How to Search Inward and Upgrade One's Xinxing

As our cultivation progresses to the present day, I have found some practitioners around me still do not know how to cultivate. They have either not truly understood the Fa with rationality or progressed too slowly in their cultivation, lingering at one level for a long time. I myself have not cultivated that well, but I have some experience in this regard and I would like to put it in writing for fellow practitioners' reference.

As a Dafa practitioner, it is of supreme importance to search inside oneself one hundred percent. Many fellow practitioners have talked about searching inward, but as how to do it and what to search for, they seem to be lost in the face of a real problem. Some practitioners say they cannot find it or cannot think of anything wrong, while some others simply say, "I have kept searching until I am almost dazed; what else should I look for?" Here is what I have done:

1. As a Dafa practitioner, when meeting with any problems, your first thought should be, "It is definitely me who has a problem and I should search inside myself." This first thought is very important, because if you do not think this way, it is very easy for you to get stuck in arguing about the matter itself or finding fault with the other person to prove how correct you are. After you have this thought, your mind will be poised, and you will be able to truly calm down and search inside yourself.

2. In the face of conflict, if we see any attachments or problems with the other party, we should look at his or her problems in relation to ourselves, examining whether we ourselves have the same problems. Teacher taught this principle of the Fa in the article, "A Dialogue with Time" (Essentials for Further Advancement). Oftentimes, the behaviour of the other person is actually mirroring ours because the principle of mutual-generation and mutual-inhibition takes effect. For example, when my husband gets cross with me, if I look at myself, I often find that I also talk to him in a commanding tone. There are many examples like this, and I will not try to exhaust them here. If you really do not have any problem yourself, you may kindly point out the problem to the other person (you can only do this if he or she is a Dafa practitioner). If the other person is an ordinary person, you may clarify the matter itself, but you should not be too attached to the clarification. If the other person does want to make changes after listening to your clarification, then we should let this issue pass and pay no more attention to it.

3. When we come across a conflict, we should notice what we think about it. Searching inward does not aim at the matter itself, but at what kind of thoughts we have in the face of conflict, which is very important. If what we find are ordinary thoughts we have yet to relinquish, we then have to suppress these bad thoughts. If what we find are unrighteous notions, we have to force ourselves to change these incorrect notions. For instance, after he got drunk, my boss once accused me of making mistakes in my work. In fact, I did not make any mistakes in my work and it was a misunderstanding. At that time, I was not upset at my boss's accusation because I had the thought of wanting to look inside myself. Soon after, Teacher enlightened me to the reason why this problem occurred. All of a sudden, I recalled that I had always told my colleagues that the boss was great at this and that. As a matter of fact, whether an ordinary person is good or bad has nothing to do with me. Moreover, such a judgment about good or bad was based on the understanding of ordinary people, not according to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. So, my trouble stemmed from my attachment to assessing good or bad in ordinary people.

4. Once we have found our attachments or unrighteous notions, we have to be determined to eradicate them. If the notion is one that formed over a long time and that will need a period of time to change, we must constantly remind ourselves to get rid of it. For example, I was once maliciously reported to the authorities for clarifying the truth to students, so I formed a notion that face to face truth clarification can easily invite trouble. Consequently, I turned to distributing materials and dared not engage in face to face truth clarification for quite a few years. Later, during a group Fa study, I came to understand that the old forces do not dare to oppose truth clarification itself. The key is whether or not our mindset is righteous when we clarify the truth. If it is, then the old forces will not have any loophole to take advantage of to interfere with you. I thus understood the reason why I ran into trouble, that is, I was reported because of my attachments that had not yet been relinquished. Despite the fact that I have understood this principle of the Fa, I have still encountered layers upon layers of resistance in removing this notion, because it was so stubbornly rooted. Sometimes I thought I no longer had this notion, but when I tried to open my mouth to clarify the facts, I found the notion had resurfaced. I now frequently memorize Teacher's Fa on this issue, and I can feel this notion dwindling, but has not been fully eradicated yet, and sometimes it returns. I am giving this example to emphasize that even if we have found our attachment, we still have to be determined to suppress it and get rid of it during our cultivation. If we remain at the stage of understanding our shortcomings without actually eradicating them, this equates to not cultivating ourselves.

5. Although we need to search within ourselves when in conflict, there is another important point we need to pay attention to, namely, do not take the matter itself to heart. Teacher once said in Zhuan Falun, "...upon attaining the status of Arhat, this person will not care about anything he has come across and always be cheerful..." Arhat is the first Fruit Status beyond the three realms. We Dafa disciples should hold ourselves to high standards, so we should be cheerful in the face of conflict and look lightly upon the matter itself.

6. It is very important to persist in memorizing the Fa: not just Zhuan Falun, but also Teacher's other articles. The benefits of memorizing Teacher's Fa are too many to enumerate here, but one of the biggest is that it enables us to better align what we say and do with the Fa, that is to say, it facilitates our implementation of the principle, "taking the Fa as teacher." When memorizing the Fa, we absolutely should not be absentminded. Sometimes our minds tend to easily go astray when memorizing parts of the Fa we are quite familiar with. In this situation, if we require ourselves to display every single word of the Fa in front of us, this will help avoid being absentminded. We should study the Fa and obtain the Fa consciously with our true self.

The foregoing few points are primarily my reflections on how to upgrade xinxing (heart and mind nature, character). Many practitioners around me are excellent in clarifying the truth and sending forth righteous thoughts but could not pass tribulations with family or financial issues for a long time. Some have even lingered with the same problems for years without making any progress. They are frequently interfered with by problems with family and money, and consequently wasted a lot of precious time and effort in solving them, which could have otherwise been used to do truth clarification. Amidst the tribulations during cultivation, we should not take too long to pass the tests. Instead, we should make every effort to progress quickly, so that we can have more time and energy for clarifying the truth. In fact, compared to those diligent fellow practitioners, my cultivation falls short and I still have too many shortcomings I have yet to overcome. In my cultivation process, Teacher has constantly enlightened me, and the Minghui/Clearwisdom website and fellow practitioners have all given me tremendous help, which has inspired me to write down my experiences on upgrading my xinxing. I hope this is helpful to fellow practitioners.