Being Benevolent to Fellow Practitioners

For a long time when I saw fellow practitioners interrupted by a serious "illness," deep in my mind I thought it was because they were not cultivating well enough. I sometimes even directly pointed it out to them, "Please cultivate well if you want to cultivate, otherwise just give it up." Occasionally I took a dislike to these fellow practitioners and used Master's¹ words to justify my doing so.

There is a fellow practitioner who trusts me a lot. When she was suffering an illness I told her, "I think you should study the Fa (teachings in Falun Gong) more in your current situation, and do not bother to practise the exercises. You could do the exercises once to improve your understanding of the Fa." On the surface, my suggestion was telling her to study the Fa; in fact I pushed her further away from the Fa. I always had an attachment of not paying attention to the exercises, and my "suggestion" exposed it. After she followed my "suggestion" for several days, she could not even stand up by herself, and she went to the hospital for treatment. I suddenly realised that my unrighteous thoughts had severely affected this fellow practitioner, and I felt very sorry. I started looking inward to search for the root cause of such thoughts.

I recognised that my selfish and demanding thoughts are from the old forces. The old forces think that because some practitioners have fundamental attachments, they are not true cultivators, and so the old forces want to weed out people that are not true cultivators by way of an enormous tribulation. On the contrary, our Master wants to offer a benevolent resolution to all lives. My thought was consistent with that of the old forces and strengthened them with more energy. This actually conflicted with and interfered with Master's Fa-rectification.

When making those unreasonable "suggestions," I had no selflessness and benevolence in my heart as a Falun Dafa practitioner. My thoughts were deviant and extreme, as Master described in Lecture Six in Zhuan Falun:

"Those high-level great enlightened beings may find it more unfair: 'What are you doing? Are you saving people like this? There are no obstacles in the path of cultivation, and one can make one's cultivation directly to the end. Is this cultivation? As one proceeds in cultivation, one becomes increasingly more comfortable without any interference. How can this be allowed?'"

Master requires us to cultivate into selfless, pure, and grand enlightened beings with boundless benevolence and tolerance. Master even saves ordinary people who have simply said, "Falun Dafa is good." He saves those people who previously caused damage to Falun Dafa but have announced their repentance and awakened. However, I was so impatient with fellow practitioners who were not as diligent as I thought they should be.

Master is purifying and rectifying all the deviant and degenerated lives in the cosmos with unprecedented, boundless benevolence, saving us to the holy and beautiful new cosmos. This is a precious opportunity for us, so we must be pure and holy to merit Master's benevolent salvation.

All of us practitioners may have degenerated notions from the old cosmos to varying degrees. This causes us to not coordinate well together and creates conflicts among practitioners. This has wasted much energy that should have been used to save more people. Isn't this a form of jealousy?

Dear fellow practitioners, let us all make up our minds to truly eliminate the selfishness and jealousy from our hearts with the power of the Fa and truly work together as a whole body. If we cannot even treat fellow practitioners benevolently, how can we save people with benevolence?

Once I assimilated myself into the Fa, a thought came to my mind, "We are all Falun Dafa practitioners; her tribulation is also my tribulation, and we are one whole body. We practitioners do not acknowledge any persecution from the old forces or the evil. Though we have omissions and attachments, we will eliminate them in our cultivation and Fa-validation. We do not acknowledge the old forces' interruption and persecution under the excuse of our omissions and attachments. We do not acknowledge any arrangements by the old forces. We are Master's students, and we only cultivate on the path our Master arranges for us."

Note:

1. Master/Teacher: Respectfully referring to the founder of Falun Gong, Mr. Li Hongzhi.