Improving understanding through Fa study

Revered Master, dear fellow practitioners,

My name is Iliya. I have been practicing Falun Dafa for six years while living in a small town in Bulgaria. Thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences in cultivation.

The Benefit of Group Study for Discovering My Attachments

I am the only practitioner in my area, and therefore I strive to participate more often in Dafa projects and events so that I can meet other practitioners while helping Master in saving sentient beings.

For several years now in Bulgaria, we’ve organized daily morning and evening online Fa study so that practitioners like me, who practice alone in their town or village, can have a constant environment for study and sharing. Previously, I studied the Fa online every day, and sometimes I traveled to Sofia for the weekly group Fa study with practitioners from the capital. I noticed that when I participated in Fa study with other practitioners in person, I received benefits: I became more diligent, gained more understandings, and was even more focused during Fa study. Even simply removing myself from my home environment, with its comforts and sentimentality, helped me. I shared this with the coordinator in Bulgaria, and he encouraged me to come to the Sofia group Fa study every week. He did so, traveling from far away to participate in Fa study weekly.

I decided to travel regularly as well, but despite this, I was unable to do it. Sometimes the day before departing I would find excuses not to go. Sofia is 170 kilometers away from my town, and all kinds of thoughts would pass through my mind. One day a leak developed in the bathroom at home and I decided not to travel. The next day I went to check again what needed to be replaced and saw that the leak had stopped. I even shared this incident with practitioners because I had used it as an excuse not to go to group Fa study. Despite recognizing these excuses, I still did not travel regularly.

It was late autumn and winter was approaching. The Fa study in Sofia takes place in the evening on a weekday, and the return trip is late at night, the next day I am at work again. One day, just before leaving, I decided to call the coordinator to ask whether he would be traveling from his town to Sofia for the weekly Fa study with the group there. It was as if I was hoping he was not traveling, it would serve as an excuse for me not to travel either. I called, and he said he was departing for the Fa study. I started the car, but I was still hesitating. I set off, and suddenly the car began losing power. For a brief moment I thought about giving up, but I quickly realized that the reason was not the car. This was happening because of my indecisiveness. I continued driving and told myself that even at this speed I would still have enough time to get there and return. I sent forth righteous thoughts. After about 50 kilometers on the highway, the car stabilized and began running normally. In Sofia it briefly lost power again, but then it recovered once more.

While writing this cultivation experience sharing paper, I reflected on what fundamental state in my cultivation had interfered with me.

Throughout the entire winter I traveled every Tuesday for the group Fa study in Sofia. The journey itself was like cultivation at high speed, and I paid attention to every thought. There were storms, snow, and rain, but interestingly it was as if I passed along their periphery. Either they passed me by or I chased after them.

Master said: “... what Master is imparting to you is the Fa of the cosmos. What I just said was to tell you that you absolutely must not slack off in your cultivation, you absolutely must not slack off in your Fa-study, and that you definitely must do it with all due sincerity. If previously you didn’t study well, you definitely should, once you leave here today and having heard Master address this again, really earnestly study and cultivate, and not let your mind wander.” (“Dafa Disciples Must Study the Fa - Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 Washington, D.C. Metro Area Fa Conference”, Collected Teachings Given Around the World, Volume XI)

When I study the Fa at home or online, my mind wanders more easily. That is precisely why, while reading, I spend at least one hour in the lotus position, which helps me concentrate. Master also says that practitioners must elevate themselves in cultivation, which comes through assimilating to the Fa. For me, traveling for group Fa study helped me break away from comfort and enabled my mind to concentrate so that I could assimilate to the Fa, which was elevation.

During a group study of Zhuan Falun in Sofia, I enlightened to something that I had not previously considered. Master said:

“When I was teaching the Fa and the practice in Taiyuan, there was a student over fifty years old. She and her spouse had come to attend my lectures. As they were crossing the street, a car drove by very fast, and its side mirror caught the elderly lady’s clothes. With her clothes caught by the car, the lady was dragged for a distance of over ten meters and “Bam!” slammed to the ground. The car stopped after charging forward for another twenty meters.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)

Several years ago I had the following experience. I had been practicing for two or three years and had still not let go of some of my attachments. I loved running. After a mountain run, I decided to go to a mineral spring outside our town where there’s a small pool. When I entered the pool, I felt extremely comfortable. My body felt almost weightless. I immediately began thinking about why I felt so good. I became concerned because I realized that, as a practitioner, such external factors as a mineral pool and sports were superficial things. I recognized my attachment to my own body and my desire to feel good. I immediately got out of the pool.

