Cultivating the Righteous Enlightenment of Putting Others First

Greetings, respected Master!
Greetings, fellow practitioners!

I am glad to be able to share my cultivation experience here. I began practising Falun Gong in 1995. At that time my father attended the class Master held in Shijiazhuang in March 1994, and afterwards he introduced the practice to more than a dozen members of our family, myself included. Over my 31 years of cultivation there have been so many stories and realisations, and my understanding of the Fa has kept deepening. As space is limited, today I will share only a little of what I have experienced in cultivation over the past year.

Last February my wife was given the opportunity to study at Fei Tian College Middletown, in New York. She was granted a student visa, and my son and my father-in-law then obtained their US visas without difficulty as well. Throughout that period, though, I kept worrying that my own visa would be refused, since I had already been refused several times before. I kept thinking, “What if I don’t get through this time either?” The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became. This was in fact an attachment of fear, and even though I knew perfectly well that it was wrong, it was not something I could get rid of all at once. Master said: “Whatever you experience during your cultivation—whether good or bad—is good, for it comes about only because you are cultivating.” (“To the Chicago Fa Conference”)

Whenever I recalled these words of Master’s, my heart would gradually settle. In the end my visa really was refused again. But I felt no resentment. Instead I thought that perhaps my mission in Greece was not yet finished, and that I needed to work harder to save the beings here who have a predestined relationship with me. Perhaps, too, I still had a great deal of qing to let go of. My wife left for New York last February, as soon as her visa came through. At the end of last June my father-in-law and my son went over as well.

Once I had settled a few practical matters, I moved into a smaller place. Every morning I would send forth righteous thoughts, do the standing exercises, and then study one lecture of Zhuan Falun. In the afternoon I would read another lecture of Zhuan Falun and then spend a while reading jingwens. In the evening I did the sitting meditation, and at weekends I joined group Fa study and Hongfa. I kept this up without a break. I felt an extraordinary calm deep inside. When your heart settles and there are no distracting thoughts, studying the Fa feels wonderful: as you read, every character seems to imprint itself deeply in your mind. It was a state I had not experienced for a very long time. I am very grateful to Master for giving me such an opportunity to improve, and I treasured that period.

Below I would like to talk about some of the realisations I have had from specific things I met with in cultivation.

Attaining Righteous Enlightenment of Putting Others First Amid Inverted Principles

The principles within the Three Realms are inverted, and they are principles of selfishness. How, then, are we to cultivate the righteous enlightenment of putting others first in a society like this? I think the first thing is to form the habit of considering other people, and that this matters all the more when their interests clash with our own. That is exactly when we should think carefully about how to benefit the other person. Ordinary people are capable of putting themselves in someone else’s position, and they often handle things with ease. But we are cultivators, and we must not only see things from the other person’s side, we must act for their benefit rather than our own. Everyone in the Three Realms is steeped in qing, and nothing in our lives is free of it. We have to cultivate kindness in ourselves and cultivate benevolence, for only then will qing not sway us.

Master said: “If this qing is not relinquished, you will be unable to cultivate. If you break free from this qing, nobody can affect you. An everyday person’s mind will be unable to sway you. What comes and replaces it is benevolence, which is a nobler thing.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)

So how do we cultivate kindness? To my mind the most basic thing is not to fight and contend the way ordinary people do, and to take personal gain lightly. I think a combative mentality arises for one reason only, which is that the other person has touched your interests, whether material interests or your own entrenched notions, which have been challenged because things did not turn out as you wanted. When a conflict arises, whether you can call to mind the Fa principles Master has taught and treat yourself as a cultivator is absolutely crucial. When karma comes and strikes, if you can manage not to react at once, but pause and leave yourself room to think, things will ease a great deal.

The second thing, as I said earlier, is to be considerate of others and to think of them in what we do. If you can stop and ask why the other person is angry, and why they are giving you a hard time, you will probably handle the conflict rather better.

When a real conflict comes, if you can manage these two things, then over time you will begin to feel the power of this kindness. The tone of your voice, the way you go about things, even your appearance will change. And when you have that power of kindness, it will have a positive effect on ordinary people as you hand out materials and clarify the truth. It rouses the clear-minded side of ordinary people, so they come to know the truth and are saved.

After cultivating for a long time you find that practitioners differ in their inborn quality, and differ too in their understanding of the Fa and in how diligent they are. Even working on the same task, everyone's thinking is a little different. But as long as you set out from the Fa principles when you communicate and coordinate, things can always be harmonised. Perhaps this is a mighty power that comes with Dafa, as the fundamental principle of this universe.

My understanding is that as long as our righteous thoughts are strong, what we do will turn out well. But we live in a world of qing, so our righteous thoughts cannot be strong at every moment. Qing affects us constantly and finds its way in everywhere. That is precisely why we need to study the Fa more, share more, send forth righteous thoughts more, and to watch fewer ordinary people’s programmes and short videos on our phones, so that there are more righteous factors in our minds and we can better resist negative thoughts.

My Understanding of Passing Tests

When some tests come, they really are an examination. My understanding is that if you can step over a test quite easily, then the test was not set high enough. You are bound to face repeated tests of xinxing, again and again, ones that wrench at you and make you suffer, to see whether you can hold firm to being a cultivator, whether you can hold yourself to higher Fa principles and so make the right choice.

Let me give a concrete example. For some years now I have run a company in partnership with a Greek friend of mine, a lawyer, investing in small property projects. We shared the costs equally and shared the profits equally. My residency status meant I could not serve as the company’s legal representative, so my friend was always the legal representative and dealt with the bank. I trusted him completely. Every time, I simply transferred money into the company account as he asked, and I never checked the bank statements.

