Treating Dafa Cultivation with a Pure and Clean Heart

Recently I read an article on the Dafa web site entitled “To Get Rid of the Selfish Desire of Taking Advantage of Dafa.” and I had some thoughts after reading the article.

I find that hidden at the bottom of my heart there is also a selfish desire of taking advantage of Dafa, which is demonstrated in the hope of getting something out of my cultivation. I have no attachment of reaching my consummation, but I always hope that my life would be smoother, the Dafa work would be done more smoothly, my physical conditions would be better and my mind would be elevated more quickly. And I have always hoped that these could be achieved through my Dafa cultivation. I have practiced Falun Gong for several years. Because of the elevation of my mind, my interpersonal relationships, the quality of my family life and my working environment are significantly improved. I am often satisfied with the improvement of my daily life, because everything around me is moving in a very smooth way, including my interpersonal relationships.

On one hand, my mind is indeed being elevated gradually through my cultivation. But at the same time, I feel that my potential attachment of taking advantage of Dafa to ask for something good in the secular world is also being exposed. Hidden behind my satisfaction with my life is the imperceptible complacency; I feel lucky that Dafa cultivation gave me so many great changes. In fact, behind any good feeling of my life is a very deep attachment. I failed to treat the holy Dafa cultivation with my sincerest and purest heart.

I remember that I had all kinds of deep and apparent attachments in the beginning of my cultivation. The relationship among my family members and my colleagues was very tense, and it seemed that I was in trouble all the time. But at that time I treated Dafa cultivation with a very sincere and pure heart. My only wish of cultivation was to return to my original, true self. With the gradual elimination of my attachments, my interpersonal relationship was getting better, and it was getting easy for me to create harmonious atmosphere. But out of this my new attachment was forming. Thus I almost treated such a holy Dafa cultivation as a skill in the human world and failed to balance the relationship among myself, Dafa and Master’s Fa-rectification. My concept of cultivation was becoming more vague, while my desire for material comfort was getting stronger. And I was somewhat indifferent to group Fa-studying and the activities of telling the truth. At the same time, I still felt that I was doing some Dafa work that could bring my ability into full use. I confused the elevation of mind through cultivation with everyday people’s improvement of personality. I was much satisfied with the benefits that my elevation brought to me. Sometimes I considered these benefits as evidence of my elevation, and indulged in them.

Now I come to realize that in fact my cultivation was not very solid. Therefore, when some part of my mind was elevated, it was also polluted by the secular society, my pure and sincere attitude toward cultivation being distorted. I regarded the benefits that my elevation had brought to me as the purpose of elevation or as something more important than cultivation and thus forgot the real purpose of cultivation. So my concept of “returning to my heavenly home” was getting more and more vague. Without knowing it, I was thinking of cultivation as some business of great interest. And these attachments were hidden and hard to find out. Though sometimes I felt that there was something wrong with myself, I just could not find it out. Now I find that basically my purpose of cultivation was not very pure. I realize that I did not sincerely hope to refine myself, but attempted to take advantage of Dafa to get all kinds of profits. How terrible was this kind of selfish desire! With this kind of dirty attitude, how could I get my real advancement no matter how hard I tried to study the Fa and tell people the truth.

Some time ago, in our group there was a fellow practitioner who had the attachment of pursuing fame and showing off with his experiences. And everybody saw his attachment very clearly and felt very bad about that. As a matter of fact, what is the difference between him and me? Though what we pursued was different, we had the similar purpose of taking advantage of Dafa to satisfy our personal desires. Now it is approaching toward the final stage of the cultivation during the Fa-rectification period. We should make more efforts to purify ourselves, to dig out our purpose of cultivation, to examine if we treat Dafa with a pure heart, so that we can correct our wrong behaviors and attitudes. In fact, cultivation is to abandon what appears on the surface; what matters is our heart. No matter for how many years we have cultivated, how much Dafa work we have done, what important role we play in each group, how much hardship we have suffered in the process of telling people the truth, we should not consider ourselves superior or have any good feeling. Otherwise, it is very dangerous and we are straying away from the demand of Dafa cultivation.

One legend comes to my mind, telling us that our pure heart to treat cultivation is the most precious. One butcher encountered two cultivators on the street. The cultivators told him that they were going to the West to see the Buddha and thus advised him to join them. The butcher said, “I am too dirty to see the Buddha. Please take my heart to see the Buddha.” Therefore, he cut open his body to give them his heart, and the two cultivators brought his heart to the West. After they saw the Buddha, the Buddha pointed to a huge pot with boiling water, asking if they dared to jump into the boiling water. Both of them hesitated, thinking that they could put the butcher’s heart into it first. So they threw the butcher’s heart into the boiling water, and the heart was turned into a golden Buddha. Seeing this, they immediately jumped into the water, but were turned into two deep-fried fluffy dough sticks.

The story tells us that cultivation does not allow any pretense or affectation. The demand on our heart is very strict, and even a short distance from the standard is not allowed. Our attitudes toward Dafa are in particular important. I am writing this article to encourage my fellow practitioners, in the hope that we can treat Dafa and this unprecedented opportunity of cultivation with the purest and most sincere heart.

Translated from Chinese at:

http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200310/25093.html