While hurriedly putting on my shoes, I heard a splash. I patted my pockets and realized that my electronic device had fallen into the water. I took it out, and it froze. I sat in the car and for several minutes wondered what was happening: first I had felt very good, then my electronic device fell into the water. What else would happen?

I started the car and left. The turnoff for the pool was right at a curve, and I had to make a left turn to merge onto the road. I started moving and saw a car approaching from the right. To avoid it, I accelerated while in the opposite lane. Because the sun blinded me, I saw too late that a vehicle was coming directly toward me. We collided head-on. All of this happened within seconds. I got out of the car and went to the other vehicle, which had been thrown aside by the impact. I opened the door and saw a man behind the airbag. I shook him and asked whether he was all right. “I’m fine,” he said. I quickly helped him out of the car and moved him away from the road because it was dangerous and another vehicle could have hit him since it was on a curve. I secured the traffic area and called the emergency services.

One of my cousins saw me and stopped his car. He wanted to take me to the hospital. I replied that nothing was wrong with me. However, he told me that I had blood on my head. Only then did I notice that I had a wound high above my forehead near my hairline. The police arrived. I explained what had happened and told them that I was at fault. I took a broom from my cousin and swept the road clear of broken glass and plastic. Interestingly, the man with whom I had collided said nothing. He did not reproach me for wrecking his new car. He simply stood and watched. I had money with me and insisted that he take it to pay for the towing service. The police stood there watching me. My brother, who is a police officer, called and told me to go to the hospital for an examination. I told him I was fine and asked him not to tell our mother so she would not worry. In the end, my cousin attached my car to his SUV and we towed it to a scrapyard.

Later, when I reflected on what had happened, I concluded that it was like the karma repayment described in Lecture Three of Zhuan Falun where Master’s Fashen protected practitioners. The only difference was that I had been at fault and was struck, whereas those practitioners bore no responsibility at all and did not even have a bruise afterward. Master said: “We have said that good or bad comes from a person’s initial thought, and the thought at that moment can bring about different consequences.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)

When I read these words of Master during group study, I realized that the elderly woman was not thinking about herself and her own interests. She was thinking, however, about the driver whose car had caught her clothes and dragged her for more than 10 meters.

I now realized that in that incident I had been on the side of the person responsible for the accident. I was not thinking about myself. I was thinking about the other person. During the collision I only felt slight tension in my legs. The car had not even come to a stop and I was already running to help. That spontaneous thought had saved me. If I had not been a practitioner but an ordinary person afraid for his life, perhaps something bad would have happened. At that time I had only two small and identical bruises on my knees, while the scar from the wound on my head remains to this day and occasionally aches, as though it were still an open wound.

Looking Within During a Truth-Clarification Event

Recently I noticed an attachment that interferes with my truth clarification. It turns out that what I had almost considered a strength until now is actually my weakness. I realized this during the most recent truth-clarification petition following the peaceful appeal commemorating July 20, 1999, which we held in front of the Chinese Embassy in Bulgaria.

When I went to pick up information brochures for distribution, I saw that our petition stand did not have any “End the CCP” brochures. I asked why there were none, and the organizers said that they had overlooked them. I replied that this was very important, especially on that day. Someone said that it did not matter and we could inform people with the brochures that were available. This upset me somewhat. The thought even crossed my mind not to participate in the petition, as if I wanted to go on strike because there were no “End the CCP” brochures. I quickly came to my senses and noticed that the problem was within me.

Shortly afterward, the organizer brought some of those brochures. I immediately understood that this had happened so that I could notice my attachment. I have always been very active in clarifying the truth about the persecution and the evil nature of the CCP. I have read a great deal about communism, and when I explain things to people, I use many reasons and arguments, but sometimes this turns into an argument. Arguing is also an attachment that I have been striving to eliminate. There was even an occasion when I felt physically unwell because someone at a petition started arguing with me while defending communism.

Many times, I have noticed that such people, who want to argue, come only to me. Sometimes I become concerned when I notice that certain practitioners do not want to clarify the truth using the “End the CCP” brochures in order to avoid conflict, since Bulgaria is a former socialist country and there are people who are still under the influence of the specter of communism.

In my understanding, Master has mentioned that our compassion is what should melt the evil factors that manipulate people so they will not hear the truth and that blocks their salvation. In other words, both things are extremes that practitioners should avoid: fear of stepping forward to clarify the truth, and the confrontation toward communism that I noticed in myself. This confrontation, or “struggle”, used so often in communist rhetoric, apparently exists within me, and I must get rid of it.

The above is my limited level of understanding achieved through my cultivation.

Thank you, Revered Master!
Thank you, dear fellow practitioners!

 

(Submitted to the European Fa-Conference 2026)