We Must Approach Our Jobs in Society from the Right Standpoint
By a practitioner in Dalian City, Liaoning Province
(Clearwisdom.net) As Falun Dafa practitioners who practice cultivation among everyday society, we all have jobs and families, and whatever we do is related to everyday people. How to always act like a practitioner in our daily lives by following the requirements of the Fa is a matter of great importance. Whether we do it correctly or not directly affects our righteous thoughts and actions in the process of Fa-rectification.
Over the past two years, the workload at my job has become heavier and heavier. At the beginning, I accepted it and tried to finish whatever I was assigned. In fact, I was able to manage the workload pretty well. Soon afterward, more and more state-funded projects landed at my institution. The workload fell mostly on the shoulders of a couple of people, with me as the key person. Naturally, in the eyes of everyday people, this is considered an honor. I was still trying my best on the job, although I did feel tremendous pressure from my work. On the other hand, I was aware that I was not as diligent in cultivation practice. I was really concerned.
Once I started to examine if my heavy workload was normal, I realized that the starting point for my thinking was incorrect and had a lot of everyday people's attachments. In the eyes of my colleagues, I am very capable. They all admire how well regarded I am at my age. As time passed, however, I realized that I had become too engrossed in my work, believing that I was indeed very capable. As a result, the old forces began to use my everyday job to deplete my time and energy, keeping me from proceeding down the path of cultivation. Their manifestation in ordinary life was that I was assigned more and more projects and the workload became heavier and heavier.
With this new understanding, I began to send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the attachment of being too engrossed. The situation started to change.
Nevertheless, my supervisors did not stop assigning new projects to me. I thought, "I must have some misunderstanding of the Fa." By reading the Fa, I learned that I was actually trapped in the old forces' plot, which made me believe that this tribulation was the result of my attachments. As a result, I was constrained by the thought of letting go of the attachments without thinking of the more profound meaning of cultivation in the Fa-rectification period. It was my wrong starting point that led me to believe that the problems I was encountering were simply part of my own cultivation practice. I forgot that I was a Falun Dafa practitioner in the era of Fa-rectification. As a practitioner in Fa-rectification, my true responsibility is to assist Master to rectify the Fa and not to get stuck in a routine job of everyday people. With a clearer understanding, I felt I was able to jump out of the trap and walk out of illusions. In fact, with the help of two other Ph.D.s, my load was considerably reduced.
While Master has taught us many times how to deny the arrangements of the old forces, it is still challenging for us to actually do so when facing problems in our practice. This is especially the case when we encounter some non-obvious tribulations that last a long time. In such cases, we tend to forget that we are practitioners in the Fa-rectification, and that Fa-rectification practice and ordinary personal cultivation are fundamentally different. Without a good understanding of Fa-rectification period cultivation, we will be unable to shake off our tribulations.
Our capabilities in everyday life can be attributed to Dafa. Such capabilities should be used to validate the Fa rather than to solve the problems of everyday people. If I apply such capabilities solely to the job of everyday life without realizing my mission as a practitioner, the capabilities will gradually weaken. On the contrary, once my starting point is the validation of the Fa, such abilities continually flow forth as if they were endless, something that really amazes me sometimes.
In face of problems in cultivation practice, things often turn out very differently when my starting point is right. Master taught us in "Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. International Fa Conference," "The path Dafa disciples are taking today is unprecedented. A fixed notion has formed in the minds of many people in the world, which is that when someone is devoted to a religious faith or is a cultivator, it won't work out unless he withdraws from society and leaves the secular world. The Dafa disciples' way of cultivation, then, has no predecessor and no model. I have always said that in cultivation Dafa disciples have no role models. And it's not just that in your personal cultivation you have to walk your own path--even the form of cultivation I have imparted to you has no example to follow. So you just have to blaze this path yourselves. And why is that? You might have realized it already through your experiences in cultivation, and I have spoken before in different settings about this Fa: it is because the historic responsibility that has been bestowed upon Dafa disciples is tremendous, an enormous number of sentient beings are involved, and the requirements for Dafa disciples are extremely high. In addition, in today's world the innate foundation of the sentient beings' souls is substantial. As you know, you are Dafa disciples, and you are part of the Dafa disciples of the Fa-rectification period. Fa-Rectification Period Dafa Disciples have enormous responsibilities, and the meaning of that title is extremely vast." Let us constantly regard ourselves as practitioners in the Fa-rectification period who have come for the Fa and who are remade in the Fa-rectification. Let us walk well and steadily on the final path to Fa-rectification.
Chinese version available at
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/1/9/118272.html
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