Removing a Fundamental Attachment: the Selfish Mind

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) After two months of cruel torture, I managed to get out of the Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp because of rescue efforts by fellow practitioners. Looking back at this incident, the direct cause for my arrest and sentencing in the labor camp were because of problems that surfaced in a recent Fa-validation activity. These included my attachment to fame, concerns over becoming a proficient practitioner, lack of consideration of family members and not being completely rational and sober-minded on the whole. Searching deeper, I discovered that the fundamental cause of these problems was selfishness. I stepped forward to validate the Fa with an attachment of being afraid of being left behind, and an attachment of establishing personal mighty virtue. This was contrary to the characteristic of "putting others first" in the new universe. The evil took advantage of my omission and escalated its persecution against me.

Although I claimed to have done this out of consideration for the Fa, by helping to alleviate the pressure on fellow practitioners in Beijing, and by fulfilling my responsibility as a practitioner, deep in my heart, I had the self-serving purpose of saving the sentient beings of my own universe. I thought that as long as I went through the motions to send forth righteous thoughts in a perfect fashion, all the sentient beings in my universe would be saved. However, I unwittingly differentiated between sentient beings in my universe and those that were not. This hard lesson of selfishness allowed the evil to take advantage of me and almost ruined me.

Fellow practitioners spent tremendous amounts of time, effort and money to obtain my release. After learning about this, I could not hold back my tears. I blamed myself for causing practitioners to spend so much time in coordinating my rescue, from their busy schedules, that could have been used to save the world's people and sentient beings. Indeed, anything that goes wrong with one person can bring losses to all of us.

When validating the Fa, we as individuals have to do so with a pure mind, letting go of all attachments. If this fundamental attachment of "selfishness" is not overcome, this omission will allow the evil to attack and take advantage of us. We must place ourselves in the greater picture, putting others ahead of ourselves. Only in doing so can we truly assimilate to the Fa and manifest its mighty power. Whatever we do, we don't do it for ourselves, or for our small universes, but for validating the Fa.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/2/4/94856.html

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