Attitude Towards Reality and Cultivation

By Shanguo (from outside China)

November 13, 2003

(Clearwisdom.net) I read a short article today on Clearwisdom.Net, which was from a practitioner in Nanyang City, Henan Province. A local newspaper published a full-page article on November 7, 2003, under the name of Jing Zhanyi to slander Dafa and Master. The author of the Clearwisdom article believed that although the writer and publisher of the article were used by the evil, the fact that evil were able to publish it in the Nanyang Evening Post requires that the practitioners in Nanyang area look inside and search for shortcomings in their cultivation during Fa-rectification. The author also gave a few positive suggestions from what he observed.

I thought about the lawsuits of Singtao Daily in New York and Les Presses Chinoises in Montreal, and the New York thugs' beating practitioners in public. I feel that the practitioners in these areas as well as all of the practitioners who see or hear about these incidents should take the chance to look inside. For instance, we can check whether we are fully rational and if we are acting and thinking righteously. Do we genuinely have unbreakable righteous belief in Master and Dafa? Do we have complete and deep enough understandings on the truth? Can we use words that are easy to understand to clarify the truth to people? Do we have any doubt about some of the facts and can only rigidly repeat other people's words? Have we been able to persistently study the Fa, cultivate our hearts, and send forth righteous thought?

Here, I want to talk about the attitude towards reality. When a problem arises, being able to calmly look inside and search for shortcomings and attachments, which are what the evil takes advantage of, and being able to correct and adjust ourselves according to Dafa in time, are the manifestation of Dafa disciples' practicing Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance. Facing up to reality and admitting the reality of the situation are the basic requirement of Truth. Whether one can see the essence of a problem reveals his cultivation level. We must learn from the lessons from the United Nations meetings of the human rights committees in Geneva. We not only should look inside, we must find the real problems. Otherwise we are wasting the precious time that Master gives us.

Is it approving the evil's persecution when we look inside after some problem appeared? Of course not. We look inside because we have understood the evil's destructive test. We are not staying home to study the Fa and look inside. We want to take the chance to clarify the truth to the people, expose the evil, and benefit people from learning the truth.

We stress looking inside when the evil persecutes us. Will that increase the negative factors and harm the coordination of the one-body? No, it will do neither. It's about whether we can see clearly the cause of the problem, and whether we react to the problem actively or passively. When we find our notions, attachments, and shortcomings, it is a proper cultivation attitude for a Dafa disciple to actively follow Dafa's requirement, upgrade our xinxing, and improve our words and behavior. Then the problem can serve a positive role in our cultivation. At the same time, we would have upgraded our xinxing. We will be able to do better in our clarifying the truth, and bring greater hopes to the people. On the contrary, if we react passively and feel discouraged when we see a problem, or stay on the ground when we tumble, it shows that we have shortcomings in our attitude towards cultivation, and that we don't have enough righteous thoughts to face the problem, and that we don't have proper righteous actions to solve the problem. Both results are the choices of the people concerned.

I think the two issues talked about above directly relate to whether we can continuously make diligent progress. No matter if it is the New York case or the lawsuit against the Chinese newspaper Les Presses Chinoises, when we clarify the facts we should learn to see clearly the weaknesses in everyday people and us that the evil targets, and learn to understand everyday people and think more on how to help them to know and understand the facts. In our cultivation, we should see clearly the notions, attachments, and other degenerate substances that are blocking us, so as to better eliminate them and purify our minds and bodies.

Actually no matter if the evils think themselves as clever or clumsy, every time they attack us, they unintentionally provide us a direct clue to see clearly our attachments and shortcomings. For example, the evil made a big, slanderous lie that Dafa forbids people to take medicine. This is due often because quite some practitioners don't have a deep understanding of the Fa. They don't have a clear understanding of the relationship between cultivation and taking medicine, or they have related fundamental attachments (taking Dafa as a way to heal illness and they're attached to it). After those practitioners develop a good understanding of the Fa principles and can clearly clarify the facts on this issue, the evil can no longer spread lies to deceive the public on this issue.

Another example is when the evil attacked us by saying that we worship Master. That's usually because some of us for a long time cannot handle ourselves correctly in relation to the Fa and Master. Since Dafa cultivation has cured our chronic or fatal illnesses, some feel grateful and uphold Master with human emotions and mentality. Knowing that Master taught us high level Fa principles, some used human thoughts to follow and worship Master as a leader like that among everyday people, instead of truly following what Master taught us and Master's requirements of Dafa disciples to understand the Fa rationally from the Fa's perspective and do well according to the requirements of the Fa principles. Some always mention Master when they speak, yet for a long time they don't know how to study the Fa well or cannot cultivate diligently. All of the above are demonstrations of practitioners not yet truly understanding the inner meaning of Dafa. In fact as long as we see clearly where our attachments lie and let go of them, regard Master with righteous thoughts, and use a Dafa disciple's mindset to uphold Master and Dafa, the evil dares not to make an issue of it. Otherwise it would be that the evil is telling people how magnificent Dafa and Master are for us.

Only by truly understanding Dafa well can we apply the Fa principles well in our practice. The process is very important, yet the result can also tell us a lot. It is not that as long as our original intention is good, the process and result will be automatically good. Only by having genuinely righteous thoughts and righteous actions during every opportunity can we completely dispel the evil, benefit more the world's people and better fulfill our mission.
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/11/14/60552.html

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