Tribulation at Home and the Seriousness of Cultivation

I began practicing Falun Dafa in 1997. I'm not interested in getting married, and my family has not been very understanding. Consequently, it has been hard for me to clarify the truth to them.

The company I worked for was not doing well and started laying off employees. My parents are not in good health and I need to take care of them. I therefore decided to stay home and did not look for another job. However, staying home with my parents all the time intensified my conflict with them.

My mother has a bad temper. She has had a miserable life and an unhappy marriage. She also has all kinds of illnesses. She thinks very highly of herself yet she is vulnerable and fragile. She dislikes everyone and scorns others all the time. She would find something wrong with anything I did. The more work I did the more she would criticize me. So I eventually stopped doing anything so that I would not feel so wronged when she criticized me. I tried my best to endure but I was not evaluating things from the standpoint of the Fa.

She felt that just criticizing me was not destructive enough, so she started criticizing Teacher. I could not bear it and started fighting with her. Others suggested that I find a man and get married instead of being scorned after helping out so much. Yet I did not want to start a family, nor did I want to pretend that I liked getting married. However I'm an independent woman with skills that can help me find a job. So I moved away from home.

My relatives were worried by my action. Although they too could not stand my mother's temper, they felt that leaving my elderly parents alone at home was wrong. They suggested that I move back home. I was out for a few quiet days and I was able to study the Fa calmly. I studied "Energy Field" in Zhuan Falun,

"When an evil-minded person is thinking of something bad, this person might change his mind due to the powerful effect of your field; he might then no longer want to commit the wrongdoing. Perhaps a person wants to swear at someone. Suddenly, he may change his mind and will not want to swear. "

I suddenly realized why my energy field was not capable of restricting my mother and why I was influenced by her instead. Although a cultivator should be able to endure, Teacher has also stated, "The Buddha-light illuminates everywhere and rectifies all abnormalities." I have practiced cultivation for over ten years; I should have demonstrated compassion and dignity. Why haven't I earned people's respect? Why was my cultivation so awkward? That was not a correct state. Was it because I had harboured loathsome thoughts that prompted my mother to act like that? I should examine myself based on her actions, instead of asking ordinary people to comply with my principles. As soon as I realized this, my grandmother was suddenly hospitalized. Wasn't this telling me that I should not escape and should go back to harmonize my home environment?

After returning home, I saw my Falun Dafa books scattered everywhere, and some were even covered with scattered clothes. I realized that the reason my mother criticized Teacher was because I did not show respect toward Teacher or the Fa. When I woke up in the morning I practiced the exercises with messy hair. I also wore pyjamas all day long. I did not care about my image when I was off work.

A cultivator should not fight evil with evil and should handle everything with a compassionate heart. I looked at my mother like a mirror and realized that her actions reflected what was on my mind. I made it a priority to look inside myself and not reject the opportunity to elevate myself. I used the environment to sort through myself. Consequently, my mother stopped being mean and became friendly towards me.

I also discovered that most TV programs carry the Communist Party's messages which have severely poisoned my mother. So I guided her to watch other programs. I discovered that it was not that hard to communicate with her. I had overlooked her in the past and had never shown that I cared about her. We have been so close and have been living under the same roof for more than thirty years, and as result I had become numb to my family environment. I felt that she was a lady with no class because she liked to criticize people and was just so impossible to deal with all her life. I loathed her and did not have affection for her. I did not think about using the Fa to harmonize her. I was holding on to my old notions, feeling that as a family we knew one another all too well and therefore there's no need to act seriously or decently, and instead we could act casually towards one another. I displayed the worse side of myself in front of my parents. Yet, when I am with others, I pay attention to keeping a Dafa practitioner's image so that my truth-clarification efforts will not be affected.

After making changes, I improved greatly. All these troubles originated from my not being compassionate and failing to treat cultivation seriously. I was reluctant to communicate with my family members because they were not understanding about my staying single. I did not make an effort to show them that they could benefit from my staying single. For a cultivator, you are evil if you are not compassionate. Our cultivation process is the process of creating a new cosmos. Clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings is enriching and purifying the new cosmos.

When we are influenced and when our minds are affected by something, it must be that we have exposed our human attachments. To put it simply, it is our own attachments that restrict us, and they are like locks that need to be unlocked by the Fa.

The above is my personal understanding. Please kindly correct me if there's anything improper.