True Cultivation During Fa Rectification (Benelux Fa Conference 2003)

Shared at the First Benelux Falun Dafa Experience Exchange Conference held in Brussels on April 27

Respected Teacher, dear fellow practitioners,

Through this report, I want to share some of my understandings that I developed recently thanks to Teacher’s precious guidance through the Dafa. I hope it can be of any use for your cultivation. Please feel free to point out inadequacies in my report.

1. True Cultivation During Fa Rectification

In Zhuan Falun, Chapter Four, “Upgrading Xinxing”, Teacher said: “Why are there suddenly so many problems? Everything goes wrong. People mistreat him, and his boss also does not favor him. Even the situation at home becomes very tense. Why are there so many problems all of a sudden? This person himself might not get it.”

In my daily life, I work for an Internet Service Provider, where I do the technical support for business customers through telephone. In Dutch language there is an expression: “to be scolded at in all languages”. Sometimes I feel like this is literally the case. Teacher said at the “Lecture at the First Conference in North America":

“Everyone is hurting one another and has bad intentions. People have no idea that when two persons meet, they have already started hurting each other without having said much. This is because over the course of a long cultural history, life after life, you never know who owes what to whom. Since it’s been an extremely long time over which grievances and gratitude have built up, when people meet, they each want to have the past repaid and so they harm each other cruelly.”

Indeed, behind those formal salutations in phone conversations, those barely cheerful opening sentences, and those polite demands to fulfill each other’s requests, I often can feel a cold and cruel game. I have to do the support in several languages, and in each of these languages, the game seems to be the same, it’s only played differently. One knows the rules are set even before he hears the other person talk. When I started my job more than two years ago, I almost couldn’t stand it. Receiving calls from people was not my favourite occupation in the first place, and I also knew nothing of computers. By improving Xinxing through studying Fa and looking inside on one hand, and building up my worldly skills on the other, I gradually overcame my tribulations. Through trial and error, I learned to reach beyond the realm of human disputes, and to serve people unconditionally with compassion. In the end I was recognised as an excellent senior operator with an extensive knowledge and who was very helpful to customers, and eventually moved up to the more difficult field of business solutions support.

I have kept the job so far for various reasons, one being that I always saw it as a good environment to improve my Xinxing. Since I started to work for the business desk, before long I felt nervous and exhausted like in the early days. Even though I learned things quite quickly, I this time found it very difficult to find the correct state of mind for a practitioner in this new environment. Somewhere I felt stuck. Although I realised this environment was actually a new opportunity for me to raise my level, I failed to meet the requirement and didn’t know how to improve, sometimes being worked up like an ordinary person.

Not until recently, I have realised a major leakage in my cultivation. Namely, deep down inside, I discovered an old attitude of seeking comfort behind my attempts to keep upgrading my Xinxing. My human side has used the excuse of “improving oneself” to slip itself in my purpose of cultivation, it indeed wants me to “improve myself”, but not with the purpose to practice cultivation, it only wants me to feel indifferent towards those daily painful tribulations of being confronted with other people’s selfish desires, quarrels and pressures. This has left a huge gap for the old forces to exhaust my true being. When I look deep inside, I can see that these notions of comfort have nurtered many, many bad elements in my heart and mind, to the extent that some part of me even saw “taking a few days off to join a conference” as the means to relax a little bit, and escape the pressure from my job, like if joining big Dafa activities is a way to “get new energy”. Though I noticed this attitude from time to time, I found it very difficult to eliminate it, and I always felt chased by the pressure.

Both my job and the place where I live are in the centre of the city, on a one minute walk from the big tourist attractions. There are many Chinese I come across each day when going out for shopping, walking to work, or taking my lunch break. Unlike before, where I didn't care about those people taking pictures all over the place, I nowadays feel a deep concern for them, I can feel the imminent danger for their future in their casual glances. If some way or another I fail to give them a flyer, I really feel pity for the loss of the opportunity to fulfil the millions upon millions of years of waiting. But quite often, due to this nervous state the work conditions at my job put me into, because I look at the situation from my human side, and using cultivation as a kind of trick to overcome such a stressing environment, I am very far from the state wherein I can help those precious Chinese people, and when I give them a flyer at that moment, I try to protect myself from their notions. The result is obvious: they get nervous in turn, and evadingly refuse to accept the materials. Sometimes, during lunch break, I wander around aimlessly, stripped from my righteous thoughts while observing whole groups of them. After a while I go back to work, to hear that we have a problem with our mail servers and that the support desk is overflowing with incoming calls from affected customers.