Then by chance I discovered that he had not in fact been paying half the cost of buying and renovating the properties, while still taking half the profits. When I found this out I was, I must admit, quite upset. I did not go and have it out with him. My first thought was: ”Why have I been allowed to see this?” As a cultivator, could I remain unmoved when my own interests had been harmed?

Of course I was still upset. Judged by ordinary people’s standards, he was clearly in the wrong. But no conflict a cultivator meets with is without cause. There is a predestined reason behind every one of them. So I did not resent him. I simply thought that, for me, this was a test. I am a cultivator, and since I could see that it was a test, in the end I would be able to pass it.

This also brought to mind the many fellow practitioners in good cultivation states whom I have worked alongside in clarifying the truth and serving Shen Yun. That sense of putting others before themselves has gone right into their bones. I cannot find adequate words to describe that state. I feel the gap between us and ordinary people really is enormous. Cultivation is hard, but the wonderful feeling among cultivators, that sincerity, that goodness, that thought for one another, is something most ordinary people never get to experience, especially in the Dharma-ending period.

My Understanding of “Human Notions”

From birth to adulthood, in the environment of family and society, a person keeps forming notions of every kind, which end up as patterns of thought in the subconscious. All of these notions are built on the foundation of qing, all of them are selfish in nature, and they are deeply rooted and very hard to remove.

Without cultivating, an ordinary person simply cannot realise that the source of these thoughts is not his true nature at all, but merely notions formed after birth. If a cultivator fails to truly look inward at each test and instead keeps shielding the very notions he ought to be discarding, then those notions will in turn take control of his main consciousness, making it harder and harder for him to look inward. Worst of all, it is very difficult to detect. The influence works imperceptibly.

They push you to look outward for the cause, to judge right and wrong by human principles, and to keep reinforcing the thought, “I did nothing wrong. What I did was reasonable.” Worse still, the old forces will exploit the gaps in your thinking to make you act on impulse, and will manufacture all sorts of reasons in your mind to prove that you are right, drawing you so deeply into a strong sense of self that you cannot pull yourself out. In the end a person is full of grievance, feels that nobody can be trusted, and may even shut himself away and go towards enlightenment along an evil path.

Master said: “When you’re being interfered with you can’t always think, “I have to destroy whoever is interfering with me, no one can interfere with me.” Why don’t you stop and think about it: Why is someone interfering with you? Why is it able to interfere with you? Is it because you have an attachment, or because you have something you can’t let go of? Why don’t you look at yourself? The true reason lies with you yourself, and that’s the only reason it can exploit your gap!” (“Fa Teaching Given at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference”)

In the same lecture Master also said: “I’m going to tell you that no matter what kind of conflicts arise, or what kind of situations emerge, it’s bound to be that we have gaps in ourselves. That’s for sure. If there weren’t a gap nobody could exploit it.”

What I came to understand is this: looking inward unconditionally is the fastest and most direct way to resolve a conflict and to improve oneself. When fellow practitioners point something out to us, if we can look inward humbly and deeply, we will avoid a great deal of loss and will gradually dismantle the selfish root behind our postnatal notions. Looking inward is itself the process of improving, and it is not easy. However much you look inward, that is how much you improve, and the problems that show up in this dimension are resolved to the same degree.

On Clarifying the Truth and Saving People

In Teachings Given on Lantern Festival Day, 2003, Master said: “But today’s Dafa disciples are doing something different from the cultivation ways in every other period in history, and that’s because you are shouldering a greater responsibility that surpasses your personal Consummation. Saving sentient beings and validating the Fa, these far surpass your personal cultivation, they’re even greater things. And that’s something that the old forces can’t handle correctly, and they’re interfering with you. Negate them, and face all of it with the right thoughts!”

I have thought about why the old forces cannot handle this correctly. It is because nothing like this has ever happened in the old universe. The Fa-rectification period is an extraordinarily special period in history. It is unprecedented, and there will never be another. The cultivation of Dafa disciples and the Fa-rectification exist at the same time and are inseparable.

If we cannot truly get our relationship with sentient beings right, it is easy to drift, without realising it, into cultivating only for ourselves. Once the basis is wrong, the old forces can readily exploit our gaps to create all kinds of obstacles and hinder our cultivation.

At the same time, after cultivating for a long time in this dimension, where inverted principles are everywhere, it is easy to fall into a mechanical, numb state and to lose the sense of mission, the benevolence and the courage we had when we first came down to assist Master in saving people. Hongfa is not merely doing the exercises, handing out leaflets, setting up display boards and clarifying the truth.

Some people take a leaflet and some do not. Some people look at a display board and some do not. When we urge people to make the Three Withdrawals, some withdraw and some do not. For ordinary people, this is them choosing their own future. For us, this is cultivation. It is benevolence made manifest, using righteous thoughts to awaken the clear-minded side of sentient beings and to save them. Behind it lie predestined relationships that human eyes cannot see, along with all the greatness and magnificence of saving sentient beings. We cannot see any of this, but Master often uses a word or a look from a being who has been saved to encourage us. I believe every practitioner has had such an experience.

On the one hand we assist Master in the Fa-rectification. On the other, we are laying a foundation for those who will obtain the Fa in the future. This honour belongs to Dafa disciples of the Fa-rectification period alone. How could we not treasure it?

May we all cultivate ourselves well, do the three things well, fulfil our prehistoric vows, and reach Consummation and return home with Master. These are some of my experiences in cultivation. If there is anything inappropriate, please kindly point it out.

Thank you, everyone.

(Speaker at the European Fa-Conference 2026 in Prague)