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My Experience of Looking Inward
By a practitioner in China (Clearwisdom.net) Teacher has been teaching us repeatedly to be
compassionate, tolerant and considerate of others. However, I found that my
first thought was still always about myself whenever I encountered conflicts. I
tended to point fingers at others and find fault in others. This notion seemed
to be engraved into my mind and became the basis of my thinking. I knew this
notion of mine did not conform to the principles of the Fa, however, every time
when I looked inward, I stopped at the surface and never dug down deep inside.
Recently some incidents have prompted me to dig into the roots of my notions,
and I found that there was a strong concept of "selfishness and self" behind my
complaints and criticism of others. If other people's words or actions touched
my "selfishness and self," then I would feel upset and start to complain about
others. Sometimes I would even distance myself from other people. I remember once reading an article on a Dafa website that talked about the
conflicts between two practitioners working at the same Dafa truth-clarification
material production site. One practitioner did not eat green onions, but another
practitioner insisted on putting some green onions in the dishes when cooking.
Because of this, the conflicts between the two practitioners grew more and more
serious. Later they had to be separated. In the end, both of them were
persecuted by the evil. When I first read this article, I laughed at these two
practitioners' situation. After a second thought though, I realized that such a
phenomenon wasn't unusual among many practitioners. Oftentimes practitioners had
conflicts because of some trivial things, but they did not look inward
seriously. As a result, the conflicts grew more and more serious, yet
practitioners still used Dafa to cover up their own attachments. A while ago, I had some conflicts with a colleague. I would feel very
uncomfortable upon seeing him. Through constantly looking inward, I realized
that what touched me was my strong notion of self and my selfishness. I thought
he interfered with my studying the Fa and doing Dafa work. In the end, I even
felt upset upon listening to his voice. I knew I was wrong but I just could not
forgive him. One night, I went to sleep with complaints about my colleague in my
mind. Suddenly I felt very uncomfortable, so I sat up. As soon as I sat up,
blood kept running down my nose non-stop. I felt that countless beings were
crying out to me. I realized that since I had held onto my notion and would not
change my selfish nature, these beings could not assimilate to the new cosmos
and were thus eliminated and ran down with my nosebleed. I was extremely sad. At
that moment, I said to Teacher from the bottom of my heart that I must
assimilate to Dafa, so that sentient beings can be saved. Then my nosebleed
stopped. Sometimes I felt that the substance in my body was as solid as granite. As
soon as the bad notions came up, I would grab them, and get rid of them. I felt
that this confining shell was gradually melting away. Not long after this realization, my colleague came to me, saying that he felt
that his thoughts were not proper and he always wanted to pick on me. One day he
suddenly felt he was too hard on me and felt very bad, and he hoped I could
forgive him. The moment he changed his thoughts was exactly the same moment I
changed my thoughts. Teacher said in Zhuan Falun that, "Buddha's light
shines everywhere, propriety and righteousness harmonize everything." When we
rectify ourselves, the surrounding environment will also be rectified. When conflicts arise between fellow practitioners, it must be that the other
person has touched our own selfishness. Sometimes practitioners tend to use
doing Dafa work as an excuse to cover up the attachments we have and fail to
look inward deeply. Since we did not look inward for a long time, conflicts
piled up and were taken advantage of by the dark minions of the old forces,
causing damage to saving sentient beings. Let us constantly rectify ourselves and walk our path of Fa-rectification
well. |