I am not sitting here to criticize myself, of course; it’s just obvious that I failed to observe some of the very basics in cultivation Teacher has told us, which has lead to such a painful state in my cultivation, and, even worse, to serious interference in my Fa-Rectification work. I wanted to point out and to discuss these with you, so as to do better from now on. If we are not clear about the meaning of suffering hardships in order to improve Xinxing, we can see now that our uncultivated part can indeed "artificially restrain our main thoughts” (Essentials For Further Advancement, “Expounding on the Fa”). Through reading this article from Teacher, my heart has become much more clear about this principle. Please allow me to read to you the first paragraph:

Expounding on the Fa
"For a long period of time the sentient beings in Dafa, especially the disciples, have had a misunderstanding of the Fa at various levels regarding xinxing improvement. Whenever a tribulation comes, you do not see it with the side of your original nature but view it completely with your human side. Evil demons then capitalize on this point and inflict endless interference and damage, leaving students in long-term tribulations. As a matter of fact, this results from an inadequate understanding of the Fa by your human side. You have humanly restrained your divine side; in other words, you have restrained the parts that have been successfully cultivated and have prevented them from doing Fa-rectification. How can the uncultivated side restrain your main thoughts or the side that has already attained the Fa? Having humanly fostered the evil demons, you allow them to capitalize on the loopholes in the Fa. When a tribulation arrives, if you, a disciple, can truly maintain an unshakable calm or be determined to meet different requirements at different levels, this should be sufficient for you to pass the test. If it continues endlessly and if there do not exist other problems in your xinxing or conduct, it must be that the evil demons are capitalizing on the weak spots caused by your lack of control. After all, a cultivator is not an ordinary human. So why doesn’t the side of you that is your original nature rectify the Fa?

(...)"

Li Hongzhi, July 5, 1997

From the window of my workplace, I have a beautiful view on the Grand’ Place in Brussels. As you may know, the city hall is located there, and it has a beautiful tower with a bronze statue of St Michel on top of it. One day when I was gazing at the sky and when my eye fell on the statue, I suddenly became sober. St Michel was depicted there, slaying the demon and casting it out of Paradise. It was as though Teacher told me to wake up and realise the importance of my daily presence on the Grand’ Place. Very calmly, I stood up from my desk, and took the flyers in my hand. I walked out of the building and towards the Grand’ Place in a peaceful pace and distributed the Chinese materials to every group I met. My righteous thoughts cleaned out the environment, and I welcomed everyone with a soft but determined smile. My cultivated side was truly in charge of my body and my actions. The results during that lunch break were very good.

Since that day there have been several occasions where I didn’t do well in taking responsibility, but through writing this experience sharing article, I am truly inspired to catch up again, and ever so determined in assisting Teacher. My current environment is a golden opportunity to understand how personal cultivation and Fa-Rectification are blended together, and that to do well in Fa-Rectification can only be the result from being diligent in truly practicing cultivation.

2. Being at Home and Non-Existence

Now I would like to talk about how I understand the requirement of “non-existence” for practitioners. When I read “Wu Cun” (Non-Existence) from Hong Yin, I always felt a deeper meaning that I wanted to understand but couldn’t grasp, especially the meaning of “To die with no regrets” for a practitioner who is still alive, and what is the link between “Get rid of all excessive thoughts” and the state of “non-existence”. Here I read to you Teacher’s poem for your reference:

Non-Existence

To live with few desires To die with no regrets Get rid of all excessive thoughts It’s not difficult to cultivate Buddhahood

Li Hongzhi

(Hong Yin, unofficial translation)

Let's for example consider the concept of "being home". To my understanding, the concept of being home in a certain place, or to feel at home or feeling at home as understood by human beings, is not referring to a material environment, nor to an atmosphere where one feels comfortable, but they are rather reflecting a state of our own self. I see it as a strong example of “excessive thoughts” that I need to get rid of. The reason why we almost never notice this state ourselves, while others see quite easily if one “feels at home” or not, or “feels at ease” or not, is because “home” is a notion rooted in one’s heart, rather than something in one’s environment. If one would rid himself completely from this notion, he will be just fine wherever he is.

Teacher said in Zhuan Falun, Lecture Nine, “A clear and clean mind”: “It has been said: "When I come to this ordinary human society, it’s just like checking into a hotel for a few days. Then I leave in a hurry." Some people are just obsessed with this place and have forgotten their own homes.”

Another example is "to prove one is right". When humans think that they are making their point with reason, they are often just defending their own “excessive thoughts”. Just like the old forces, they are too attached to their own concepts, and always fail to look inside. They instead mix up the weirdest thoughts like if they were their reason of existence. In this state, how could one “die with no regret”?

Then, for a practitioner, a Dafa particle that is to clarify the facts in every kind of environment, to all different kinds of people, and facing different kinds of attitude, aren't his notions a big obstacle to overcome, and excessives thoughts to get rid of? I walk in a formal suit through the European Parliament, knocking doors to ask for support, or if I offer a flyer to someone on the street, am I trying to feel mentally at home and physically at ease, so as to give a better impression? Or is it me who is inviting everyone I encounter to take place in my righteous field, and give them an opportunity in this chaotic world to righteously position themselves?

As Dafa disciples, we should cultivate unconditionally, and not according to how we feel. This means that in Fa-Rectification, we should just go and save them. If we are able to recognise all those different notions we formed as human beings as the obstacles on our path, and get rid of every single “excessive thought”, we will be able to sacrifice, and this leads one “to die with no regrets” in my view. It is a state of naturally letting go of the concepts that build up the self and that keep one pursuing things for self-interest during our lifetime. While abandoning that old attitude, we are conforming to the state of “Non-Existence” wherein we can unconditionally help others. On the other hand, if we fail to recognise those concepts, we might think that we are trying to help others, while under the surface our heart is preoccupied with self-containment.

We should be clear that a Great Fa Enlightened Being needs no home to be home, and that It can be the host in any situation, even when it appears to be the guest. This is the manifestation of our benevolent compassion towards all sentient beings.

Thank you for listening to my speech.