By Qingfeng

(Clearwisdom.net) Happiness is something that everyone pursues and aspires to achieve. For most people, happiness represents contentment and the fulfillment of personal goals and interests, which they achieve through great efforts or even unscrupulous means. However, such happiness is temporary and elusive. Some people feel happy when they achieve fame or some form of personal gain. In reality, genuine happiness does not exist in the secular world.

In a casual conversation with a fellow practitioner, we talked about such attachments. This practitioner is from a rural village. As we know, farming in a rural village is very hard work. It is only in winter that they have any free time. In the busy season, this practitioner took the time to finish all of his family's farm chores. He then went to work as a laborer. He spent all his income from his labor on saving sentient beings. He made his money doing hard work in the scorching sun day after day and year after year. He also has a family and children. I was deeply impressed by his work ethic and his painstaking efforts.

He mentioned all this matter-of-factly, and I was moved to tears by the selflessness and compassion that he had for sentient beings. It would not have done to praise the greatness of this practitioner overtly, but through him I saw my own selfishness and greed, and how far behind this practitioner I am. At the last stage of saving sentient beings, we are their only hope of being saved. However, I am still too lax in this great undertaking, anticipating a good life and wanting a better life in normal society. I dress up to look my best, decorate my house, and long for a good life in the future. With such selfishness, how can I abandon my attachments calmly and have my heart be unaffected?

"Sacrifice is evidenced by one's being detached from ordinary human attachments. If a person can indeed calmly abandon everything with his heart being unaffected, he is actually at that level already." (Non-Omission, Essentials for Further Advancement)

Divine beings are observing every single thought we have and every deed we do. As a Dafa practitioner in the Fa rectification period, we should control our every thought so that we leave no regrets in our cultivation.

Posting date: 7/22/2008
Original article date: 7/22/2008
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://minghui.cc/mh/articles/2008/7/7/181599.html

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