One Needs to Purify Oneself When Slacking Off

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) I have recently slacked off in cultivation and felt awful about it. Looking inside, I knew that I had many attachments to get rid of, but I didn't know where to start. Today I read an article on the Minghui (Chinese version of Clearwisdom) website about family, marriage, and getting rid of desires. It made me realize the reasons for my slacking off: my big attachment to emotions and my fundamental attachment to so-called happiness in the human world.

The fellow practitioner's article helped me zero in on my faults and helped me find them. My husband is nine years older than I. I always thought he should take me seriously, accommodate my opinions, and care for me. But three years after we were married, he had an affair and almost destroyed our family. I was stricken so badly that life became meaningless. Looking for a way out and to set myself free, I started practicing Falun Gong with my mother-in-law and found that the practice could help me take emotions lightly. I began cultivation with this motive, which I realize today was incorrect and selfish.

The practitioner's article, "Looking at Marriage from the Perspective of Divine Beings," (http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2007/8/6/88367.html) inspired me tremendously. I realized that, as a practitioner walking toward the divine, one should follow the way gods have arranged life and marriage instead of taking emotions so seriously, like today's aberrant ways of thinking. I always wanted my husband's caresses. While he didn't hug me, I was unhappy and even resented him. Now I feel so ashamed to be unable to let go of emotions after several years of cultivation. As I understand it now, the harder it became for me to purge my emotions, the more the old forces magnified my emotions and desires, aiming to ruin me. Besides, of course, one cannot do the three things well when overwhelmed with emotions.

Realizing the severity of my attachments I asked myself, "Why did I come to this world? For emotions? Then I can only be a human being. Now I am a practitioner, and I must follow Master's words." Master said,

"Cultivation practice must take place through tribulations so as to test whether you can part with and care less about different kinds of human sentimentality and desires. If you are attached to these things, you will not succeed in cultivation." (Zhuan Falun, Lecture Four, 2000 translation version)

Only when a practitioner can take all the emotions in the world lightly can he/she ascend from this world toward godhood.

Only the Fa can help a practitioner remove human thoughts and attachments. In the past, when I tried to memorize the article "True Cultivation" in Essentials for Further Advancement, memorizing the sentence "Whether you can let go of ordinary human attachments is a fatal test on your way to becoming a truly extraordinary being" was always difficult. Later on I understood the reason: my mind was not determined enough to get rid of all my attachments. When I told myself from the bottom of my heart that I would definitely let go of all of them, I could immediately memorize the entire article. I clearly felt that many bad substances were taken away from me and I became purer and could do things that a Dafa disciple is supposed to do better.

This concludes my limited understandings. Please point out anything improper.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/10/7/187218.html

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