My Personal Understanding on How to Help Fellow Practitioners Get Rid of Attachments

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in Hengshui, Hebei Province

(Clearwisdom.net) When practitioners appear to have sickness karma or run into tribulations in their families, some fellow practitioners attribute it to "their attachments" or "lack of righteous thoughts." They then go on to point out their attachments. The practitioners being criticized don’t know how to deal with it. Those practitioners sometimes pointed out others' attachments through the lens of their own notions and attachments. The practitioners who were being criticized found it hard to accept and even became averse to their accusing attitude and manner. They felt pressured, but may not have figured out what their attachments were. Of course, the practitioners who pointed out the attachments did so in order that they could improve. However, why weren’t they able to achieve that result?

Teacher said in "Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles",

"Improvement for a cultivator definitely doesn't result from finger pointing, nor does it result from my criticism of you as your Master or from your pointing fingers at or criticizing each other. It comes from you cultivating yourself."

I personally don’t think it’s appropriate to point out a practitioner’s attachment in the way I just described. Such criticism actually acknowledges the old forces’ arrangement and actually provides an excuse for the evil forces to persecute fellow practitioners. It only pleases the evil forces and makes it harder for the practitioner to step out of the tribulation.

When a practitioner is facing a tribulation, he is like someone who has fallen into the water and is struggling. He needs our help to get him out. So the first thing we should do is to give him a hand to drag him out of the "water." No matter what kind of attachment he may have, we should first drag him out of the tribulation, then study the Fa with him, and strengthen his faith in Teacher and in the Fa, so that he is able to remove his attachment by cultivating in the Fa. We should not stand on the shore, point our fingers at him and say, "You have attachments," or "You should look into yourself, and find out why you fell into the water. You will be able to get out when you find your attachment and when you have righteous thoughts."

Of course, I am not saying that we can’t point out other practitioners’ attachments when we notice them. If we don’t point out fellow practitioners' shortcomings, but take the attitude of "I'm ok, you're ok, and everything is fine", then we are going to the other extreme, and being irresponsible to ourselves and to fellow practitioners. When a practitioner is in a tribulation, he must have some sort of attachment that he hasn’t realized or hasn’t gotten rid of yet. When we look at others, we often unconsciously judge them with our own notions, and what we see may not be the true situation. If we kindly point out a practitioner’s possible attachment with a truly understanding and tolerant mind, without any intent to criticize, and without any criticism in our tone of voice, it may be easier for the practitioner to listen. Teacher told us,

"While working, your tone of voice, your kindheartedness, and your reasoning can change a person’s heart, whereas commands never could!" ("Clearheadedness" in Falun Dafa Essentials for Further Advancement)

When we follow Teacher’s instruction, the practitioner in tribulation will accept our kindness. Only when we help a practitioner strengthen his faith in Teacher and Dafa, and become more confident that he can get rid of his attachment by cultivating Dafa, are we truly helping him.

For the practitioner in tribulation, he should look into himself by completely negating the arrangement of the old forces, and look for his attachments and human thoughts in order to get rid of them. When criticized, he should keep a calm mind, correct the mistake if he has made one and guard against them if he has not.

In short, if all practitioners can truly cultivate themselves, always be considerate of others, be understanding and tolerant of other practitioners and keep a calm mind, we will be able to coordinate better in doing the three things that Teacher requires us to do and do a better job in saving sentient beings.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/10/15/140086.html

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