When I Am Affected by Fellow Practitioners' Attachments

I live with my mother-in-law and we are both practitioners and go to the same study group. However, we cooperate very poorly, or rather we do not cooperate with each other at all. The non-practitioners who know us would never say that we cultivate well. I realized that this does not reflect well on Dafa.

I was very disturbed by this. I wanted to cooperate with her and to become one body to validate the Fa. We simply do not agree on anything. Every day, she complains about what I do not do well in day-to-day matters. She said that I was not strict with myself and I was not even a good person. On the other hand, I saw very clearly her fear, show-off mentality, and vanity, as well as her fear of other people knowing that she is a practitioner. I did not like what she said about me. I thought she was picking on minor things. What she did prevented us from doing bigger things to validate Dafa. She frequently found excuses for herself for yielding to pressure from the old forces.

Every time I read Lecture 3 of Zhuan Falun, I read:

"when some people are doing their qigong, who knows what they're doing, they'll be exercising away, swinging their bodies all around, and at the same time going off about things--'Ugh! That daughter-in-law of mine has no respect for me,' 'My mother-in-law is such a wretch!'...To put it a little more seriously, he's practicing in an evil way!"
(Lecture 3, Zhuan Falun, 2003 translation version)

I felt that this described exactly what was happening between my mother-in-law and me. She often tells our neighbours and relatives that I do not respect her as a parent. On the other hand, I often complain to my husband about how bad she is and how she yielded to pressure and did not validate the Fa in an open and dignified manner, finding excuses for herself. Every time I read this paragraph, I felt bad. So I made up my mind to only look within myself. I couldn't always do it though and often ended up failing.

I doubted that I would ever have ultimate forbearance, no matter how hard I tried.

This afternoon, I went to Fa study. We talked about how my mother-in-law's relative cooperated with the CCP (Chinese communist party). I felt this was caused by my mother-in-law due to her attachments, which, I believed, was why similar issues happened again and again. My mother-in-law defended herself, accusing me of not being understanding. We went back and forth and our conflicts just escalated.

I was very angry. My husband stayed with me and we talked about my personality. Since I was little, I have had an attachment to being fair. I do not like hypocrisy and I wanted to be true to myself and at peace with myself. Although I don't have as many problems with other people's competitiveness and jealousy, I cannot stand hypocrisy. I thought it was on the level as the CCP. I despised people who I felt displayed hypocrisy, whether they were practitioners or ordinary people.

My husband said to me, "Perhaps, to Master, Fa-rectification is the most important. If we focus on fellow practitioners' attachments and expect them to correct themselves before we can work together to validate the Fa, then we will be 'tested' again and again. After all, cultivation is a gradual process to get rid of attachments. Everything including personal cultivation is integrated into the three things (study 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). If we are attached to other practitioners' personal cultivation or our own cultivation, it will be impossible to solve those issues, because the old cosmos has deteriorated; no gods are capable of solving the problem because the old cosmos is not harmonizing."

"It's the same with cooperation amongst practitioners. If you keep looking at other people's shortcomings to the extend that you despise them and cannot let go of the issue, you are not putting Fa-rectification first. No matter how serious a fellow practitioner's problems are, we cannot be too focused on them because it is more important that we work together well and validate the Fa. This is what Fa-rectification requires. Failing to do that, and letting our demon-nature run rampant, without treating ourselves as practitioners, we would not be setting our priorities right. We would lose more as a result."

Hearing what my husband said, tears just ran down my cheeks. I understand that Master once said that when he was spreading the Fa, if he had tried to feel what the students were thinking, he would not have been able to save us. Indeed, we are here to assist Teacher to rectify the Fa, why are we trying to judge what other practitioners are lacking? The most important thing to do is to validate the Fa well. As Master spoke about in "Fa Teaching at the 2009 Greater New York International Fa Conference":

"It's just like when this fist goes out--it's strong when everyone is clenched together. (Master makes a fist.) But if you're saying that this one wants to do this, that one wants to do that, and the next one something else (spreading the five fingers apart and pointing to each finger), then that's weak, and as soon as it goes out, it will be repelled, right?"

We should make a fist in order to be effective; if all five fingers want to stretch out, we will not be a one body and will be less effective.

I have read many articles by practitioners in China on the Minghui website about similar issues. After I watched Fa-Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners, I felt that these things are probably not uncommon among overseas practitioners, either. That's why I decided to write about it. I hope that those who have similar issues will learn from my mistakes and search within, practice forbearance more and focus on Fa-rectification.
My level is limited. Please point out anything inappropriate.