Don't Put the Cart Before the Horse

By Falun Dafa Practitioner Shi Xin from China

(Clearwisdom.net)

A few days ago, I had an idea that I thought was pretty good and I wanted to share it with my fellow practitioners, so I planned to write an article for the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. I started to browse through Teacher's books and articles to find Teacher's words that were relevant to my idea. However, I hadn't studied the Fa enough and therefore I couldn't quite remember in which lectures to find the words. During this process, I suddenly realized I should have studied the Fa more.

Meanwhile, I also came to realize that I was trying to validate myself by quoting Teacher's words that supported my idea. In other words, instead of sharing my understandings on what Teacher said and therefore validating the Fa, I tried to use the Fa and Teacher to prove that I was right and thereby validate myself.

I hope my lesson serves others well. There are many discussions on how to quote Teacher's words. Personally, I think the critical thing is to examine whether we have any attachments when we do so.

Sometimes when I thought about my strong points, I would feel very good. For example, I'm very good at using Word, Photoshop, and other software. I can make very appealing truth-clarification fliers. I felt good about this and couldn't help thinking, "Look, I can do this so well. Now I can use my skills to validate the Fa!" However, one can tell that I tried to emphasize myself and my advantages. I felt happy for myself and I felt special and superior to other practitioners.

In fact, no matter what kind of skills or special talents we have, they are to help us validate the Fa. It's not that we have some advantages to give the Fa. Instead, it's because we are supposed to validate the Fa that we were given these skills, so we could do a better job during the Fa-rectification period.

As Fa-rectification period Dafa disciples, we can feel happy that we have special skills and are experienced in doing certain things. However, we need to be clear-headed and understand that the reason we have the skills is to validate the Fa. Therefore, we need to fully explore our capabilities so that we can better validate the Fa.

The above is my personal understanding. Please correct me if there is anything inappropriate.

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