Western Practitioner: Cultivating Like a Turtle Crossing the Highway

For most drivers in our area, the turtles on the highway can be a nerve-wracking sight to behold. Early every summer, you see a lot of them on the steaming hot rural blacktops, three or four per mile, sometimes more, following some deep primordial instinct to move from wherever they've been to wherever they are going.

They start out strong, proceeding with apparent determination. But then a car or a truck goes by and they seem to get confused, lose heart, tuck their heads and limbs inside their shells, and wait for some internal whistle to blow telling them it's safe to come out and resume their journey. On they go like this, in fits and starts, plodding along for a while, then retreating into the illusory safety of their shells for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, maybe longer, as cars and trucks go whizzing by. A lot of them, perhaps even a majority, eventually reach their goal on the lightly travelled roads and continue on their way, but you also see the flattened remains of those who don't. And I can't help but wonder how many more would have made it safely to the other side if they had just stuck their necks out, ignored the distraction of passing cars and trucks, most of which were doing their best to miss them anyway, and made a beeline to the other side without stopping.

I have more than an average amount of sympathy for these turtles, because their travails on the highway remind me of my own cultivation. At some point in my life, I also heard a deep inner voice calling me to take a journey--the long journey back to my true home and my true self. And like those turtles I started out full of confidence and apparent determination, only to come, time and time again, to periods of confusion, and sometimes even to a screeching halt in the face of some obstacle or sign of danger. And in most cases, it wasn't even a test of life and death that sent me diving for cover, but rather some distraction or difficulty, a conflict with another practitioner perhaps, or some physical discomfort or sickness karma.

In Zhuan Falun, Master Li says:

"What is owed must be paid for. Therefore, some dangerous things may occur in the course of cultivation practice. When these things take place, however, you will not be scared, and neither will real danger be allowed to happen to you."

My interpretation of this passage is that, because we have karma to eliminate, our paths back to our true selves will not be smooth and trouble free, but we will be under Master's protection and will not be in any real danger, despite all appearances to the contrary. Yet, there is a requirement here, one that is not mentioned in this passage, but is stressed in other places. For example, in the poem, "What's to Fear?" Master writes:

Should you have fear,
it will seize upon you
If thoughts are righteous,
evil will collapse
(Hong Yin 2, Version A)

And from "The Master-Disciple Bond,"
When disciples have ample righteous thoughts
Master has the power to turn back the tide
(Hong Yin 2 Version A)

A turtle might have a good excuse for fearfully retreating into its shell when it feels threatened--after all, even though it is called to its destination by some primordial instinct, its primary instinct is still to preserve its life. But as a cultivator, a Dafa practitioner, what is my excuse? I have none. As a practitioner, my faith is based on my understanding of the Fa, and my thoughts are righteous only inasmuch as they emanate from the Fa and are imbued with this faith. Any failure on my part to remain steadfast or to live up to the requirements of a practitioner necessarily stems from a lack of faith and therefore a lack of righteous thoughts--and one of the consequences of that is a distancing of myself from Master's protection.

I have read many articles by practitioners in China in which the authors state in very clear and definite terms how they encountered a tribulation, how they overcame it through the application of Fa principles, and how they emerged from that tribulation as distinctly different persons who had grown to exist at a higher level, free of some illness or attachment. These are stories of personal victories on the road to Consummation which I have found very inspiring. There are also many stories of personal failures, their consequences, and great lessons learned in the process.

Unfortunately, I have no such dramatic stories to share, either of great victories or of humiliating defeats in cultivation. At times I may have said or done some things I should not have, but more often than not, I have been guilty of sins of omission--of not doing or saying something that an upright cultivator should certainly have done or said. And it is this problem--my timidity as a cultivator--that is the main point I'm trying to illustrate with this analogy. Have I made progress? Yes, definitely, I have; there is no doubt in my mind about that. But my progress has been slow and gradual, sometimes even imperceptibly so. Now, ten years into cultivation practice, it's easy for me to look back and see what a different person I am from where I started out, but I can't remember a time when a specific surge of enlightenment or transformational event changed me dramatically overnight. I have just been plodding along.

Is this the best I can do? I refuse to think so, or accept that I am just a hopelessly timid and fearful person, permanently mired in this state. How can I break through to that noble state of an upright, courageous and steadfast practitioner--that state which I can easily imagine but find so difficult to achieve?

I believe this may be part of the reason Master Li has constantly stressed the need for daily Fa study. Our faith is not based on some set of ideas or principles that we arbitrarily decide we are going to believe in. A practitioner's faith is based on his deep understanding of the Fa, and this can only come from regular, good quality Fa study. The second way I think this situation can be changed is by continuously looking within to find and eliminate attachments that keep us bound up in fearful human thinking.

Analogies never totally prove anything, they can just illustrate a point, and at some level they always break down. So it is with this one.

In Zhuan Falun, Master Li states, "Every test or every tribulation is related to the matter of either progression or regression in cultivation." Thus, in cultivation practice, there is really no standing still: if we are not advancing, we are in retreat. When I thought I was just huddling in my shell, I was in fact going backwards into humanness, retreating from my goal of returning to my true home. Because of my lack of faith and righteous thoughts, I perceived danger where there actually was none, and this was the very thing that really put me in danger.

Overall, I believe I have made some progress on this journey home, but I can only speculate with regret about where I might be right now had I advanced with full faith in Master and the Fa.

Master has taught us the Fa. He has given us a ladder to heaven. He has even told us how to climb it, while patiently protecting us from danger. We know that Master always does His part. The rest is up to us.