My Personal Understanding of Being in a "Maze"

Recently I have had some understandings of "being lost in a maze" [This is a more literal translation of Master Li's words from Zhuan Falun, aternatively translated as "lost in delusion"]. Being in a maze is a situation when someone gets stuck in a certain state or feeling, and cannot get out of it.

When one cannot break through one's own passive notions, he is in a maze. Sometimes, when running into many problems at the same time, I felt very uncomfortable, as if my future was hopeless. In this situation, everything that came to my mind made me feel uncomfortable. At that moment, I just couldn’t let go of my attachments and take a further step forward. Instead, I was lost in my own feelings. In retrospect, I realise that it was me who allowed myself to become entangled in my own feelings, and let my bad moods control myself, instead of understanding them based on the Fa. In addition, I was unable to clearheadedly break through the entanglement of sentimentality and break out of human notions.

When one cannot distinguish his primordial spirit from his sub-consciousness, he is in a maze. Today when Dafa practitioners assimilate to Dafa and help validate the Fa, we should always regard the Fa as the most important. Whenever we make any decision, we should always give first priority to Dafa. When encountering problems, if what we consider first is ourselves, such as our own safety, work, studies and lives, we might have been infatuated with the illusion of the everyday society or become lost in the current environment or personal situation. Master Li mentioned in an article entitled “Practicing Cultivation after Retirement” in Essentials for Further Advancement: “One’s lifetime is limited. Oftentimes you plan things quite well, but do you know whether you will have sufficient time left for your cultivation? Cultivation practice is not child’s play. It is more serious than anything of everyday people—it isn’t something to take for granted. Once you miss the opportunity, when will you be able to get a human body again in the sixfold path of reincarnation? Opportunity knocks but once. Once the illusion that you cannot let go of disappears, you will realize what you have lost.”

When one looks at things or problems with a fixed perception, he is also in a maze. Last month, I found that the 2nd half of a Video-CD showing Master Li’s lecture wouldn’t play. When a practitioner wanted to borrow it from me, I told him that it couldn’t be viewed because it was broken. One day last week, I happened to remeber something: After quitting practising Falun Dafa, a person gave his child a tape of Master Li’s lectures to record English lessons onto. Later, a practitioner brought back that tape and wanted to play it. He found that the content of Master Li’s lectures on the tape was intact. I came to understand that actually this VCD was supposed to play normally. It was my problematic notion that impeded its normal function, and it was my disrespect for Master Li and the Fa that caused the problem with the VCD.

When I understood the problem, I told myself to start all over again and truly respect Master Li and the Fa through my actions. In the meantime, I started to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate all the unrighteous factors that hindered the VCD from working normally. After that, everything was back to normal. This proves that if we look at problems from a fixed angle, everything will remain the same. However, if we look at them from another angle, everything can change. In "Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference", Master Li said: “As a Dafa disciple, when you can truly do well, I think your troubles won’t be as absolute as they look to you. It’s because when you can’t look at things from the Fa, everyday people’s troubles are just everyday people’s troubles. In the eyes of human beings things don’t change, but in the eyes of Gods all of this changes. You’re troubled, and Master is troubled for you too—I’m troubled that you haven’t let go of your attachments and that you haven’t reached a high level of understanding of the Fa, and that when you resolve one problem you create new problems. This isn’t criticism! Everything Master says is Fa.”

Lingering at a certain level or being attached to one's own understanding of the Fa is also a kind of maze. When faced with the same issue, some practitioners may understand it one way, whilst others understand it differently. Some practitioners may insist that what they understand is right, while others may maintain that their understanding is higher. Actually they are all lost in their own understanding of the Fa. Only when one gets lost in a maze will he hold onto something or insist on something.

As long as one is in a maze, there must be the thoughts of self, limitations and personal human notions. To get out of a maze, one must constantly eliminate his rigid human notions, get rid of his layers upon layers of self, limitations and ties, and truly believe in Master Li and Dafa from the deepest origin of his life, so as to steadfastly purify himself with righteous thoughts time and again. To get rid of a maze, one must be able to judge whatever issues he encounters with the principles of the universal Dafa, as opposed to looking at them from a fixed, narrow angle. To break out of a maze, one must fully validate the wisdom of the new universe with the capabilities and wisdom Master Li has bestowed upon us.

To eliminate a maze rather than get lost in it, one has stand on the a highest vantage point to incessantly remove all his own selfish and individual notions, so as to carve out a brand new future.