A Few Thoughts on Selfishness and Forbearance

By a Western Falun Dafa practitioner

(Clearwisdom.net) When I first started practicing Falun Dafa in April of 2000, my main concern was purely selfish: In order to improve my health, how was I going to discipline myself to do the exercises every day? Looking back, I wish I would have enlightened to my duties and responsibilities as a Dafa disciple naturally and totally on my own, but it took a strong hint from Master in "Serious Teachings" to move me to action.

Since I live in a rural area where there are not a lot of local activities, and had a background in writing, participating in our websites seemed like the quickest and most natural way to get involved in Dafa work on a daily basis. Now, four years later, I'm still concerned with how I'm going to find time to do the exercises every day-- but even though it turns out I'm still sometimes asking a similar question, it's now from a totally different point of view, as I believe a good deal of the selfishness that was apparent in my original question has been eliminated.

Working on a Dafa website has not only helped me to eliminate many of my selfish attitudes, it also helped me to learn forbearance. Reading about forbearance in Zhuan Falun (1), or reading about the great forbearance displayed by the Dafa practitioners in China amidst the persecution, it was easy to think of myself as practicing forbearance when in fact I was just reading about it or admiring someone else's practice of it. That's rather like thinking I'm a great basketball player simply because I watch Michael Jordan on TV. When it comes to actually practicing forbearance, I tend to have a problem. It seems like I always fail to recognize the need to practice forbearance until after the opportunity has been lost, and I realize to my dismay that I have failed once again.

In the article "What is Forbearance (Ren)" in Essentials for Further Advancement, Master said,

On more than one occasion during the past four years, even an everyday person's forbearance would have been superior to mine. But I can truly say that through doing this work--and sticking with it over a long period of time despite feeling at times that I'd like to find some easier and less intense Dafa work to do--that I have made definite progress in this area. I'm not able to say how much progress, because I still have setbacks, but it's real, and not just words.

(1) The book Zhuan Falun comprises the principal teachings of Falun Dafa.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/10/27/87734.html

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