Western Practitioner: An Understanding of "Kindly Pointing Out"

By a practitioner in The Netherlands

(Clearwisdom.net) Lately a fellow practitioner helped me to read a poem from Hong Yin in Chinese. At the time I was a bit on edge because there were many practitioners gathered and I felt we didn't make the best use of the opportunities this presented. I realized I was feeling slightly stressed so I looked inward and decided I should best study the Fa more. Because I just started reading The Grand Verses and also wanted to learn Chinese, I asked someone to help me read the poem in Chinese, thereby being able to study the Fa and to learn Chinese in one go.

After explaining the meaning of every word and practicing with the intonations of each word and sentence with me, this fellow practitioner smiled at me, which made me more calm. She said with a smile, "I discovered a little secret you have." This made me curious and I asked her what the secret was. She simply said something like, "When you study Chinese your one foot is pointing like this and the foot looks tense."

Then we separated. A few days later I told my husband (also a practitioner) about how she helped me with the poem and how she explained the meaning of the words very patiently. I also mentioned the "little secret." Then we started talking about the "little secret."

I discovered in this manner that my motivation to study The Grand Verses in Chinese changed from the original motivation, and I had become a little muddleheaded on this. Originally I wanted to learn Chinese so I could understand the Fa better and I could work better on truth clarification with Chinese practitioners.

Then somehow this original motivation was polluted by my thinking how I could show off to colleagues, my family and friends etc., if I could read or talk a little Chinese.

So I then realized it was this show-off mentality that made me tense.

And then I thought about the extremely kind manner in which this lady pointed this attachment out for me. Instead of questioning me about my tenseness, my motivation for studying The Grand Verses in Chinese or simply telling me that I had a show-off mentality on this issue, she smiled and said, "I discovered a little secret you have, your foot points like this when you learn Chinese and it looks tense." It was said such a kind manner that I only realized at the moment it was something good she said to me and it made me wonder. And it was so kind that only with a little time it helped me realize an important thing: that I should remain clear and follow the Fa in why and how I do everything.

It also made me realize that helping someone in cultivation can be done so kindly. With a kind heart and kind words, this for me was the first time I got a sense of "kindly pointing out."

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