The Power of a Letter to Encourage Diligence

By a Chinese practitioner from Europe

(Clearwisdom.net)

Today, my husband translated for a fellow Chinese disciple, the contents a letter a western practitioner wrote to that disciple. The goal of this letter was to encourage this Chinese disciple to really be diligent in Dafa cultivation. After hearing the content of this letter, this fellow disciple was moved to the point that his voice started to quiver. After this fellow practitioner left, my husband said to me, "My translation was not very good (since his Chinese was not very good), however, after that fellow disciple heard it, he was still very moved."

This situation made me think very hard about what I had just witnessed. The Chinese disciple mentioned above had been very sluggish in his cultivation recently. Many fellow Chinese disciples, including myself, had already approached him to speak with him about it. But the end result of these efforts was not all that great, and many of us felt he was about to give up his cultivation.

Personally, I felt that we'd already tried our best and that choosing which road to follow was his own affair. However, this mentality was actually one of selfishness. I and others had been thinking to ourselves that "I've already done what Master asked us to do, what happens now has nothing to do with me."

However, I never would have thought that a letter would really make him have the thought of diligence. Actually, that letter was written by a western practitioner who spent many hours on it some months ago. This western practitioner asked us to find time to translate it to that Chinese practitioner. However, for many different reasons the Chinese practitioner could not come until now. It was the arrangement by Master that allowed him to listen to the contents of this letter today. It really awoke the part of him that understood.

Thinking about it really makes me feel ashamed. Master thinks of methods to let every disciple catch up. How can we let them fall? Thinking back on it now, every time I talked to him, inside I had already had some negative thoughts about him. I was not at all thinking 100% for his well-being, and thus this stopped me from showing him the power of a compassionate field. I also noted that I had allowed my competitive mentality to distract me from this purpose; there was always the thought of wanting to persuade others. This further weakened the purity of the energy field of our conversation.

Looking at this western practitioner who wrote the letter, he is really solidly grounded in cultivation. Every day he fully makes use of all his time with his work and Fa rectification matters, and yet he finds the time to diligently study the Fa, practice the exercises and send righteous thoughts everyday. His sleeps only a few hours a day. When he encounters something, he never acts on impulse and always considers others first. Towards fellow disciples, he always maintains a forgiving and forbearing heart, always looking inward when in difficulty.

This is to say, if you really want to achieve the goal of encouraging diligence, it does not at all depend on how precise your language is, or on whether your argument can win. The most fundamental necessity is a compassionate heart, and a peaceful and calm mind; this is the key.

Therefore, this is the reason why so many of us talked to the Chinese practitioner face to face and yet it wasn't as powerful as the letter this western disciple wrote.

These are my personal understandings. Since my level is limited, please point out anything inappropriate.

July 14, 2005

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/7/15/106207.html

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