Maintain Xinxing to Substantiate Buddha Nature

By a Dafa practitioner in the USA

(Clearwisdom.net) I would like to share some of my experiences in recent Fa-study and cultivation. Please kindly point out anything improper.

The Fa-rectification has progressed to date, and every Dafa disciple can feel that it has come to the very last stage. We understand from the Fa that the closer we are to the end the more we need to pay attention to cooperation and coordination as one body, and we must not leave any loopholes for the evil to take advantage of. How do we achieve this? I realize that one of the aspects is that we must maintain our xinxing. Often, practitioners find it hard to get along harmoniously. There are a lot of reasons for this. I believe that the following are the main reasons for the discord: mistrust and dislike.

1. Mistrust

The main reason for mistrust, to my understanding, is that we have each failed to maintain our xinxing and have indulged our demon nature. From the Fa we understand that humans have both Buddha nature and demon nature. We are human beings who have taken up the path of cultivation, which requires us to constantly get rid of our demon nature and to substantiate our Buddha nature. Therefore in the course of our cultivation, there are bound to be many occasions when our demon nature would manifest. As for damage done to us as one body, I feel the most important reason is that we tend to unwittingly infer, assume and make conclusions through our own judgment.

From the Fa we have learned that the human mind has been tainted with much contamination and has deviated from the universal law, and, therefore, when we think about things with demon nature, we have already deviated from the Fa. Most importantly, we are not aware of this at all, and very often we even think we are in the Fa, when in fact we are assisting the old forces in damaging the Fa. What shows on the surface is mutual suspicion and talking behind each other's back. As a result, plans for promoting the Fa take a long time to surface, with much time and energy wasted. And at the same time it has given rise to negative energy, which in turn has canceled out the energy from our righteous thoughts. This is what makes us the saddest.

How can we do better? The answer is to uphold and maintain our xinxing. No matter what kind of people or situations we face, we must at all times remind ourselves to hold onto our righteous thoughts--the righteous thoughts of Dafa disciples. We must suppress our inclination to guess, to infer and to imagine with our own notions. We need to think: what would I do in such a situation if I were a Buddha. In fact, when our righteous thoughts are strong, we will unconditionally look within ourselves when conflicts arise. The more we point fingers at others, the more problems we have. Furthermore, the demon nature will expand, harming both ourselves and others. More importantly, it will affect us as one body. Therefore, as long we can hold onto our xinxing, we will be able to suppress the demon nature.

2. Dislike

Many practitioners, when seeing this word, would say they are not like this, because all this is qing [emotion or sentimentality]. However, when we interact with fellow practitioners, we have already unwittingly done some information processing: this practitioner gets on well with me, and we have a lot in common in our views; I cannot accept what that practitioner is doing; how come this practitioner behaves this way; how can that practitioner be like that ... ...; when we meet next time, we would inquire how come so and so did not come, and may feel a bit lost; or how come that practitioner has come, his ideas are different from mine, etc. Right now, I think very few practitioner would say these things in the open, but such thoughts are turning around in their mind, intentionally or unintentionally causing gaps between practitioners. I'm writing this because I know that every Dafa disciple knows that this should not happen among Dafa disciples. This is qing, and as Dafa disciples, we must treat this issue seriously. We must hold onto our xinxing and not indulge our demon nature and allow our qing to affect us as one body.

I realize that my understanding on this issue is very limited and there is much more I cannot express in words. What I have written here only serves as reference and I hope it can offer a few ideas to solicit other practitioners' deeper understandings.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/1/11/169892.html

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