Facing Hardship in Cultivation with Righteous Thoughts

Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!

I am from Belgium, and I obtained the Fa in 1998.

Master says in the scripture The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be: “But in reality, what human society takes to be truths are, from the perspective of the cosmos, inversions of truth; when humans go through hardship and suffer it is so that they may pay off karma and thereby have happiness in the future. A cultivator thus needs to cultivate by correct and upright truths. Going through hardship and suffering is an outstanding opportunity to remove karma, be cleansed of sin, purify the body, elevate your plane of thought, and rise in level—it’s an extraordinarily good thing. This is a correct and upright Fa-truth. But as cultivation is lived out, when the suffering bears down on you and conflicts come up that hit upon the deepest part of you—and especially when it rattles the rigid notions you have—the test is really hard to pass. It can even be to the point that you know full well it’s a test but still can’t let go of your attachments. What’s more, Dafa disciples are cultivating in this ‘real’ world that brims with temptation, so it becomes even more difficult—and even more important—to change those notions.”

Master wrote this scripture twenty-one years ago, and I memorised it at the time. Yet it is only in the past few years that its meaning, even just its surface meaning, has slowly begun to truly enter my heart and to become part of the standard by which I measure my daily life.

Passing tests and enduring hardship is a good thing

A few years ago I passed a major test in my cultivation. Master says in Zhuan Falun: “The enlightenment that we actually refer to is a matter of whether in the course of cultivation one can enlighten to and accept the Fa taught by the master or the Tao taught by the Taoist master, whether one can treat oneself as a cultivator upon encountering tribulations, and whether one can adhere to the Fa while cultivating.” 

I lived through that process for real. When it first happened it felt as though a mountain had come down on me and was about to crush me, and I was full of incomprehension. Later on I thought, all right, in theory I know that passing a test and enduring hardship is a good thing, but emotionally I really did not want to go through it again, because it was simply too bitter. Then, when I truly made up my mind to cultivate and witnessed the miracles of cultivation, and felt the relief of the way opening up again, I was filled with gratitude, gratitude that I had been given such an opportunity to pass this test.

I was grateful, too, that Master had watched over me and brought me through. It was from that time on that I truly came to appreciate that passing tests and enduring hardship really is an immeasurably precious experience. I no longer instinctively recoil from a test, and when a fellow practitioner goes through an ordeal I no longer feel upset for them with human notions, or indignant on their behalf. Instead I am genuinely happy for them. When a conflict arises, the principle I am insisting on does not matter in the eyes of the divine. What matters is whether, at the moment the conflict suddenly erupts, I can meet it in the state of a cultivator. So when conflicts and ordeals come, the bigger the matter and the more unfavourable it is to me, the more I should actually be glad, because it means I have the capacity to endure and pass this test.

We are far too accustomed to having this physical body, and we instinctively use all sorts of means to deal with whatever the outside world does to it, so that many of our responses to pain have become instinctive. I remember that during a European heatwave we held a Hongfa activity. As the sun moved, the shady spot we had been standing in was no longer shady, and fellow practitioners began moving to another patch of shade. I have to be grateful that the passage I happened to be memorising that day was this one, from “Lecture Nine” of Zhuan Falun: “One must begin by being a good person. One should always improve xinxing, always suffer hardships, ascend constantly in cultivation, and always seek to improve xinxing, even though one cannot see one’s own gong.” 

Softly repeating to myself, “always suffer hardships”, “always suffer hardships”, I found that once I genuinely treasured the chance to endure hardship, standing out in the sun did not feel especially difficult. Of course, I was not deliberately going out to look for hardship, as that would have turned into pursuit. Had there been shade one step away, I would have moved into it.

This small incident is not worth mentioning in itself. What matters, as I see it, is the change of notion: we are far too used to avoiding any bodily discomfort. Yet each time “discomfort” arrives, before we instinctively push it away, perhaps we can also remind ourselves that hardship is coming, that this is a good thing, and that we should not dodge it.

Ordeals in cultivation are not punishment

At the beginning of June my period came in a highly abnormal way. It was something I had never experienced before. My first reaction was: What have I done wrong? Could this be serious? Am I going to die? It sounds absurd, but I am the sort of person whose mind runs away with wild thoughts I cannot control. A single hailstone falls and my mind has already worked its way to the end of the world.

My husband asked me what I was afraid of. I asked myself the same question: what exactly was I afraid of? Was I afraid of dying? I cannot say I was not, but it did not seem to be quite that either. Master said in “Fa Teaching Given at the 2006 Conference in Canada”, from Collected Teachings Given Around the World, Volume VII: “The type of death visible to people isn’t horrific, because that is not the death of the person’s true being.” 

He also said: “I, your master, removed the names of all Dafa disciples from the ledgers of the Three Realms, of the Human Realm, of the Netherworld, and even of Hell.” (Dafa Spiritual Practice Is Serious) 

After thinking about it for a long time, I found that what I was afraid of was that I had not been doing well, that the old forces had exploited a gap, and that this was a punishment for me. On that point I felt uneasy. I really had been slack, and I really had not been doing well.

I did not believe in the so-called solutions of ordinary people, yet I could not stop the attachment of fear from forming in my heart. So I found Master’s teachings on illness karma and read through them, and at that point I felt that righteous thoughts had gained the upper hand. The next time all sorts of chaotic thoughts came to harass me, a thought rose up in my mind: “Who dares come and shake my righteous thoughts? Whoever comes will be destroyed.” The moment that thought came out, those wild thoughts vanished at once, as though they had never existed. But my self-reproach and my fear of punishment did not disappear. On top of that, this period really was unusual and went on for a long time, so my heart was still unsettled, and I did my best to hold on to righteous thoughts. As it happened, that same week a fellow practitioner shared how she had faced things with righteous thoughts after being diagnosed with cancer, and that was an encouragement to me as well.

