On the Attachment to Time and My Resulting Unemployment

By a Practitioner Living Outside China

(Clearwisdom.net) In my local area, there have been a few elderly fellow practitioners tortured by "illness karma" for a long time, and there are also some young practitioners having difficulty finding jobs.

I personally feel that there are some similarities between the "illness karma" of the elderly practitioners and the difficulty finding jobs for young practitioners. However, they all come down to the fact that old evil forces and dark minions are capitalizing our loopholes in our cultivation. I have experienced the tribulations and difficulty of looking for a job so I would like to share my personal experience with everyone:

Two years ago, due to the attachment to time and going to extremes in certain aspects of my personal cultivation, I did not balance the relationships between my personal cultivation and Fa-rectification cultivation well. At work, I thought about validating the Fa, so I came up with the idea of quitting my job. As a result, I very soon thereafter lost a very good job. I didn't even feel sad about losing it. Instead I felt kind of delighted, feeling I could finally devote 100% of myself to the Fa.

For more than 2 years after I lost my job, I never even took time to look for another one. I spent a little time getting training in my professional field, thinking that if I could not find a professional career, I could at least make ends meet by taking on a more menial job.

Later, I realized that the Fa rectification process is not as quickly coming to its end as I had imagined. If I didn't find a job soon, I would no longer be able to make a living. I began to worry, and started looking, however, no one responded to the resumes that I had sent out. I could not even find a job as a laborer.

The more I worried, the more tribulations I came across, from my family in China to others that I have interactions with. I read the Fa many times, and asked myself: where did I fall short? Teacher said before that Dafa practitioners had good fortune. So I figured that as long as we did the three things well, Teacher would make good arrangements for us. I also felt like a diligent practitioner. I study the Fa, I do the exercises, I send forth righteous thoughts, and I clarify the truth, I have been doing all of them diligently, they are my whole life, I should not have this tribulation, then how come I can't even find a job as a laborer?

As time went on, I really couldn't figure things out so I started begging Teacher. Before I went to bed, I begged teacher to grant me a dream to enlighten me. Oddly enough, I slept soundly all night until next the day and had no dreams at all. Later, I felt more and more pressure in my heart, and I started to complain. I understood that this was not right, but still I could not suppress it. Right at that time, two sentences from Zhuan Falun cast into my mind:

"Some people don't grasp this. When begging to Buddha doesn't work they start blaming him, 'How come you aren't helping me out? Day after day I burn incense to you and kowtow.'"

I was shocked! I have been cultivating for so long. How could I come up with such an unrighteous thought during my tribulation? How can I doubt Teacher?

This kind of scared me. I didn't know what else to do but study the Fa intensively for a few days. One day when I was sitting there studying the Fa, I suddenly understood the root cause of everything, which was that I considered myself a diligent practitioner, that I was doing the three things well, so I felt that I naturally should have good fortune and that Teacher should make good arrangements for me. What a dirty and selfish heart! I was even making deals with Dafa and Teacher!

As a Dafa practitioner, a particle in Dafa, I do what I should do, without condition. I am learning to practice "Truth, Compassion, Forbearance" in order to be compassionate to sentiment beings on my own initiative, and due to the influence of attachments, perhaps what I have done is far less than what I promised to do in my pledge. How can I see what and how much I have gained as my goal of cultivation?! Teacher said that he would make arrangements for us. This is teacher's benevolence for us, which can be neither measured or understood with a human heart. As his disciple, I should be in the state of "putting the mind on practicing, not putting the mind on getting gong." I should assimilate to the Fa unconditionally, do the three things well unconditionally, and save sentient beings with compassion. These are my responsibilities, and are also the meaning of the existence of my life.

After that day, I felt that I was more pure and clean than I have never been before. All unrighteous thoughts disappeared from my heart. Consequently, every tribulation subsided, like the tide going out, over a short period of time.

I found a full time job doing graphic design. The location is near my home. Even though I am not paid as much as when I was doing my professional job, the job is not stressful at all, and the working hours are pretty good. As a result, there is more time for my Dafa related work. The so-called tests and tribulations that had been bothered me for a log time disappeared quietly.

Originally published on May 9, 2004

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/5/10/74263.html

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