My Understanding of Problems Encountered in Group Study

By a practitioner from Taiwan

(Clearwisdom.net)

During our group study, some fellow practitioners would read the Fa very fast while others couldn't keep up with them. If we had been considerate of each other and cooperated with each other, it shouldn't have been a problem at all, but when everyone stuck to their own style of doing things, we had omissions and separations among practitioners.

A few of our fellow practitioners went to Hong Kong a few times and found that practitioners there read Dafa books very fast. They decided they should do the same. During our group study, they began to read the Fa very fast. Several of us talked to them and asked them to slow down. However, they asked us to speed up to catch up with them. We didn't reach any agreement after a few discussions. After I came home, I decided to practice increasing my speed, but I gave up after a few tries, since I realized that when studying the Fa, we should put our hearts into it instead of paying so much attention to speed.

Eventually, our group study couldn't continue. The superficial reason was that we didn't have the space any more. However, I know the true reason was that the old forces had taken advantage of us, but the other practitioners didn't want to talk about this topic any more and said they would simply stick to their way of studying the Fa. There was no more sharing on this topic. After that, I couldn't calm down and during my Fa study, I kept wondering why, as fellow practitioners, we couldn't communicate well with each other, why we couldn't cooperate with each other, and why we paid so much attention to the speed of reading Dafa books.

One day while sending forth righteous thoughts, I couldn't bear the interference from my thought karma any more. I came to realize that I needed to completely drop my own opinion regarding this issue, since everyone has things to become enlightened to and we can't force our opinions on others. Each and every word and action of ours should be used to validate the Fa instead of ourselves. When validating the Fa, we might sometimes walk down a wrong path to validate ourselves. Therefore, we need to constantly look inside to see whether our words and actions have deviated from our original thoughts of safeguarding the Fa. Sometimes, we our understandings stray from the Fa yet we felt we were still on the Fa. For example, my initial thoughts were very much for the group study, but later on, when other practitioners got attached to their ideas, I became attached to their attachments and I grew anxious. I tried to prove that my thoughts were right and that I was on the Fa. At that point, my validating the Fa changed to validating myself and I started to deviate from the Fa.

When I saw my problems, I no longer felt anxious. Although our group study has stopped, I am no longer attached to other practitioners' attachments. I feel the true gain is in giving up rather than in gaining validation. When we cannot get over something and feel hurt, very often we are able to improve ourselves if we can give up something. On my cultivation path, I have experienced many tests like this. Therefore, I'd like to share my understandings with you. Please correct me if anything I said is incorrect.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/3/24/123494.html

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