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Cultivate Diligently to the End By He Ming, a Dafa practitioner from Mainland China
(Clearwisdom.net) I had taken countless exams in my life and still clearly remember the
situations. When an exam was nearing its end, the supervising teacher would say,
"There are only 5 minutes remaining, please check your answers and prepare
to hand in your answer sheet." At this moment, there were all kinds of
reactions from the students. Some students became anxious; some students' goal
was just to pass the exam so they did not worry about the problems that they
could not solve; some students became nervous and did not know which problem to
concentrate on; some students already finished answering all the questions, so
they got up, turned in the sheet and left the room; and of course, there were
students who had already finished all the answers, but still quietly checked
their answers and made full use of each remaining minute. In a recent lecture, Master mentioned that time was short. What kind of
attitude are we going to take? I feel that no matter how we have done on our
answers, we should carefully examine ourselves in the final moments and
repeatedly look inward. Being steadfast, sticking to and cultivating diligently
to the end - shouldn't these be the basic qualities that an enlightened being
should have? And yet, cultivation during this Fa-rectification period is totally
different from ordinary people's exams. It is much more difficult than any
matters of everyday people. On the one hand, the evil is getting more and more
vicious in their final struggle, but on the other hand, our cultivation is
getting closer and closer to the surface layer. At the same time, our surface
layer is the worst part, and the low-level spirits, karma, notions, and even
lust, which have been mentioned repeatedly in recent times, are accumulated in
our surface layer, which encounters huge interference. Speaking for myself, some things that I had no trouble dealing with in the
past are now more difficult to deal with. I have repeatedly delayed going out to
distribute truth-clarification materials. In the past, if I did not do any
exercises one day, I would treat it as a big thing that was not tolerable.
Recently I became less strict with myself, especially with the fifth exercise,
"Strengthening Divine Powers." I often failed to do it. Now I realize
this is due to interference from the evil. They are afraid of me clarifying the
truth, afraid of me sending forth righteous thoughts, and afraid of me doing
this exercise. I am also a person who wrote a "Solemn Statement" on
Clearwisdom.net. Here I want remind all the practitioners who have written a
"Solemn Statement" that a divine being follows through on what he or
she says. What does it mean to talk about "catching up with redoubled
effort?" If it is the same as before, or worse than before, how can we call
it "redoubled effort?" If we do not double our effort, how can we talk
about "catching up?" Although the last 5 minutes of an exam are not long, those few minutes can
better test a person. This is because the remaining problems are the hard ones
that we cannot solve; moreover, fatigue will test our remaining strength. Master has said, "Since you are cultivators, even though it's hard you
should do even better." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2001 Canada Fa
Conference" from Guiding the Voyage) This is a request for us; it is
also a huge strengthening of our energy. The purpose of this article is to encourage those practitioners who are not
very diligent in cultivation. This is my personal understanding. Please point
out any mistakes. June 25, 2003 Posting date: 7/21/2003 |