By a practitioner from Taiwan

(Clearwisdom.net) At the initial stage of my cultivation, I encountered many tribulations with my husband. He now respects my beliefs, perhaps because I have worked through my karmic relationship with him.

The people who test me now are my two children. They often create situations that I am not happy with. When they were little, they were very obedient and would do whatever I told them to. Now they have grown up and have their own opinions and friends. They are less obedient and more self-centered. In addition, after several years of cultivation, they seem to have developed complacency and become numb.

It is very hard for me to accept this situation, but I still looked within to see if I fell short in certain aspects. Sometimes I feel that I did not do anything wrong, and thought that the problem was that they simply did not listen to me. In fact, the problem is because of my sentimental attachment to my children. Isn’t it also sentimentality when I am unhappy about them?

For example, when I saw them not do well in something, I would first feel uncomfortable. Then I wanted to yell at them. They would start talking back, rebutting me and denying that I truly care about them. Because I could not completely let go of sentimentality, my words carried my negative emotion. I was not truly compassionate toward sentient beings, but rather wanted to educate them in the way I thought was the best.

At the very beginning of my cultivation, I wished that my husband could also start practicing and often encouraged him to read Dafa books. He stopped reading Zhuan Falun after he finished reading the first two chapters. He told me that his time for this practice had not come yet. However, I was still hopeful. At that time I also had the selfish thought that if he practiced, he would not interfere with our children and me.

However, it did not work out as I had hoped. My husband did not want to cooperate and caused much interference. One day, I found that I had become less attached to the thought of whether he could be my fellow practitioner or not. Now we do not interfere with each other’s activities. I don’t have sentimentality, but rather compassion towards my husband.

Now when I think back on the conflicts between my children and me, the ultimate reason is that I care too much about my children’s cultivation. I fear that they are not diligent and will fall behind. The more I fear, the more they dislike it and often indulge in TV and computers, which makes me very upset.

Speaking of "unacceptable" things, I need to look within to see if I really tolerate as a cultivator without anger or hatred. Frankly, during the conflicts with my children, I not only did not tolerate, but was also moved by their attachments. Isn’t this because I did not cultivate well? If my heart was not moved, their hearts would not be moved. Because my own field was not pure and righteous, I could not rectify their incorrect states.

Take my husband as an example. During my cultivation, he wanted to stop me from participating in Dafa activities and often got very angry with me. I treated myself as a cultivator and my heart was unmoved when he was angry. He then quickly became calm. Because his act could not move my heart, how much longer could he be angry?

While writing about this, I have come to realize that the reason for the conflicts between my children and me is because I was unable to keep my heart unmoved. I thought that they made me angry. However, it was actually my own heart which moved. The problem is not others' but my own. Most of the time it was because my own deviation was not rectified, therefore it caused the incorrect situation to last. When I could not enlighten to this, it was easy to blame the situation on the external environment or others. It was actually seeking externally.

In addition, my children are also Dafa practitioners. They are cultivating to get rid of their own attachments. How could I focus on their problems? I thought that I was looking out for them, but actually my thoughts revolved around sentimentality, not the true compassion of a cultivator. If I could keep my heart unmoved no matter what kind of situation they are in, then the conflicts would not occur repeatedly.

In my family life, I realize that many things depend on whether my heart is moved or not. In the same way, isn’t everything we encounter in our cultivation targeted at our heart? Our heart determines the result. How can we be confused by the surface? Why can’t we always look within ourselves?

Posting date: 9/6/2006
Original article date: 9/6/2006
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/8/6/134887.html

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