A College Student's Realisation in Cultivation Practice

One day when getting together with local fellow Falun Dafa practitioners for some experience sharing about our cultivation, somehow this time I had an odd, uncomfortable feeling. Any trivial thing in the meeting would make me feel perturbed. While feeling strange, I said to myself that Master tells us to be lenient with others and I wondered why I was bothered by such small things.

A fellow practitioner and I had different opinions on the issue of security when clarifying the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution through Internet chatting. Obviously, the difference was due to my being overly cautious. Later I corrected my mistake, but the conflict quietly grew more acute.

Because of my unrighteous state of mind, I felt that the fellow practitioner was ignoring me. However, I did know clearly in my mind that definitely I had some problem myself. Then what was the root cause of it all? Finally, I desperately tried my best to repeatedly tell myself, "This is a trick to separate me and fellow practitioners. I do not agree to it!" But the effectiveness of this way only lasted briefly. I knew that problems need to be resolved and not avoided. Sensing this, I frankly shared my state of mind without any omission with my fellow practitioners. This served to be a good topic for discussion. They all listened sincerely and then diligently helped me in analysing the whole thing. They said that they had also experienced similar situations. Through discussing and learning from each other, my "bad feeling" was de-layered so that I could pinpoint to the crux of the matter. One key thing I discovered was that my over-carefulness was caused by fear.

Since reading the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party," dubbed as the "9-Ping," I constantly sigh with feelings of surprise and anger. The sigh is for the terrifying culture created in human society by the old forces that is used to interfere with today's Fa-rectification. The surprise is for the fact that we Chinese people have been living in a country full of lies and what we learnt about history has been a distortion of the truth. The anger is toward the terrorist regime, the Communist Party. It has killed its own citizens and destroyed hundreds of millions of peoples' righteousness and conscience. For example, I unknowingly deviated from seeing through to the true inner meaning of the "9-Ping" and thus acknowledged and unwillingly agreed with the immense terrifying arrangements of the old forces. That led me to worry a lot and care for such trivial things as being overcautious instead of having righteous thoughts and actions, in spite of my original intention to be against the persecution.

The second key thing was my attachment to Qing (sentiment). We are all fellow practitioners, and the common ground of cultivation practises make us good and close friends. The bits and pieces of close interaction lead to the human attachments such as feeling happy, feeling ill, sensing other's being nice to me or ignoring me and treating others better, among other things. As the others said that they had encountered similar situations, I realised that the human friendship and affection should elevate to the boundless benevolence. This way my problem was readily resolved. I told them, "Suddenly, I am enlightened." Thus, it all went back to the harmony as usual between us fellow practitioners. Without words, we exchanged kind smiles.

But, there was still something wrong with me. When I was alone at home, I still felt somewhat depressed. Almost nothing went right or smoothly. Plus, thinking about the notion "if you are good, there will be no interference," I felt that I was a failure. These extreme thoughts reaffirmed that I still had some problems. In desperation, I could not help but cry while reading a Dafa book. Looking at Master's portrait, I said to him, "No matter how deficient and with how much human heart I have, I know that you will never abandon me and will always have confidence in your students."

I understood very well that all the interference was for the purpose of destroying me. I sternly said to them, "You try so hard by hook or by crook to find our loopholes. But we are Fa-rectification practitioners. We are the disciples of the greatest Master. Just for this, you cannot compete with us. Even though we may not do it well enough and still have human hearts, our fundamental purpose is for Fa-rectification. We, the Dafa practitioners, can forsake fame and gain or even the future. Our magnificent Master guides us and makes us his disciples; we will accomplish our great task! You underestimate us."

Tracing back in detail to what led to my unhealthy situation, I realised that it was one fellow practitioner who did not answer my calls to her cellular phone. When she was taking out a Falun Dafa book to read, her mother came home and right away she started not to take my call. She did not respond to my messages and also turned off her cellular phone. It was so abnormal. Then I began to arbitrarily imagine too many things. Could it be that her mom found out that we were Falun Dafa practitioners and would not let her keep contact with me? Various thoughts popped up in my mind here and there. Although I tried hard to eliminate them, I was still feeling nervous and was not able to calm down. The deep searching let me uncover that my basic attachment was the fear of her parent's finding the Falun Dafa book and then telling my parents so as to cause me trouble.

The reason for my fear was my unwillingness to change the easy status quo. In other words, I was intoxicated with ease and didn't want to break out of my comfort zone. Master said,

"Wherever you run into difficulties you can't avoid them and go around them. Wherever there's a problem, that's where you need to go resolve things and where you need to go clarify the facts." ("Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference")

Now that I found the root cause, I must get rid of the problem. Everybody in the universe must do his or her best to assimilate to the Dafa and this is the ultimate mercy to sentient beings. We must clarify the facts to all people in the world, including our parents, so as to save them. Then all the fundamental human things will not be able to move our hearts. As soon as I realised this, I then came upon a cultivation experience-sharing article by a child practitioner. He was persecuted by being forced to drop out of school and had to run away from home to escape further suppression. However, he was still firmly doing the three things in saving sentient beings. Reading it brought tears to my eyes. Yes, I should cheer up because I am so fortunate as compared to so many fellow practitioners who have been forced to become homeless and have to go from place to place.

In the article, "Personal Understandings of How to Thoroughly Overhaul Ourselves," a fellow practitioner wrote; "Even if I might be the worst one among the Dafa practitioners, I would not be discouraged. My deficiencies will be improved during cultivation practise, as we are inside the Fa (law or principles, the teachings in Falun Gong) and inside Master's merciful, painstaking salvation. All the negative and bad things will become all good, righteous, and pure. Master's salvation will take us out of this filthy, distorted, and complex world to a new wonderful cosmos. The forthcoming everlasting virtue cannot be expressed or praised by human languages." I was awed by these sentences. Yes, as of now it is not as important to emphasise our own doing well or not as it is to realise that we are so fortunate to do Fa-rectification as one of Master's disciples. What we must focus on is using our full strength of life in doing what we should do to save sentient beings.

While I was thinking about this, my telephone suddenly rang. The fellow practitioner I mentioned earlier was calling me back. Her voice was still clear and happy in saying that she had been too busy lately and everything was fine. Now it was not important to ask her why she had not taken my calls or why she had turned off her cellular phone. There was no need to mention the past. I expressed my best wishes for her in our cultivation practise and she replied, "Cheers to us!"

Someone once described cultivation practise as a song, and now I know it is so from my own experience.