Don’t View "I Like" or "I Dislike" as Yourself
By a Dafa practitioner in Taiwan
(Clearwisdom.net) I have read the book Stories of Reincarnation, and I have some thoughts since reading about the issue of helping people to recall their feelings of gratitude or resentment in their previous lives through hypnosis.
In one story there is someone who has been very nice to her older sister all her life in this lifetime, and she has given a lot to her sister. However, her sister has treated her very badly, and she felt very upset about this. After she went into the hypnotic state, she became aware that she had killed her sister in a previous lifetime, and that she had to pay for this debt in this lifetime. After reading this story, I realized that my attachment to being nice to so and so, or to someone not being nice to me, is controlled by principles at higher levels. Moreover, the real reason behind such situations is that you need to pay back your debts. However, because we are in the middle of it, we sometimes feel as if it is we, ourselves, who are in control of it.
I also read about a hypnotic experiment on the internet. The hypnotist instructed people who were in a hypnotic state, "When you wake up and see me touching my nose, you should go and open the window." When the person woke up and saw the hypnotist touching his nose, he would open the window. Because they were not aware that they were in a hypnotic state when given this instruction, when asked why they went to open the window, they gave such reasons as: "because it’s too hot" or "because the air is stuffy" and so on.
Master said: "And where do people’s thoughts really come from? Scientists have now realized that man’s brain isn’t really where his thoughts originate. So where do people’s thoughts come from? Everybody thinks they come from what they’ve learned in the ordinary society and from their own reasoning. But that’s not how it works. When an everyday person has a thought about doing something, his brain actually hasn’t gone through some long process of reflection. A lot of things just instantly pop up, and a lot of words just roll right out off the tongue. So then just where exactly do those thoughts come from? We cultivators all know that there are actually connections between a person’s mind and factors in a lot of different dimensions, and when it comes to major things, man is just doing things under the control of other beings. He’s just acting things out here in the human world, that’s all. The surface of the human body, the postnatally formed body, is really nothing." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.") Most people are indeed very weak; they have no idea where their thoughts come from. Still, they will find reasons to justify their thoughts and actions. No wonder it is so easy for things in other dimensions to control humans. It is actually rather sad that humans are like this. If we cultivators think that sentiments such as "enjoy doing something" or "disliking doing something" are our own, and if we try to safeguard them with perfect assurance, then we will indeed find it hard to jump out of such sentiments.
I now understand that to "soak in sentiments" is effectively no different than losing oneself. Sentiment is used to control everyday people. Then, as cultivators, how do we know that when we are doing things we are not being controlled by sentiment? The only way is to study the Fa more often. The Fa is the only way to break through the maze in this dimension. Moreover, if we base every single thought of ours on the Fa when looking at things, we shall naturally be able to see clearly their nature with a pure mind and without any notions. As cultivators, we must show compassion to everyone, and the compassion we have only emerges after we let go of sentiment. Our compassion is not controlled by our sentiments of like or dislike, which are based on karmic sentiments of gratitude or resentment that have accumulated in history. This is the only way we can truly bring a benevolent solution to everything. "See the human world with eyes of compassion,
Then are you freed from the spell of delusion."
("Success at Consummation" in Hong Yin) The conflicts between some practitioners also have historical causes as well as superficial reasons behind them, and they are brought out in the open so that we can let go of the attachments yet to be relinquished in our cultivation. The compassion we have cultivated in Dafa is the only solution to resolving all conflicts. Now that we are in the last act on the historical stage, all the sentiments of gratitude or resentment will also be brought to an end. If we can all open our hearts to each other and have heart-to-heart talks with those practitioners with whom we have conflicts, then wouldn’t it be a big show of benevolent reconciliation?
In fact, from another perspective, our understanding improves along with our cultivation; that is, we do things according to our understanding at our own level. Only by getting rid of the post-natal contamination we have at low levels, breaking through the conceptual sentiments of "I like" or "I dislike" at various levels, and reaching a rational understanding at the level we have ascended to, are we able to have the wisdom to ascend further.
Chinese version available at
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/7/4/132107.html
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