Stop Being a Slave to Life

In 2000, I spent my vacation on a mountain. There was a temple there that had been built in the Yuan Dynasty. There I met a wandering monk. He was an abbot at another temple. We must have some predestined relationship. In private, he talked with me about his cultivation practice. He told me that he had tried every Qigong he knew of and had found Falun Gong was the best, especially for people who want to practise cultivation but cannot become monks or nuns. He said people who set lofty goals for themselves should learn the righteous Fa or Law that is Falun Dafa, obtain the right fruit status, elevate their moral character, get rid of their attachments and reach consummation.

It often occurs to me that an everyday person’s life is very tragic. From ancient times till now, there is one thing that is absolutely fair - no matter whether you were an emperor or a high-ranking official or somebody from the lower classes, one thing has been fair and applied to every single person all along. And it is death! The history of mankind has proven that not only ordinary men, but also emperors who dreamt to live forever, cannot escape from this fairness.

Let me draw an analogy. The earth can be thought of as a prison that is overloaded with prisoners and bursting at the seams. Occasionally a few people are able to get out of this prison (let’s call them astronauts), but they have found the outside was even worse. Every single person who lives inside this prison (other than genuine cultivators) is a convict awaiting execution. The time between birth and death is how long the waiting time is.

Being alive is a precious thing. Cultivators, however, are not satisfied with modern science’s explanation of what happens at the end of one’s life. They constantly explore the meaning of life while being alive, searching arduously on an endless road. It can be said that cultivators have seen through life and death, but they also treasure life. Unlike most people, cultivators have gained a double life. At the worst, their lives have gained another meaning and, therefore, they have nothing to lose. The worst thing that could happen to them happens to all other human beings anyway – death. What’s different is that they have gotten something to hope for. An average person’s life is full of struggles and fights and, no matter how splendid it is, in the end it just drifts away with the wind.

A Great Way is extremely simple and easy. Falun Gong has long proved itself to be a great, high-level cultivation way. It’s good for people of any race, any cultural background, and any nationality. Now, the great cultivation way that one might encounter once in tens of thousands of years is right in front of us. Falun Dafa aims directly at human nature, it points out that true cultivation entails the cultivation of your heart according to “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance,” which is called the cultivation of character.

Master Li Hongzhi said in Zhuan Falun, “What is xinxing? It covers many aspects of things, including De (virtues, a kind of matter), Ren (forbearance), awakening quality, giving, giving up all kinds of desires and all kinds of attachments which are common to ordinary people, and the ability to bear hardships. Only when every aspect of your xinxing has been improved, can you really go up. This is one of the key causes of strengthening your energy potency.”

Falun Buddha Fa still has another part which is used to cultivate life: it has some movements to practice. In other words, like Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, said in The Great Consummation Way of Falun Dafa,

“Falun Dafa requires both cultivation and exercises, with cultivation taking priority over the exercises. A person’s gong will not increase if he merely does the exercises and fails to cultivate his xinxing. A person who only cultivates his xinxing and does not perform the exercises of the Great Consummation Way will find the growth of his gong potency impeded and his original-body (benti) unchanged. Falun Dafa is a righteous Fa. One upright mind can subdue all evils, provided that in the practitioner’s cultivation practice he maintains his xinxing, abandons his attachments, and forgoes any incorrect pursuits, as prescribed by Dafa.”

Master Li also said,

“The teachings of Falun Dafa are thus completely unlike those of conventional cultivation methods or the dan-cultivation theories of other practices and branches of cultivation.”

I hope people with predestined relationship can treasure it.