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Treat Every Sentient Being with a Compassionate Heart
(Clearwisdom.net) In July 2000, my husband and I were arrested and
detained for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. While I was in
detention, my husband's whole family became a mess. My husband's brother and his
wife, and my husband's sister all put the blame on me, claiming I was the one
who had driven their family to destruction. They even badmouthed me in front of
my father. They said they didn't believe I would be released, and if I did get
released they would spit on me upon my return. My father couldn't put up with all this so he started a fight with them. His
sister-in-law later even went to the police department to report me, claiming I
had been keeping constant contact with other Falun Gong practitioners and hoping
the authorities would increase my sentence. At that time, my son was only a fourth grader and couldn't take care of
himself yet. Both of my parents-in-law used to practice Falun Gong, but they
didn't dare to keep my son with them. Nobody else in the family wanted to help
care for my son either. In the end it was my father that took my son with him
and looked after him. I didn't learn about these circumstances until I was released on medical
parole from the labor camp in 2001. My sister and my son told me about all of
it. I was extremely pained after hearing what they told me and my heart was
broken. I had treated my husband's family very well. Why had they treated me and
my son this way when I was in difficulty? I started to hate them, and I never
wanted to see them again. Compassionate Teacher saw my hatred and gave me some hints in a dream. I was
able to see my predestined relationship with people in my husband's family.
After waking up from my dream, I felt very ashamed of myself. As a veteran
practitioner who obtained the Fa in 1997, I still had such poor xinxing.
Teacher said in Zhuan Falun, "In cultivation, when you're really having trouble with somebody, or
when other people treat you badly, it could be one of two scenarios. One is that
you might have mistreated them in your previous life. You feel wronged, 'Why are
they treating me like that?' Well, why did you treat them like that before? You
say, 'I don't know anything about back then. This lifetime has nothing to do
with that lifetime.' But it doesn't work like that. There's another scenario.
When you're clashing with somebody, there's the issue of transforming karma
involved, so when we're handling each of them we should be very forgiving, and
we shouldn't act like ordinary people. At work there's interaction with other
people, and the same goes for other environments where you do work or if you're
self-employed. It's impossible not to have any contact with the outside world--at
a minimum you interact with your neighbors." I came to realize that I must remove my hatred and treat my husband's family
with kindness since they are also sentient beings waiting to be saved. With such
thoughts, I began to have a better relationship with my husband's family.
Through truth-clarification, some of them have quit the CCP and its
affiliated organizations and my father-in-law has resumed cultivation. Oftentimes we feel we already understand the Fa principles. But in our
cultivation, we still tend to unknowingly judge everything with our human
notions and don't use the Fa principles to guide us to look inward and rectify
ourselves. I wrote this article hoping to help fellow practitioners realize the issue I
just raised. We should share experiences and elevate together. |