(Clearwisdom.net)
Teacher said in the article "Another Comment on Evaluation Criteria", "Why don't you listen to your Master's words: 'The only criterion for evaluating a student's cultivation is his xinxing'?" (Essentials for Further Advancement) Recently I read a few articles by fellow practitioners and I came to have more understandings on what Teacher said above. I saw the following few cases:
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Some practitioners used "abilities", including what one can see with his or her celestial eye, as the criterion to evaluate other's cultivation. Teacher said, "Supernatural skills are but petty means, the Great Fa must be the basis of everything" ("Seeking the Righteous Fa" from Hong Yin I) Those practitioners had attachments to supernormal abilities and sometimes wanted to show off their own "abilities."
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Some practitioners looked at how seriously other practitioners were persecuted and used that as the criterion to evaluate their cultivation. Some practitioners thought the more serious the suffering, the higher their level. Some of them even considered it to be "credit." Others thought that practitioners who didn't cultivate well would encounter more suffering. Both these opinions went to the extreme, since they looked at the issue from an everyday person's perspective and didn't understand the relationships between Fa-rectification and individual cultivation. Some of them took the tribulations arranged by the old forces as "real tests." Some had an attachment to heroism. Wouldn't it be the same as acknowledging the old forces' persecution when practitioners had these opinions? They didn't realize we should completely deny the old forces. They didn't realize, "The next person's things are your things."(Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference)
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Some practitioners took how much work one did and how much influence one had as the criterion to evaluate their cultivation. They thought the more "big projects" one worked on, and the more influence one had, the higher one's cultivation level. This demonstrates their attachment to "doing things." This is another everyday persons' notion. Without improving one's xinxing, even doing the three things wouldn't qualify us as Falun Dafa practitioners.
When we use everyday people's notions to look at cultivation and the three things that Teacher asked us to do, we will have various kinds of complicated thoughts that deviate from the Fa. We need to look at problems from the perspective of the Fa. We should use our xinxing as the criterion when evaluating our cultivation. We should use practitioners' righteous thoughts to handle issues. This is the true criterion and the standard that we should use to see whether we reach the requirements of "Fa-rectification period Dafa practitioners."