Why We Need to Cultivate Every Thought

By a practitioner from China

(Clearwisdom.net) While reading a fellow practitioners' experience-sharing article, I sobbed several times. Little by little, I started to realize why the NTDTV Chinese Spectacular has surprised the whole world, and has touched so many people's hearts and moved them to tears. It is because the New Year Spectacular is a part of Master's Fa-rectification, and it's not merely a show. I enlightened from this that without Master, no matter how hard we cultivate, we cannot reach consummation, because, "Cultivation depends on one's own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one's master." (Lecture One, Zhuan Falun) Master is doing everything.

I realized why we have to cultivate our every single thought. Actually, it is not that we have come to a stage of cultivating our every single thought, rather, we should cultivate our every single thought at all times. When we started our cultivation, we didn't study the Fa enough, and we were not mature enough in our cultivation, so it was hard for us to differentiate good from bad (impurity) in our each and every thought, and we therefore went through many lessons. However, today, we are basically approaching maturity, and we know how to improve from the Fa's standpoint. We are obtaining the ability to differentiate good from evil in our every thought, and are therefore able to cultivate ourselves in every thought.

Why should we cultivate our each and every thought? Here are three points I understand:

A. Whenever a thought pops up, access its nature, and extinguish it if it is not needed, or not good. As soon as our righteous thoughts emerges, Master takes the bad substances off our bodies. "Cultivation depends on one's own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one's master." Master cannot do anything if you do not have righteous thoughts; you did not have righteous thoughts because you did not cultivate that part.

B. As soon as a bad thought comes up, we should catch it, and get rid of it immediately. When it has just come up, it hasn't had a chance to grow; it cannot control you, and the bad substances have not formed yet. If we notice it and let it be, or even go along with it, then it will grow bigger and bigger, and then control us. Even if it's not too late and you later find it, it will just be harder to get rid of it, because you, after all, let it (the evil thought) lead you. "The farther away from the Dao, the more difficult to return through cultivation." ("Practicing Cultivation After Retirement," Essentials for Further Advancement )

C. Once a a bad thought comes up and you get rid of it, you will feel that righteous thoughts have led you and your actions. You will feel that your mind is clear and open, and everything before you will be clear and obvious. What you should do, what you shouldn't do--everything will be clearly displayed in front of you. These are righteous actions under righteous thoughts. If you fail to distinguish the thought as good or bad, and react by following your human thoughts, then your mind will be occupied by bad thoughts. You will have troubles, you will do things incorrectly, and you will follow the route that the old forces arranged for you.

Only when we cultivate our each and every thought can we follow the right path steadily. We are gods if our every thought is righteous. We are human even if we only have one single unrighteous thought. So many fellow practitioners have been imprisoned just because of one thought. So many fellow practitioners have turned danger into safety with a single righteous thought. The difference in a single thought can result in differences between heaven and earth.

Fellow practitioners, let us focus on our each and every thought, and eliminate those demonic ones with righteous thoughts, and we will definitely be able to reach consummation since we have our almighty Master behind us all the time.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/4/15/152743.html

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