Sharing the Experience of Cultivating with a Child

By a practitioner from Heilongjiang Province

(Clearwisdom.net) Teacher answered a disciple's question in "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York:"

"A kid, well, sometimes he might still have the traits of a kid, and the people he comes into contact with will play a role in it as well. Mankind is a big dye vat, and if there were anyone who was untouched by this dye vat, then he would be a god. Even Dafa disciples who are cultivating need to clean themselves off often, and that's even more so for a kid."

"And also, if the parents have problems in certain respects, the kid will reflect that. Those will be intentionally shown to Dafa disciples and to the parents. Let's not go on about this too much. He's a kid, after all."

Teacher has made it very clear to us. I deeply understood that a child's cultivation is not an isolated occurrence; it is not that we just take the child with us to cultivate. On the contrary, our child helps us to improve ourselves.

Our family of three obtained the Fa at the end of 1995. Our daughter was 4 years old at that time. In the spring of 1996, we started a local Falun Dafa exercise group. Our daughter went with us to the group every evening. While the group was studying the Fa, she was playing. After about six months, she suddenly read Zhuan Falun in one day. She could not even hold the book at that time. We were all surprised because we had not taught her to read. Through this matter, we experienced the mystery of Dafa and the boundlessness of Teacher's mercy.

Since July 20, 1999, the evil has been recklessly persecuting Dafa practitioners. Our harmonious happy family has suffered because our home has been ransacked many times. We have also been illegally arrested many times. Especially in September 2002, both my wife and I were detained and sent to labor camps. Our daughter was left alone at home. Afterward, our father came from southern China to take care of her. During that time she did not study the Fa. Because of the additional contamination from the big human dye vat, she was like an ordinary child. Despite many practitioners coming to take care of her, she was unable to keep up. Her room was full of bad cartoon pictures and she was unable to finish the homework the teacher assigned to her. Her homework scores were going down dramatically. She was like that for about a year until we came back home. Through studying the Fa, her xinxing improved and she was able to do the three things that Teacher has required us to do. Her school scores improved as well.

Currently, non-practitioners try to push their children to study well and go to a good college. They are all squeezing onto the same bridge. After the schoolteacher knew that we had come back home, he came to us to ask us to help him improve my daughter's scores. At that time my daughter was in her second year of middle school. The neighbors were also checking on her school performance. They were concerned about whether she could get into the best high school. They mentioned about how other families' children enrolled in the best high school, and that now it was time for our child to try. With this, our attachments surfaced. We did not realize it at the time. We thought that we were functioning from the Fa. We often told our daughter that the school knew that we were all practicing Falun Gong, that she must study well to get good scores, and that this was part of Fa-validation.

Our child was indeed trying hard to study, but her scores were sometimes good and sometimes bad. Our hearts moved along with the scores. We were excited when the score was good. We were upset when the score was bad. Sometimes we even blamed her, using the teacher's words, like you should study well as a student, etc. Gradually, our daughter started to hate school. The homework was tremendous every day and she did not have any time to study the Fa. At the worst time, we even found unhealthy books and pop music in her room. We also found the letters that she exchanged with her friends. Those surprised us. What happened with all these? What could we do with her?

We were worried. We made a lot of attempts to patiently convince her, and we sternly gave her lectures. None of these worked. Through studying the Fa, we realized that we must look within ourselves. Right at that time, a fellow practitioner from another city came and visited us (thanks to Teacher's arrangement). He pointed out our attachment. We were using our daughter to earn fame and glory for ourselves. Even though we were saying that it was to validate the Fa, we actually were grabbing the Buddha with one hand and using the other for self-interest and fame. What selfishness!

Our daughter came to obtain the Fa. She waited for so long! If we, as her parents, were really thinking on her behalf and being responsible for her, we should have put her cultivation first. We understood it as: "If the Fa is studied well, her scores will naturally improve." I knew that this was the principle, but I thought it also reflected some form of attachment, or a loophole. It sounded like cultivation was done in order to study well, just like the faulty idea that cultivation was done for curing illness. Cultivation is cultivation, which is a serious issue. Teacher not only saved us, but also purified us and named us as the glorious Dafa disciples. If we were not serious about cultivation, we would not be responsible for ourselves, and we would not deserve what Teacher has suffered, with his greatest benevolence, for us.

When we realized this selfish thought, we got rid of it. We felt relieved in our hearts. Our daughter is in the fourth year of middle school now. Although she is very busy with her schoolwork, she can finish her homework at school. After the evening study sessions, she can study 10 pages of Fa every day. During the weekends, she can study more. She reads each Minghui Weekly Journal, distributes Dafa informational materials and "clarifies the truth" to people around her. She has gotten rid of those bad habits from the past, and she has recently gotten the highest score on the mid-term exam. When the score came out, our hearts were very calm. We were not excited or happy, as we used to be. We enlightened to Teacher's superior principle of: "Pursue nothing and gain naturally." ("Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference")

The above is our sharing about our daughter's cultivation. If anything is not accurate, please kindly point it out.

December 7, 2005

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/12/8/116096.html

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