By Zhang Dong

(Clearwisdom.net) For cultivators, "enlightenment" is very crucial. It is a part of xinxing. Master said, "What is xinxing? It includes de (a type of matter), tolerance, enlightenment quality, sacrifice, giving up ordinary people's different desires and attachments, being able to suffer hardships, and so on. It encompasses various things." ("Why Doesn't Your Gong Increase with Your Practice" in Lecture One of Zhuan Falun)

It's very hard for people with poor enlightenment quality to cultivate. Like inferior persons, they don't believe in cultivation of Buddha and Dao at all, so it is very difficult for them to cultivate. For average people, it's also hard for them to reach Consummation, because they tend to go along with the tide and are unable to make diligent and persistent progress by themselves. Whenever a tribulation strikes, they would cringe. Therefore, it's only easier for exceptional people with good enlightenment quality and a strong desire for the Dao to cultivate.

Today, Dafa practitioners who are able to keep up with Fa-rectification may all be called exceptional people, since this test is relentless. However, these practitioners are of greatly different enlightenment qualities. From a certain perspective, poor enlightenment quality can seriously hinder one's improvement in cultivation and even the improvement of Dafa practitioners as a whole. The so-called poor enlightenment quality is characterized by a lack of faith in the Fa in depth and solidity. The actual behavior of such people is that they often judge and treat everything with human notions, and the direct consequence of such behavior is that they often take the detour and suffer more than necessary, which affects the quality of their Fa-rectification work as well as the quality of their righteous thoughts. It's easy for them to yield in their self-discipline, which eventually causes them to slow down in their improvement in the Fa and to have a limited understanding of Fa principles.

Master said, "With a lot of karma and poor enlightenment quality, it is more difficult for this person to practice cultivation" ("Transformation of Karma" in Lecture Four of Zhuan Falun). Indeed it is so. For example, currently some fellow practitioners are interfered with by the evil (e.g. developing scabies). Some practitioners quickly understood it from the Fa principles and destroyed the evil's persecution from the root, while some others could not improve and were trapped at one level for a long time. They suffered much more hardship than necessary and the tribulation occasionally even caused them to waver in their faith of Fa. For instance, some practitioners were arrested and persecuted; some firmly resisted the evil's persecution with righteous faith and righteous understanding of Master and the Fa, and they didn't cooperate with the evil's demands, orders and instructions under any circumstances, and they ended up walking out of the demon's den in an upright and dignified manner, while some others acquiesced to the evil's arrangement and passively endured. In the end, they suffered many pains and were detained for a long time, which in turn also affected their Fa-study and their salvation of predestined people. Although these practitioners endured lots of pains and kept rock-solid faith in Dafa, and they are also outstanding, however, they cannot say that they have no omission in their righteous understanding of the Fa.

Because their enlightenment quality has not improved, these practitioners tend to stumble, and they won't be able to pass the test until they realize their mistakes and improve themselves. The most regretful thing is sometimes the evil would take advantage of these gaps and cause losses to Dafa.

I had some deep personal experience when sending forth righteous thoughts. When my enlightenment quality was good and when I was able to keep one single thought in my mind, my power was penetrating through levels of cosmos and the evil was being completely eliminated; I felt great, -- magnificent, gigantic, calm and rational. When my enlightenment quality was poor, my thoughts would be chaotic and they would be powerless. When my enlightenment quality was at its worst, I would be somewhat relaxed in sending forth righteous thoughts. In fact, when the outcome of our sending forth righteous thoughts is not very good, doesn't that indicate we should improve ourselves in a certain aspect and make a certain breakthrough? Of course, if we have doubts about sending forth righteous thoughts itself, then it only shows that we have poor enlightenment quality.

The better the enlightenment quality, the more we are able to be diligent in the Fa and the more strictly we will conduct ourselves; otherwise we would easily pamper ourselves and become moved by the pursuit of comfort, and we won't be able to keep up with the progress of Fa-rectification.

Poor enlightenment quality also affects the outcome of our Fa-study. In our sub-consciousness, if we somehow study the Fa like studying human theories or reading stories, that would seriously hinder our improvement; however, we are usually unaware of it. In fact, every one of Master's words is worth one hundred times its weight, so why aren't we able to pay attention to certain problems and fail to correct them even when we have realized them? Why would we often treat people and things with human notions? One of the reasons is that we have failed to improve our enlightenment quality.

With strong attachments, plus poor enlightenment quality, we would likely deviate from the Fa and even go to extremes. Not only would we obstruct ourselves from improving, we would also cause losses to Fa-rectification work. The worse our enlightenment quality, the less attention we would pay to Fa-study, the more likely we will have an obscure understanding of things around us as well as Fa-rectification work. Without righteous thoughts, we are more likely to be moved by human notions and even fail to regard the Fa as the teacher, and we would take others as models.

All in all, as a cultivator, there is no benefit in having poor enlightenment quality. So how do we improve it? I think first of all, we must have absolute faith in Master and Dafa, which means we must have true faith and solid cultivation. Secondly, we must study the Fa more diligently, and attentively study the Fa without pursuit. Proper sharing with fellow practitioners is also necessary, including reading articles on Clearwisdom net in a relatively complete and thorough manner, instead of picking out only two or three articles everyday to read. Only by melting ourselves into the larger environment of cultivation as a whole body, can we better keep up with Fa-rectification. In order to do better in Fa-rectification and completely break away the old forces' evil arrangements as soon as possible, and to complete our mission of saving people to the maximum extent, abundant sharing among fellow practitioners and improving together is very important.

Above is only my shallow understanding to inspire more valuable sharing from fellow practitioners.

Posting date: 12/29/2002
Original article date: 12/28/2002
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 12/22/2002
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/12/15/41043.html

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