arrest. Two practitioners in our Fa study group were concerned that the police might follow her, so we stopped studying with her. Without the group cultivation environment, she moved to her daughter’s home and didn’t bring her Dafa books with her. Her daughter played Buddhist music to her every day. She didn’t send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the interference and began to decline shortly after.

Kang told me that she couldn’t endure the suffering anymore and wanted to die. I asked her not to think that way. She had waited life after life to obtain Dafa and become a Dafa disciple. Master has done so much for us. If she gave up like this, how could she face Master’s compassion and the beings in her world that had pinned their hope of salvation on her?

I said, “You have to be responsible for yourself and the sentient beings in your world. Only by cultivating yourself well can you save them. You must strengthen your main consciousness.

“If your daughter doesn’t let you study the Fa or do the exercises, can she give you righteous fruition and a bright future? If you stopped practicing Dafa because you didn’t want to upset her, isn’t that sentimentality? Didn’t you think about disappointing Master and letting Master down? As a true cultivator, you need to measure things based on the Fa, not what your daughter or housemaid tells you. We need to face everything, whether it’s family sentimentality or police harassment, with righteous thoughts. We should tell ourselves that we are Master’s disciples and we only follow Master’s teachings to do the three things well.”

Kang asked, “Why do I always struggle with sickness karma in my cultivation and now I’m even worse off?” From her question, it seemed to me that her understanding of the Fa was on a superficial level and she didn’t truly understand what cultivation is and why we cultivate.

I said, “Since the day we took up Dafa, we ceased being ordinary people. We are cultivators. Master is rearranging our lives based on our inborn quality, karma, enlightenment, and willpower. Master made systematic arrangements for us to eliminate our karma, so there will be tests and tribulations for us to pass. It’s all up to us to enlighten to it.”

She also asked, “Why are some of my friends who don’t practice Dafa in better health than me? They have a good time every day and very few tribulations.”

I explained, “Because, as a cultivator, we need to eliminate our karma and pay off our debts. Our entire cultivation process is for us to purify our bodies and improve. When we endure physically, our xinxing improves and our level rises. For non-practitioners, it seems they are doing well on the surface, but it’s because their karma is deep down inside. For us, our karma is being pushed out from a deep level, layer by layer, until everything is cleared. Our bodies will be transformed into high-energy matter. There are many ways for us to eliminate karma, both through physical suffering and mental torment. It depends on the types of debts we owe. We will need to pay off all of our debts and remove all of our human thoughts before we can achieve consummation and return home with Master. Everything needs to be settled. If we understand these principles, it won’t be so difficult when it’s time for us to pass the tests.”

Master taught us,

“If you live very well among everyday people, how can you cultivate? How can your karma be transformed? How will you have an environment to improve your xinxing and transform your karma?” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)

I urged Kang to recite “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” If she really treated herself as a Dafa cultivator, I said, Master would help her.

Kang nodded and said she felt much better. I truly hope that she can strengthen her righteous thoughts and pass this test.

As Falun Dafa cultivators, we need to look at things differently from non-cultivators. When we endure discomfort, we should take it as a good thing. All of us have generated boundless karma in our past lives. Repaying that won’t be pleasant. Only by enduring hardships can we repay our debts and truly improve.