Handling the Relationship Between Work and Cultivation Correctly

Some practitioners in our area have either failed to find a job or they have worked in an unsatisfactory situation for a long time, or they had some disagreements at work with their colleagues who reported them to the police, which severely disrupted their personal lives and cultivation. With regards to work,I think we need to discuss whether we have attachments that we don't yet realize and whether we have correctly handled the relationship between work and cultivation. Master said,

"Many students understand only that doing the exercises and studying the Fa are cultivation. Yes, with those you directly engage the Fa. But as you go about truly cultivating yourself in your day-to-day life, the society that you come into contact with is your cultivation environment. The work and family environments that you spend time in are both settings in which you are to cultivate yourselves, are part of the path you must walk, are what you must handle, and handle correctly at that. None of these should be glossed over. When you have made it to the end, [a question would be]: How did you travel the path that Master arranged for you? When all is said and done, these things have to be taken into account. And in the course of your cultivation these things have to be looked at, too. So you shouldn't neglect anything. As far as convenience goes, [in Dafa] a person can cultivate without having to enter a monastery, go to a secluded mountain, or leave the secular world. But from another perspective, all of this adds a layer of difficulty: If you are to make it through, you have to do well with things such as all of the above, and do well in every aspect of your life." ("Teaching the Fa in Canada, 2006")

Dafa practitioners must be good people wherever they are, and they must do well with their jobs in order to validate the Fa and rescue sentient beings. I remember Master mentioning in "Fa-Teaching Given to the Australian Falun Gong Practitioners" that some practitioners decided their purpose was to practice cultivation and not to work, so they did not do a good job as employees at a company owned by a fellow practitioner. Dafa practitioners cultivate themselves in society, and are not differentiated from other people by abnormal behavior. We simply act with exemplary moral standards at work and during other interpersonal encounters.

Some practitioners have a misconception that the three things are important and work is not important; doing the three things is cultivation, and work is not cultivation, and they purposely separate work from cultivation. Our work provides us with income, and we can improve ourselves in a work environment. How can we cultivate otherwise? Some practitioners who work in private companies hurried to talk to customers about Falun Gong before they were proficient in their job skills. Their earnest desire to rescue people is admirable, but it would be even better if we could all handle our work well in addition to cultivation, so we can rescue more people and improve ourselves in the process.
As I understand it, part of the reason we practice among non-practitioners is so we can present ourselves to people in the society and help them along the way, so we can reveal the magnificent wonders of Falun Dafa and therefore rescue more sentient beings. Everything we do will be a reference left for posterity, so our behavior should be concerned with the harmonization of the firmament, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level, and with the path that leads from the human to the divine. We must really take our jobs seriously, even if it's just short-term or temporary work. We are Dafa disciples, and we represent the image of Dafa to some extent, and people will understand Dafa through our words and actions. This has a lot to do with the issue of whether they will be saved.