Regarding the Pressure to Get Married

I am close to thirty, and have experienced the bitterness and desperation of falling down. After I started to practice Dafa again, my life was truly refreshed, and I gradually began to participate in the Fa-Rectification process. However, I am quite behind on both personal cultivation and saving sentient beings. Sometimes, catching up with the Fa-rectification process has become my motivation to cultivate diligently. I didn't exhibit the true state of a practitioner in the Fa-Rectification period. Although I felt that I was beyond everyday people, sometimes I have more attachments than everyday people, such as feeling lonely, sleeping too much, liking good food and good clothes, wanting to watch movies, wanting to play games, and even having lust. I seemed to understand everything when I studied the Fa, but could not maintain righteous thoughts after I put the Dafa books down. The impression that I was "wandering outside of Dafa, or doing fake cultivation" became stronger and stronger in my mind. It was also quite easy for me to work with materials and clarify the truth, but I did not have many breakthroughs in doing truth clarification in a larger area or with having it be more powerful.

Anyway, I was quite passive. I realized that the passive state and the fake cultivation state were due to my strong selfishness. There were no very obvious notions blocking me, and the effect of studying the Fa and doing the exercises was quite good. Why couldn't I be more diligent? Some practitioner once asked Master,

"Ever since the Fa-rectification period began, my state has been up and down, and I haven't been able to let go of my pursuit of comfort all this time, so I'm quite distressed." Master said, "Master can help you, but only as long as you know to strive to improve. " (Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference).
However, I still wasn't able to get up on time to participate in the morning exercises the second day after I studied this portion of the Fa:

"It is your own responsibility to cultivate your heart and mind, let go of your desires, attain wisdom, and eliminate confusion. If you take up this path out of some interest, your mind will definitely not be firm and you will definitely forget the fundamentals while living in human society. If you don't firmly hold to your faith you will gain nothing in this life. No one knows when there will be another chance. It's very hard! " ("Determination" in Essentials for Further Advancement).

These words sounded so loud, as if Master were speaking right in my ears. At first I didn't think of myself as coming to cultivation for fun, but now I realized that I sometimes studied the Fa with conditions. I didn't cultivate diligently when it got harder and more difficult. Isn't that selfishness? Isn't that coming for fun? Dafa can help eliminate lust, and solve problems. But Dafa is not for eliminating lust and solving problems. If I try to solve my problems on the basis of selfishness, I will never be able to eliminate the selfishness in my life. When I cultivate diligently, I will certainly be able to do the three things well (the Fa [the teachings of Falun Dafa], send forth righteous thoughts and clarify the truth about Falun Dafa and about the persecution to the world's people) ; however, doing the three things doesn't necessarily equate to diligent cultivation.

Many times, I walked to the opposite side, and therefore weakened my righteous thoughts and righteous beliefs. Using marriage as an example, on one hand, I thought that Dafa disciples should not be attached to human emotions, and should spend more time in clarifying the truth; on the other hand, I thought that Dafa disciples should comply to the principles of ordinary people, and should not behave so differently that other people would think that disciples are strange, and have misunderstanding of Dafa. I also thought that I should balance well the relationship with my family and other people, and harmonize with the principles of this world. However, I was easily influenced by human emotions when I thought of these problems, although in my heart I didn't want to be married. I still contacted girls because I felt pressure to be married and had an attachment to human sentimentality. Because of my human attachment, curiosity, and lust, I experienced increasing interference on the path of my cultivation. Although many times I took the opportunity to clarify the truth to the girls, and persuaded them and their friends to quit the CCP (Chinese communist party) and its associated organizations, I didn't go for the purpose of clarifying the truth, but out of lust, curiosity, pressure, and human attachments. Therefore, I always had to deal with these type of contacts. Although my decision could not be changed, there was quite a lot of interference and trouble. I thought about truly taking these incidences as an opportunity to re-establish predestined relationships and clarify the truth, but the effect was actually not very good. My xinxing (character) had not improved and therefore the fundamental problems could not be resolved.

"Every level has different standards, and if you want to raise your level, you have to put a stop to your bad thoughts and dump out your filth, and you have to assimilate to that level's standard. That's the only way you can go up."(Zhuan Falun)

No matter how we deal with the marriage issues encountered by young practitioners, there are always difficulties. Once our xinxing has truly improved, and we think about the issue from the perspective of saving sentient beings, the individual cultivation environment will change accordingly.

"But if you do break out of emotion, nobody can affect you, and ordinary attachments won't be able to sway you. What replaces it is compassion, which is more noble." (Zhuan Falun)

If we are truly solid, getting married or not is not the issue, we know how to deal it with already. Of course, many articles on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website have already discussed the principles of marriage; I just want to emphasize that we ought to have righteous thoughts in facing such situations.

When the environment is better, we should save more people, not follow our attachments. The so-called loneliness, and the pursuit of comfort are all elements that could destroy us and the sentient beings we are supposed to save. A senior practitioner once said to me, "How can you feel lonely? We don't have time to feel lonely!" These words touched me deeply. I think that all diligent practitioners must have the same feeling. Once we get rid of those low-level attachments, the so-called pressure will not exist anymore.

Assimilating to the Fa and doing the three things well are the best way to harmonize the Fa on this level. The rest are all excuses that we use when we are not able to let go of our human attachments.