Be Demanding of Oneself and Tolerant of Others By a practitioner in China
(Clearwisdom.net) Do not act too hastily when you see a fellow practitioner's attachments or
deficiencies. You should only give your advice after you have purified yourself.
You need to remind him with good intentions in your heart and help him with
sincerity. Try as much as you can to use your true nature that you have
cultivated in the Fa and use your heart to communicate with him. Do not point
fingers and do not carry pre-conceived notions. Quite often words spoken without
deliberation tend to contain attachments or prejudices that are yet to be
cultivated away. This bad content will affect communications and cause your
message to be unacceptable to others, or even generate resentment in others.
Things will not go the way you intended them to go, and it can cause many
unnecessary misunderstandings and conflicts. When helping people, do not take a superior stance. Do not feel that you are
doing something extra or handing out something. Do not have any thought of
seeking things, because you should not forget that the process of helping others
is a process of cultivating and purifying oneself. As a matter of fact it is
this process that practitioners use to help each other and elevate ourselves
together. When a fellow practitioner points out your attachments or deficiencies, do
not deny them right away, or try to evade or cover them up, or to find excuses
for them. Sometimes one can sense that one is trying to cover them up, but even
he himself is deceived by his own excuses, while the attachments that need to be
eliminated are left alone. One needs to deliberate quietly to see if one's
thoughts and conduct indeed have some problems. Do they contain any
hard-to-detect but impure motives? If the answer is yes, do not run from them
and let them slip away. You need to face them squarely. Look deeper into your
heart to find their roots. You have to catch them and hold them tight. Try to
find out what it is that is causing the problems. When you find it, you need to
root it out and get rid of it without hesitation. If the answer is no, then do
not do too much explanation to show your innocence. When a fellow practitioner points out our attachments or deficiencies,
sometimes he may carry certain emotions or prejudices of his own, since he may
have some things that are yet to be cultivated away. We cannot use his bad
attitude or tone of voice as an excuse to reject his criticism, paying attention
to "cultivating" him but not ourselves. Remember that Master has said
that we need to "look inward unconditionally," no matter how bad his
manner is or how deep his misunderstandings toward us are. One should absolutely not tolerate any attachment or deficiency of one's own.
Toward other people's attachments or deficiencies, one should be as tolerant as
possible and point them out with good intentions. Do not be too attached to other people's attachments. Do think often of how
to get rid of your own attachments. Do not constantly try to change others. Do
think often how to change yourself. Reviewing Master's article "Pacify the External by Cultivating the
Internal" from Essentials for Further Advancement from time to time
may help. Posting date: 7/22/2003 |