My Child Reflects My Cultivation State

By a Falun Dafa practitioner from China

(Clearwisdom.net) My son is almost 5 years old and has been studying Dafa for more than two years. He can recite most poems in Hong Yin and Hong Yin Vol. II. Every day he practices the "Falun Standing Stance", "Coursing Between the Two Poles", reads a paragraph of Zhuan Falun, and recites two poems from Hong Yin. However, sometimes he behaves quite badly when he is among everyday people. When I look inside myself, I found I have all the problems that my son has, although they are more hidden. I have classified them as follows:

1. Bad temper. Sometimes when something is going against his will, my son will make fists and scream loudly. Looking at myself, at work I am always able to think of others first, but at home I often emphasize myself. For housework or work related to validating the Fa, if my wife does not follow my way, I will get angry. Though sometimes I do not say anything, it gets stuck in my mind for quite some time. When my son gets angry, sometimes I cannot control myself well and yell at him. Those times I do not look like a practitioner.

2. Likes to hear praise. My son always get praised by other people and it makes him very happy. But when people criticizes him in any way, he immediately gets unhappy and ignores that person. A child's behavior really can reflect that of the adult! Looking at myself, although I act very modestly among everyday people, often I will think about the complimentary words others have said to me.

3. Strong mentality of showing off and the attachment to competitiveness. My son really likes to show off. He frequently says that he is the best and that he does things the best. Looking at myself, whenever there is something unique I have done at work, I will start to consider myself as different from others. When other people say bad things about me, I will start to argue and not able to face my shortcomings calmly.

4. Taking Fa-study and doing exercises as tasks. When my son does the second exercise, he always asks me whether the time is up yet. When he does other moving exercises he often asks me how many times he has done them. Looking at myself, when I try to memorize the Fa and encounter a long paragraph that I have trouble with, after a while, I will start to get impatient and start to speak faster and faster. When I get impatient, aren't I taking Fa-study as a task? Also, I have trouble getting up every morning to do the exercises at the set times with practitioners around the world.

5. Not cultivating diligently. Before Fa-study, my son always looks at Master's photo, puts his palms together and says something. What he says is basically, "Master, I will study the Fa earnestly and cultivate myself well next time. I promise." Once I asked him, "Why do you always say 'next time'? Why not earnestly study the Fa and do the exercises now? Are you trying to slack off?" My son looked at me and laughed, "Yeah, I can only be diligent the next time!" My son's words really puzzled me and I could not figure out the reason for a long time. One day, I looked at myself and suddenly enlightened to it. I am never diligent enough in doing the three things, and cannot reach Dafa's requirements. I always say to Master that I will do better next time, and next time after that. But when it is time to break through, I still cannot do it; the human mentalities and human desires that I should have extinguished are still not extinguished. Every day, when I open the book I am afraid of looking at Master's photo. I feel too ashamed!

There is another important reason behind my son's bad behavior: I did not treat him as a young practitioner. I did not share with him about xinxing and tell him how to cultivate himself. All I was doing was just teaching him to study the Fa and do the exercises. When I realized this, I started treating him as a young practitioner. Whenever there was a problem, I would look at myself first, "Dad did not do well - I yelled at you. Dad will do better next time." My son would say quite seriously, "All right, as long as you correct yourself, it is ok, no problem."

"But just now you also got angry," I said. "Wasn't that something a young practitioner should not have done?" My son immediately said, "Yes, I will correct myself, too." This way, a "storm" got put off and both of us had our xinxing upgraded. Although many times we still cannot maintain our xinxing and get into arguments, afterwards we can both look within. My son and I

"Study Fa, obtain Fa,
Compare in studying, compare in cultivating,
Examine each and every deed,
Accomplishing is cultivating."

(Solid Cultivation, Hong Yin, Translation Version B).

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/11/19/166838.html

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