Cultivators Should Not Have the Attachment to Saving Themselves First

By a Falun Dafa Practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) In order to avoid persecution, I relocated to a city in the south of China, though I knew there were few practitioners there. My initial thought was to make money to solve my financial difficulties. I encountered many conflicts between my personal life/work and saving people. I suffered persecution as well. Finally I realized that the lack of support in this new environment created many difficulties for my cultivation. I kept retreating back to my hometown and then returning to the southern city. I felt lost until I read an article in Minghui Weekly. I understood from the article that I should do the three things well wherever I am.

I stopped measuring my personal gains or losses with human notions and focused more on saving people. Slowly I improved, but soon I found I had the attachment to saving myself first. This is what I would like to share with fellow practitioners here.

Under normal circumstances when there is no persecution, it is alright for a cultivator to save himself first. That was the practice for cultivators in the past. However, in today's environment, while the persecution continues, I think it is not alright for a Dafa disciple to be attached to the idea of saving himself first. All sentient beings await salvation. We should not delay saving others until after we are saved, and should not view the act of saving people as a way of saving ourselves. We would not be able to catch-up with the Fa-rectification process and effectively save more people if we had such a thought. Of course, a practitioner must cultivate himself well in order to be able to save others, which is a different topic.

Through Fa study, I recognized that the old universe has the attachment to saving the self first; this is the nature of the old universe. Yet such an attachment cannot be brought into the new universe.

The attachment to saving ourselves without changing ourselves is the "root selfishness" of the old universe, and it is the reason the old forces face destruction. We Dafa practitioners must eliminate such root selfishness.

I enlightened that saving the self first is not cultivation. We must obviously cultivate ourselves when encountering conflicts and obstacles, but the purpose of our cultivation is to offer salvation to sentient beings.

Once I eliminated the attachment to saving myself first, I found I could consider others first when encountering problems. I cultivated myself when I was saving others. Yet I found another attachment: In the name of helping fellow practitioners, I was attached to seeing others' mistakes, and always wanted to correct them through orders and coercion. The bottom line was I wanted to cover up my own attachments. This exposed my selfishness, and it stopped me from being able to do everything from the stand point of validating Dafa and saving people.

I finally understood why I always wanted to avoid conflicts and always wanted to change the environment when encountering conflicts and difficulties. For example I kept switching between the northern city and southern city. If all I cared about was saving people and thinking about others, I would walk firmly on my cultivation path; whether I had ideal conditions or whether there were obstacles, nothing could stop me.

Once I realized this, I started to cultivate diligently on the path of saving others. When doing the three things, I am no longer afraid of clarifying the facts face to face any more. I stopped worrying about dangers and the threat of persecution when distributing materials to clarify the facts. My relationships with fellow practitioners turned harmonious. I also got rid of the attachment to results when doing Dafa work. I now focus on saving people rather than wondering when the persecution will be over.

I hereby thank Master for his salvation and the help I received from fellow practitioners. I finally broke through on my cultivation path. As long as we are focused on saving people and validating Dafa, we will help to bring the persecution to an end soon. This is my personal understanding. Please kindly point out any mistakes.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/9/10/162403.html

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