On Resenting the Wealthy and Powerful

By a Western practitioner in the United States

(Clearwisdom.net) Recently I've become clearer about a problem that others and I share, that is, having negative feelings and/or resentment toward people who have a lot of money or power. I've realized that these feelings lack compassion and reflect three cultivation shortcomings. They are especially important to get rid of at this time when we want to comprehensively save sentient beings and clarify the truth to people from all sectors of society, especially sectors that we may have overlooked in the past, such as the business community.

When I heard how large someone's salary is, how many nice cars they own, what expensive clothes they buy, or how much power they have in business or government, I've noticed some negative thoughts and feelings come up in myself. I've also noticed other practitioners making negative comments about such people. It's likely that practitioners such as myself who grew up without much money, or who were raised to believe in "closing the gap between rich and poor," are more prone to this problem.

First, looking within myself with determination to get rid of this problem, I've realized that this is in fact a manifestation of jealousy, plain and simple. It's a very bad attachment, as we know, and each of us needs to get rid of it. In Zhuan Falun Teacher commented on jealousy, saying,

"Today I'm telling practitioners: stop turning a blind eye to your problem. Your goal is to cultivate up to higher levels, so you have to get rid of jealousy."

Negative feelings like this can surely interfere with our truth-clarification efforts to those people. It would be extremely unfortunate if we missed chances to save those people because we either did not want to deal with them or because, when dealing with them our words and thoughts weren't pure and utterly compassionate. In Zhuan Falun Teacher also said,

"If jealousy isn't eliminated, all the thoughts you've cultivated become fragile."

I think our godlike, compassionate thoughts are, as is said here, put at risk when we have jealousy in our hearts. The thoughts we've cultivated about saving people could be overshadowed by our jealous feelings when it comes to clarifying the truth to these people.

Secondly, I've realized that this attitude does not reflect the values of a Dafa cultivator, but rather those of an ordinary person in society. How much money or power they have really has nothing to do with us. We have come here because we made a vow or had the desire to save sentient beings. We're not here to compare ourselves with them and we shouldn't give a thought to those worldly things. We have something more precious than anything in the entire universe, and that thing is the Fa.

Lastly, and this may be the most fundamental issue of all, is that I think this problem reflects a lack of understanding of basic Fa-principles. Hasn't our Teacher made it clear again and again that blessings such as money and rank come to people because they actually earned it through accumulating virtue? In Essentials for Further Advancement Teacher said,

"Virtue is accumulated in past lives. Becoming a king, an official, wealthy, or nobility all come from virtue."

The question is, do we truly, deep in our hearts, believe what our Teacher has taught us and embrace it? Aren't the thoughts that these people shouldn't have these things, or that they should be taxed more heavily, or that it's not fair that they have these things, or "why don't I have that," etc., actually little bits of warped notions that have formed in our minds. Don't these thoughts reflect a fundamental lack of understanding of "no loss, no gain"?

Everything in this world is directed by higher beings. There's a reason for everything.

If we want to become higher beings we should look at worldly affairs from the perspective of higher beings.

Of course, there are certain cases of injustice in this world, and it is good for wealthy people to help poor people (when they choose to do so), but in general I think the above holds true. In cases where there is injustice we can have faith that the Law of the cosmos is just, and that wealthy or powerful people who do evil will lose out in the end. But that is not for us to judge. The Fa will look at each person's heart, and that will determine his or her future.

Right now our job is to clarify the truth and save sentient beings, looking at the people in this world only as precious lives that are waiting for Dafa.

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