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Get Rid of Fundamental Attachments, Do Not Seek Shelter and Protection
(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. |