Improper Mentalities in Memorising the Falun Gong Teachings

With a quite low rate of progress, I have only reached Lecture Six after over two years of memorising the Fa - the Falun Gong teachings. On average I would cover one paragraph at most every day, and it would be regarded as having been memorised to be able to recite it without one word missed; then I would go to the next paragraph on the following day without doing reviews. I spend about one and a half hours to memorise only one paragraph of the Fa.

During my memorisation up to now, I have hardly ever experienced the situation described by some fellow practitioners on the Clearwisdom website that the more they recite the faster they get, and that Fa-reciting makes them feel very at ease. Instead, I would sometimes feel a headache, dizziness, and even agitation when I come across difficulties in remembering the Fa. This phenomenon indicates a serious necessity to look inward.

It is not correct to seek to achieve a certain goal in reciting the Fa. The base point of reciting the Fa is to become more and more assimilated to the Fa, rather than to achieve a higher status for oneself, to make oneself different from other practitioners, or to satisfy one’s attachment for showing off, which are all not in line with the Fa principles and part of the attachment of pursuit. Furthermore, it is also not right to take reciting the Fa as a daily task or as a guarantee for maintaining a good status in cultivation. It is also wrong to intentionally pursue the experiences that other practitioners have gone through in their memorising the Fa.

The correct mentality should follow what Teacher has said,

"The only way to gain a good understanding of Dafa is to study it without any intention." ("Learning the Fa" from Essentials for Further Advancement)

The mentality while reciting the Fa is also very important. I usually recite the Fa together with my girlfriend, but on some occasions while I recite the Fa she prefers to read her school books. At that time I may worry about whether she thought I was spending too much time on reciting the Fa. "Since she is making more progress in her schoolwork and I am falling behind, I need to hurry up to finish reciting the Fa and do my school work!" In addition, sometimes I would think, "With so much Falun Dafa work I should hurry up to finish the reciting and then set forth to do the truth-clarification work properly afterwards… today’s paragraph is so hard to remember and it makes me light-headed… after a while what else should I work on and how...whoops, how come I made a mistake again in the reciting… I have to start from the beginning, and be sure not to make errors this time…I’m coming to the end of today’s reciting, so after the reciting I ought to have a good day…"

With such thoughts I actually have already forgotten that the real essence of reciting the Fa is to assimilate myself to the Fa, not to fulfil a task simply getting the assignment over and done with. It is further wrong to seek a better status for myself through reciting the Fa. The more my mind wanders, the more difficult it is to fulfil the reciting, and the more likely it would be to be stuck in this situation for a long time. Only when I think of the real purpose for reciting the Fa, can I jump out of this vicious cycle.

I wrote this article in order to look inward and examine my improper thoughts in reciting the Fa and make myself more alerted to them. It is also to remind myself of examining my mentality in reciting the Fa, catching each improper thought and then removing it. Just as Teacher taught in Zhuan Falun,

"Whenever there is interference of one kind or another in qigong practice, you should look for reasons within yourself and determine what you still have not let go." ("Lecture Six" in Zhuan Falun, March 2000 translation version)