Later, during Fa study, I came to understand why that one thought had carried such power. Master says in Teachings Given on Lantern Festival Day, 2003: “No matter whether they did it intentionally or unintentionally, as soon as they were seen they were destroyed, since they committed the sin of persecuting Dafa disciples’ righteous thoughts and righteous faith. So, even if they can justify it, they’re still very timid when they do those things. As a matter of fact, I’m already eliminating that type of thing and putting a stop to it.”

And with that, the matter passed. A few days later my husband told me about a dream he had had: apocalyptic thunder and lightning, terrifying, and in the dream his elder brother reminded him to send forth righteous thoughts, so he woke up sending forth righteous thoughts. As I watched him describe the scene so vividly, I suddenly realised something. When I face things like this, my first thought is always negative. Right then, for instance, what came to my mind was that if I had had such a dream my first reaction would have been fear. How badly must I have been doing to be struck by lightning in a dream?

I noticed this difference in outlook, but the thought left no great mark on me. On my way to work the next day I opened Minghui Radio’s cultivation sharing podcast and heard the cultivation experience of a Canadian practitioner who had driven a very old motorhome three thousand miles from New York back to Canada. The many ordeals he met along the way, and the state of mind he held while he was in them, moved me deeply. Through ordeals that cut him to the bone, and through looking inward, he realised that he had all along been treating ordeals as punishment. Once he realised this, a completely new state of cultivation appeared. This Canadian practitioner said: “Without kind thoughts towards myself, I could not truly have benevolence towards others either. I realised that this state of kindness is essential. I am not outside the Fa. I must genuinely apply the Fa to myself.

“In the past I seem to have applied only a distorted kind of Zhen to myself: a harsh honesty that never allowed me any excuse. But without benevolence towards myself, I could not truly abide in Zhen, Shan, and Ren.” The sharing was called “Learning to Treat Difficulties as Gifts”. I was deeply moved. Was this not describing me exactly? When I finished work and opened Minghui Radio again, meaning to carry on with the other sharings in the same recording, I discovered something remarkable. Each Minghui Radio recording contains several sharings, and in the morning I should have started from the opening and heard the first one. But this sharing was the second one in that recording. That morning I made no choice at all about where to begin, yet I heard the second sharing straight through from beginning to end, without even missing its opening music.

I am not someone who likes to have “Master is right beside me” always on my lips, but this time there is no other explanation for why I landed straight on that one sharing. Thank you, Master!

Enlightening to something is not the same as being able to do it. In the time that followed I caught myself again and again, seeing how that notion would surface the instant a problem arose and take charge. In fact an ordeal is itself brought about by karma and by predestined circumstance. An ordeal is painful, but it is also a gift, and having few ordeals does not mean one is doing well. Of course it is only right to examine oneself when something happens, but not out of such a negative notion.

While writing this sharing I went back and read the Canadian practitioner’s article again, and I still found it extraordinarily moving, especially the line “I am not outside the Fa. I must genuinely apply the Fa to myself.” I realised that the disgust I feel towards myself when I do not pass a test well, the way I give up on myself, and the readiness with which I pin a label on myself, all of which look like holding myself to the Fa, in fact carry an element of “evil”, an element of judgement. This kind of judging closely resembles the way the old forces treat Dafa disciples: you are not up to standard, so you are not qualified to save sentient beings; you did such and such badly, so you do not deserve the good things Master has given you.

But to sit in judgement over other beings from on high, even when the being judged is oneself, is warped. This is hardly surprising, of course. We too are beings from the old cosmos, and it is only natural that we carry these factors of the old cosmos. The difference is that we have obtained Dafa and, of our own accord, have the wish to assimilate to Dafa, which is what qualifies us to be cleansed by Master and slowly transformed into beings that meet the standard of the new cosmos. As I experienced this feeling of “kindness” that comes from placing myself within Dafa, and looked at my own shortcomings in a way that was kind, I felt a warm strength. There was no judgement, only positive hope.

I find that the thought “my life, too, is melted into Dafa” carries great power for me. Once I heard that people had been gossiping unkindly about my family. At first it upset me, but then I remembered this thought and tried to draw strength from the omnipresent nature of the universe, Zhen, Shan, and Ren. All at once I felt how abundant this universe is: there is the righteous and there is the evil, there is kindness and there is wickedness, and there are also things that cannot be sorted by righteous or evil at all, but are simply how beings at different levels exist. All I need to do is keep my own heart turned towards the light. I need only to know what it is I am pursuing, and I do not need to concern myself with the choices other beings make. Those things that are not in accordance with the Fa, or those things whose level is limited, are merely existing in their own way at their own levels, and there is no need at all for me to pay them any attention. I could even sense a scene: in a field of golden light, the things that had made me uncomfortable were like motes of dust that only become visible in a beam of light. Yes, they were there, but how insignificant they were.

This is my present understanding in cultivation, and my level really is limited. But whenever I have witnessed a miracle in cultivation, I feel a responsibility to share it, and so to validate the greatness of Dafa.

I bow in deepest gratitude to Master for his salvation!

(Submitted to the European Fa-Conference 2026)