(Clearwisdom.net) Cultivation is a serious matter. It is not a process that one can go through by following the crowd. To turn from a human being into a divine being, we need to give up our qing and our preconceived notions. Sometimes they show up during certain phases of our cultivation when we are not paying attention.

Human society is a society full of qing. One's love for his children, parents, as well as his feelings when his desire for fame and interests are not met are all qing.

To make a living, some practitioners kept borrowing money from fellow practitioners to do business. They hope to earn money to support themselves financially, but often end up owing more debt and making the situation worse. Eventually the load becomes too heavy for them to bear. Not able to sense attachments to fame and interest, they become angry with others: "How come fellow practitioners don't want to help me?" Some even forget the principles of a cultivator and used money for Dafa materials to invest in their own businesses, thus committing a huge mistake. If one does not recognize one's attachments to fame and interest and always looks outward instead, one will be stuck in them and won't be able to get out. Some practitioners will take money from fellow practitioners to solve their living problems whenever they can, taking other people's help for granted based on their own financial difficulties.

We all know that to have a hardship is not a bad thing for a cultivator. Without hardships how can one get rid of the huge volume of karma one has? How can one get rid of one's attachments and elevate one's xinxing and move toward becoming a divine being?

Cultivation of one's mind is often very painful. In fact if one tries too hard to achieve something, one will develop an attachment. Depending on how you look at it, cultivation can be either difficult or easy. The difficult part is to be able to jump out of the fame, interest and qing in this worldly society. One needs to continuously get rid of one's attachments rather than holding on to them. On the other hand, cultivation becomes easy if one can always think of the Fa and have one's every thought based on the Fa at every moment. One can treat the ups and downs in one's life with a calm and peaceful mind. One does not panic when faced with difficulties and constantly corrects oneself to restore one's original self, and to get rid of notions and attachments.

Cultivation is very serious. All practitioners form one body and cooperate with each other to do the three things well. We all cultivate in an ordinary society. The existence of some qing among practitioners is natural. When a practitioner is having difficulties supporting himself financially, some other practitioners not worrying too much about money showed their kindness and helped him. Some kept lending him money or even pushed him to accept the money. They forgot that cultivation is not making friends. It is not to make everyone happy. It is not to achieve the principle of equality in society. They forgot what cultivation is.

Everyone's cultivation path is different. Some practitioners are poor, and some are rich. If one uses money or materials to help other practitioners, but does not comply with Fa, the result will only be to strengthen the attachments of those practitioners and end up harming them. A cultivator's goodness is to help others to be and to do good. It is a benevolence that does not contain sentimentality.

Shall we or shall not we help when a fellow practitioner is having difficulties? How to help? To what extent do we help? We need to use the Fa to evaluate and answer these questions. We need to shed our attachments and our qing, and use our benevolence and kindness to evaluate these issues.

Please point out my deficiencies if you see them.

Posting date: 12/22/2006
Original article date: 12/22/2006
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/11/29/143310.html

 Yearly Archive  Printer Version