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Let Go of the Attachment to Watching TV
By Xiaobao, a practitioner in China
(Clearwisdom.net) I began to practice Falun Dafa as a fifth-grader. I
matured as a Falun Dafa practitioner and have experienced severe persecution
since 1999. I was interfered with by qing and witnessed the
persecution of other practitioners. As I grew older, I began to realize that we
had to be able to cultivate in any kind of environment. This was fundamental to
the practice and no excuse could change that. Watching TV may not be a problem for many practitioners, as they rarely watch
it. But there are some practitioners who watch TV, and I was one of those who
developed an attachment to it. I believed that as a student, who was under
strong pressure to study well, that I watched TV for relaxation. Therefore,
watching TV was a minor issue and thus it was perfectly all right. Sometimes, I
would watch TV on the weekend for the entire day or daily during holidays. It
interfered with my Fa study and affected my validating the Fa. I
became depressed and felt miserable, but did not realize it. Today, when looking
back, I feel deep regret. I would like to tell fellow practitioners about my
lessons learned from watching TV in the hope that they would learn from my
experience. And I will eliminate this attachment while writing about it. Some attachments appear minor at first, but over time they become bigger and
bigger. The attachment may control you without your realizing it. It is just as
I used the excuse of taking a rest when watching TV, which then became my
priority. Therefore, I would take a rest whenever I thought I was tired. Another
excuse was that I was in need of entertainment. I believed that people would get
bored if I talked about Falun Dafa too often. I thought I could find some topics
from watching TV that I could use when talking to ordinary people. My excuse was
that I was conforming to everyday people in order to clarify the truth better.
But in writing this article, I realized that all these excuses were to cover my
fundamental attachment of pursuing comfort. Why did I enjoy watching TV? I could sit back on the sofa and select whatever
program I wanted with a click of the remote control. I did not have to think
about saving sentient beings and how to validate the Fa. I was completely
relaxed and even my primordial spirit no longer was in charge of my body. My
thoughts immersed themselves with the plots. When I watched TV, I had no
righteous thoughts and was controlled by my notions. I would burst into tears,
get excited or angry, laugh, or daydream along with the story of the TV program.
I had a feeling that since I could not pursue fame, personal interest,
sentimentality and so on, I could satisfy my sense of loss through watching TV.
At those times, I did not act as a practitioner. Looking back with a calm mind, I now realize that TV is a dangerous tool that
can bring back the attachments that we eliminated through diligent cultivation.
It brings chaos to people's mind and thoughts. It took a long time to calm down
after watching TV. Sometimes I had to study the Fa for a long time to again
achieve the mental state of a practitioner. I thought watching TV was an addiction, like drinking or smoking. When we
watched TV, all that we had cultivated left our body, and even the main spirit
did not want to be in charge of the body, because it didn't want to see the
programs produced by people's demon nature. Although some programs seemed to be
righteous, they were produced according to today's declined moral standards and
ordinary people's standards. Only when looking at it through the standards of
Falun Dafa and the principle of "Truthfulness, Compassion,
Forbearance," can we recognize this. For example, almost all TV shows
revolve around love. We could even say that most topics were about love and love
was the basis of the plots. But sentimentality, the basis for love, is exactly
the attachment that practitioners should eliminate. There were many myths about angels falling in love with an ordinary person.
They did not want to return to heaven and stayed in this human world to live
with that person. In the end the angels were punished by heaven. The evil CCP
changed the content and added atheism to these legends. It twisted punishment
from gods and the heavenly principles into something human and made people feel
that gods were merciless. It is evil to destroy the traditional culture. This
also had another effect on us, which was based on the attachment to
sentimentality. The angel would rather be an ordinary person instead of an angel
for the sake of sentimentality. They were moved by sentimentality in the human
world. From the perspective of a practitioner, this is interference from the demon
of lust, and it is really very serious. Maybe we cannot experience these things
in our real life. But the demon of lust has something common with the true
nature of the communist evil spirit. It spreads through the TV to everyone,
day-in and day-out, around the clock. We all know that the personal lives of the
evil Party members are degenerate, and these degenerate things are spread
through the TV programs; they flood the environment. Maybe some practitioners
may think that it is not so serious. But just think about it, did your heart not
beat suddenly because of a person in the TV program? Or did your heart move a
little bit because of a certain scene? If so, it was the interference from the
demon of lust. But you could not resist at that moment when you were watching
TV. Of course there were exceptional times when the righteous thoughts were very
strong. You could not resist at that moment because all the righteous beings
left your body and only left your body in a drunken state. Then how could you
tell right from wrong? The TV programs control people easily. Actually, sentimentality and lust are just one aspect. When you watch TV, you
will see programs related to your attachments. What you watch will be just what
you are attached to. For example, today's students worship some stars, then when
you turn on the TV it will tell you that the star you worship has produced a new
film or will produce a new special, or will visit some place. Then, one thinks
about this all day long and is oblivious to anything else. If you are attached to money or other personal interests, when you turn on
the TV you will see money, houses, cars and it will show how wealthy the rich
people are and how to make money, how to hurt others for money and how to enjoy
luxury after you have money. That is to say, TV can bring back and enlarge all of our attachments. The bad
elements come into people's bodies when they are in a numbed state. Smoking and
drinking hurt practitioners' bodies, so practitioners should quit smoking and
drinking. TV can shake practitioners' firmness and interfere with the righteous
thoughts as well as hurt practitioners' bodies. I had to quit watching TV just
as other practitioners quit smoking and drinking. When it comes to today's music, especially popular music, we find that the
tendency towards lust, sentimentality and love go to the extreme. It is a far
cry from real human culture, in which one viewed the appearance of the singers
and listened to the content of the songs. But these things are interfering with
people, especially students everywhere. In my family, a school age child will
listen to these songs, talk about them and learn to sing them. In my personal
understanding, as practitioners we should quit watching TV. Please kindly correct me if there is anything inappropriate. 2006-01-02
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