By a Falun Dafa Practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) I know female practitioner A, who has recently suffered a lot when she tried to pass the tribulation of lust and desire. Her tribulation manifested in that male practitioner B's appearance was always lingering in her mind.

After fellow practitioners learned about her situation, they shared their understandings about this problem. As a result, practitioner A realized some of her shortcomings and corrected some of her incorrect thoughts and behavior. Her relationship with her husband also improved. However, she still felt that something fundamental had not been discovered since she still experienced very serious mental interference.

Since this cultivation state of practitioner A had lasted for quite a long time, fellow practitioners shared their understandings about the issue. Through this sharing, we have realized that unrecognized warped notions are the fundamental cause that makes the elimination of lust so difficult. The root cause is the deeply rooted warped and degenerate notions that interfere with the practitioner because she has not been aware of and recognized them.

Today we want to write down our understandings of this issue and share them with fellow practitioners. We want to use this to remind practitioner A, practitioners with similar cultivation problems, as well as ourselves, so that we can fundamentally eliminate these degenerate substances, correct our minds, uproot the interference of emotion, lust and desire, thus walking well on the path of Fa-rectification, and saving sentient beings.

Ancient people treated inappropriate relationships between a male and a female, such as adultery, very seriously. The punishment for such relationships was often severe. In mainland China, under the control of the old forces, the evil Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has intentionally deviated and corrupted people's morality. With the rapid down-slide of people's morality, literature, television, and visual arts that are increasingly filled with sexual content, all of this is increasingly getting out of control.

In such an environment, people's minds have constantly been polluted. This is especially true for the younger generations who have grown up in such a terrible environment. Being always in such a society, they cannot even realize how warped and corrupt their minds and moral values have become, not to mention the essential criteria that a human being should meet and the traditional moral values that a human being should have.

After they started cultivating, many practitioners have experienced difficulty in getting rid of the attachment to lust. They have stumbled many times on this issue. Fundamentally speaking, when a practitioner had not studied the Fa well or with a concentrated mind, he or she always stumbled and failed in passing a tribulation. Under such a condition, when a practitioner's main consciousness is not strong, the warped notions that he or she has developed over a long time, as well as the attachments that he or she has not eliminated will be aggravated, enlarged, and strengthened. This is partly due to the arrangements that the old forces have imposed on a practitioner, as well as the evil exploiting the practitioner's gaps and thus causing interference. We have found in our actual cultivation that if we can clearly and rationally recognize these corrupt notions, and then clearly differentiate and dissolve them, it will be easy for us to get rid of the attachments. Evil forces will then find no loopholes to exploit, and the old force arrangements will naturally be negated. Therefore, the bottom line is that these are things we need to cultivate away.

In fact, if after our xinxing has improved and we then reflect on the issue at hand, we will find that the way ancient people viewed a relationship between a male and a female, is the view that today's humans should have as well. An inappropriate relationship between a male and a female can incur great sins; thus the punishment that results from these actions is something that these individuals will suffer according to the principles of karmic retribution. The five thousand years of traditional Chinese culture has been passed down to people by the gods. The gods use punishments to warn people not to commit such sins, so as to prevent people from committing even bigger sins and thus being ultimately destroyed. Through these punishments, the individuals who have sinned can also repay and eliminate some of their sins.

Traditional Chinese culture has stipulated many standards, such as not looking at, listening and thinking what is contrary to moral ways of conduct. A married couple should be loyal to each other and stay together for a lifetime. In history, there were many virtuous officials and worthy gentlemen who "never did forsake a wife who had shared a life of poverty with them." Ancient people said that "heaven and earth knows everyone's thoughts" and that one needs to be "cautious even when being alone." These are the moral standards that the Gods have stipulated for men. If one follows these standards, one will benefit. Only modern people, with their degenerated notions want to indulge into their desires and consider these standards restrictive and troublesome.

We feel that the aforementioned practitioner A, if she wants to eliminate those wicked thoughts, first needs to correct her notions and realize the seriousness of this matter. We should not use the excuse that we have not had any actual sexual contact. First, being a Dafa practitioner, one should cultivate each and every thought. A Dafa cultivator has to start by being a good person; with a mind full of wicked thoughts, he or she will not even be a good person, then how can he or she be a cultivator? On the other hand, from the perspective of ordinary people's realm, if one person has wicked thoughts toward a third person and dislikes his or her spouse because of financial or appearance reasons, this person is in the eyes of upright people not pure and loyal. Furthermore, from the perspective of high realms, this is the same as "betrayal"? It is "betrayal" because this person has already committed "adultery" in his or her mind. There was a story about a couple who are Dafa practitioners. The wife once left home on business and the husband dreamed that his wife had betrayed him. After his wife returned, the couple talked about the dream. It turned out that his wife indeed had had some incorrect thoughts toward another man. As a matter of fact, she just had generated some so-called thoughts of "feeling good about him," "having sympathy for him," and similar things. At that time, she did not feel that this was serious. But in the eyes of the enlightened beings, this is serious, as the requirement for Dafa disciples in cultivation is serious.

