(Clearwisdom.net)

There is a plant called "Tusizi" in Chinese. The botanical name is "Cuscuta chinensis." It survives by clinging to other plants and drawing nutrition from them. Tusizi bears tiny whitish yellow flowers. It can cause the host plant it depends on to wither, too. Recalling my early twenties, I once thought to myself - wouldn't it be wonderful if I could live a quiet and peaceful life in this world, and be protected and sheltered like the weak little Tusizi, relying on a host plant for food? However, life is not always what one expects it to be. Time and again I was hurt until I started taking up cultivation practice.

In the early days of my cultivation practice, I often thought that I was very diligent. Whenever I came across a problem, I always looked into myself to find out where I'd gone wrong. When the Fa-rectification period came, I thought that I had followed the Fa accordingly. However, what seemed minor at the time started to become an issue. I was continually troubled by my own selfish thoughts, which were open for demons to attack. Instead of improving on my understanding of the Fa, I was looking for superficial explanations. That put me in a miserable state. I was perplexed and perturbed by many of the recent cases of practitioners being apprehended, practitioners falling sick, their family members falling sick, and so on. From what had happened, I saw what we had been lacking--group effort and earnest cultivation practice. As for myself, I was still vague on the proper way to cultivate. I had been trying to find faults with others all along and was not looking at things from the perspective of the Fa. I was attached to my own ego. I hadn't realized that the bad habits acquired from years of living among everyday people had seriously affected my understanding of Fa and Fa-validation work as well.

I took up Falun Dafa because I was seeking shelter and protection from Teacher, as I was not able to protect myself. Teacher once said, "My Fashen will protect you until you can protect yourself." So, I had been thinking, "How will I protect myself?" All along, I had been using the human mentality to evaluate and handle problems.

One day, though, a few plainclothes police barged into our work place to arrest people. At that split second, I was not weak any more-- I was full of courage and righteousness, which I felt, had been boxed up for too long.

Picking up the courage I questioned the officer, "Am I a Chinese citizen?"

"Yes, you are," he answered.

"Do I have the freedom to select my faith?" I continued.

"Yes you have," he responded.

"Then, what are you people doing here? Your people have brought us enough trouble -- to our family, now to our work units and to our neighbors." The officer quickly turned around and left, "Keep talking, keep talking..." as they were walking away. On arriving home, my legs were still trembling and my limbs were cold. I quickly hid away all the Dafa books, knowing well that they would come back. I was a nervous wreck.

At that time, two practitioners that I hadn't seen for a long time came in. After a brief sharing on what had just happened, we concluded that "Teacher is with us, we have the Fa to follow, we can negate everything done by the demons." After my mind had settled down, I found my omissions: I did not study the Fa well enough, and we lacked coordination among ourselves.

Teacher's recent article pointed out my omission clearly -

"In any circumstances, as long as the cultivator's righteous thoughts are strong, he can gain improvement, guidance, and assistance from it, thereby strengthening his righteous thoughts and helping him to ward off interference from whatever human tactics or evil temptations might come his way." (Teaching the Fa at the 2005 Canada Fa Conference )

It further strengthens my understanding of the principle "Cultivation depends on the individual himself while gong is up to the master." (Zhuan Falun)

So, as long as we act according to the Fa and our main consciousness is strong, the righteous thoughts will take effect. So, that is cultivation. I have everything already. I am not missing out on anything and do not have to pursue the peaceful and quiet life.

This brought me to understand more about another principle,

"You know what? Just on the one issue of cultivation alone it's so complex at the cosmos's lower levels. But it becomes simple at higher levels, where there's no longer any concept of cultivation but only the concept of karma elimination. At levels higher up, all troubles are to pave the way for ascending to Heaven. And at even higher levels, concepts like eliminating karma, enduring hardships, and cultivation no longer exist, and it's just a choice! This is the principle at high levels of the cosmos: you think someone is good enough, so you choose him--that's the principle. "Cultivation? We didn't arrange cultivation for him. What's cultivation? We just want to cleanse it, cleanse it step by step, all the way up. Cleanse it--it's as simple as that!" Yet when manifest at different levels, it becomes paving the way, having troubles, enduring hardships, eliminating karma, cultivating, and so on, cultivating one way, practicing another way...

("Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference")

Arriving now at this stage of cultivation, all the evil spirits and my preconceived notions don't mean anything to me. True enough, all of these nonsensical decaying things will simply be disintegrated by our righteous thoughts. At this time, the end of the Fa-rectification, my subconscious idea of "Tusizi" should be thoroughly removed. Sentient beings are waiting us to be saved; I exist for them. How can I be like the "Tusizi," living as a parasite on another?

What is required of me now is to be more diligent. The way to achieve this is to step up my Fa study, remove all obstacles and follow Teacher closely. I must not let down my Teacher and the sentient beings waiting for me. I must make full use of this fleeting moment while the opportunity still exists, and do well the three things.

Please point out anything incorrect.

Posting date: 3/17/2006
Original article date: 3/17/2006
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/2/27/121689.html

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