Thoughts on the Easily Overlooked Attachment of "Fame" During the Course of Cultivation

The Falun Gong practitioner, who wrote the article "Golden Buddha With Master's Comment" ( http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2003/11/2/41918.html), mentioned the situation of there being many well known Assistance Centre heads, assistants, and veteran practitioners who didn't pursue everyday people's things while among practitioners and in cultivation circles. However, when it came to what they perceived as "gains," they were so blatant in pursuing them yet they thought nothing of it. This is also an attachment to "fame," brought about during the course of their cultivation.

This is an issue, which I didn't pay much attention to before. I always felt that I was quite a modest person; some practitioners even said that I had a pure mind. Recently however, I have found that I am not so "pure"; instead, my issues are more complicated than others. I realised that on almost every occasion, my each thought, or many of the things that I have done all revolved around the factor of "fame." This was something that had formed deep in my bones and wasn't easily recognisable.

I only say that my issue is "more complicated than the others," because not only do I have a very strong attachment to pursuing "fame" but I have also tried very hard to disguise it, effectively hiding it from others. Some of the things that I have done during my cultivation were nothing but acts to show people my "high level" xinxing [mind/heart nature], showing people how tolerant and compassionate I am. These acts are all easily seen by fellow practitioners as good behaviour that I have developed during my cultivation. However, good behaviour based on these reasons is certainly not a result of our cultivation in Dafa, nor does it show the real state of my cultivation. Instead, these were just forced performances, they weren't something that came about naturally. Teacher has said,

"I've told you before that Shan isn't something pretended, nor is it a state that's just maintained on the surface. Shan truly comes from within and can only be attained and embodied through cultivation." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Western U.S. Fa Conference").

[Shan can be translated as Compassion or Benevolence.] Teacher also mentioned in the book Zhuan Falun:

"That's not out of compassion. He hasn't gotten rid of his attachments to reputation and personal gain one bit, and no compassion is about to come out. He's afraid of losing his reputation, and he'd even rather get the illness himself than lose face. He's that attached to his reputation!"

These various manifestations of the attachment of pursuing "fame" confused me for a long time, sometimes I even knew that my heart was totally out of line, however, I would rather follow my feelings than delve deeper to find out the true reason. Firstly, I only wanted to deceive others, but actually the only person I have deceived is myself. My heart hasn't been truly upgraded. Today I want to reveal this attachment to people and at the same time, I also want to show people that I am determined to change.