Ever since a remote age, the old forces have imposed and arranged many attachments for Dafa practitioners. By letting practitioners hold on to these attachments in their many lifetimes, the old forces made practitioners develop various, hard-to-recognize human notions. The old forces acted this way so as to ultimately control the practitioners by exploiting their "shortcomings" and interfere with the Fa-rectification. For example, the old forces may have arranged that a specific practitioner likes to read romantic novels or stories, letting the practitioner often fantasize of a handsome, rich, and charming princess, and further letting the practitioner long for this kind of "enjoyment" and "beauty" in the human world. So the old forces have arranged that the practitioner's mind will be filled with these kinds of things.

The cultivation path in the Fa-rectification is full of hardships. Under the high pressure that exists in mainland China, many Dafa practitioners have tried very hard in their Fa-validation work and have endured a lot of pressure. Because they are still human beings who are cultivating, and because the process of gradually getting rid of their human mentality, in this most filthy and degenerate human world, where demons of lust and rotten ghosts are everywhere, if they do not study the Fa well, those attachments will interfere. Under the pressure or amidst the sufferings, one would want to dodge the tribulations and use human ways to "solve" the problems. So at these times, if a person of the opposite sex comes into a practitioner's life, the practitioner may "develop some good feelings" toward this person during the process when they work together or interact with each other. This can happen because those warped notions still exist in the practitioner's mind, and the other person may have satisfied some of this practitioner's fantasy. The practitioner and the person may thus develop some common interests, and gradually generate some feelings toward each other. By staying and working with that person, he or she may feel a sense of relieve in his or her stresses. The practitioner may then develop some expectation and hope toward that person and slowly the practitioner can no longer sever his or her feelings toward that person. Therefore, he or she cannot stop thinking about that person. Because of the lack of guidance of correct moral values, this practitioner may still feel that all these things are normal.

People who are close to the practitioner will then notice that this practitioner and the other person do not mind minor details and become increasingly casual in their words and behaviors. When fellow practitioners then mention this situation to the practitioner, the practitioner may feel offended because he or she may still feel that they are "pure" in their relationship; this is because the practitioner is using the degenerated human moral values to measure him or herself. By considering it "pure," the practitioner is deceiving him or herself; otherwise, why can't the practitioner sever his or her feelings toward that person? In another dimension, many dirty and warped things may have already attached themselves to the practitioner's body, which then reflects in this human world as many problems on that practitioner's body.

This is dangerous! It is really dangerous! Because the evil is trying to destroy you. It is your warped notions, which have not been removed, that are deceiving you and making you consider it as a trivial matter and you may feel that the others are trying to make a big deal out of it. Over several years, there have been many such tragic "examples" in various regions.

In the maze in the human world, our naked eyes have created false impressions for us. Some individuals may not have charming appearances, neither do they have good clothes, but they are kind and their true lives are pure and wonderful. On the other hand, some people wear good clothes and appear handsome, but their true lives are dirty and degenerate, and are wrapped by the black substance, and some of them are even demons, foxes, weasels, snakes, and ghosts. Therefore, the "good things" that we see with our naked eyes are not necessarily really good. When we are pursuing the vain glories in the human world, it is because we have not seen through the false manifestations in this world and because we are trapped in human emotions but we still do not want to see through this emotion. Therefore, we have mistakenly considered the dirty things in the Three Realms, which are what we should get rid of, as good things, because at those times, what our naked eyes have seen and what our flesh body has felt are indeed the concrete "joy" and "goodness."

We have seen that the practitioners who are amidst such a tribulation are not clearheaded, and most of them cannot accept other's words and advices that caution them. It is the goal of the old forces that are sabotaging people. We should have great compassion when helping these practitioners. We should send forth righteous thoughts for them and share our understandings from the Fa with them, so as to let them change and realize the danger and seriousness of the problem; in this way, we help them to eliminate the attachment more quickly. Only by becoming rational can the practitioners walk through the tribulation and cause fewer damage to the one body of Dafa practitioners.

On the Minghui website there is a column called "Culture Imparted by Gods." All of these articles represent various aspects of the traditional Chinese culture, which are what humans should live by. This culture can correct the warped notions which we have formed over the many years living in the evil party's society. Reading more of these articles will be helpful to our understanding, recognizing, and eliminating degenerate notions.

September 24, 2007