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Stepping Outside of Conflicts

Aug. 31, 2006 |   By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Recently after I reviewed the latest Fa lecture by Master, I found some attachments and gaps of mine: I didn’t follow the teachings of Master that, "the next person’s things are your things, and your things are his things." ("Teaching the Fa at the Washington D.C. Fa Conference") In "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference," Master said,

"When any conflict arises or anything happens, I’ve told you that not only should the two parties in the conflict look for reasons on their part, even any third party should think about himself---Why are you the one who observed it?"

After I had exchanged understandings of the Fa and shared the experiences of cultivation with my fellow practitioners, and I had studied the Fa persistently, I realized that I should have seriously looked inward.

Two things that I sense strongly are that that I have qing and I have the attachment of being selfish. I will look within myself with regard to qing. My parents both practice Falun Gong. My father is eighty-four years old, and my mother is seventy-eight years old. In my family, there was a succession of conflicts in our daily lives. My father didn’t have the habit of washing his hands before reading Zhuan Falun, and he always folded a page to mark where he was reading. After a long period of time, the book became dirty. Besides that, the position in which he sat when he was sending out righteous thoughts was not correct, and he wasn’t diligent in his cultivation. Each time I saw him, I always had a few words of complaint with strong sentimentality. Therefore, it did not have an effect. Not only did he not correct his old shortcomings, he added some new ones. Then I didn’t realize that it was my own attachments that escalated the conflicts. Even worse, I always looked outward instead of looking inward.

On July 28, 2006, Teacher’s new Fa lecture "Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital" was published. After studying the Fa lecture, I clearly understood the meaning of looking inward. Teacher’s Fa principles touched me completely and woke me up. I now have a further understanding of the meaning of cultivation. As a true cultivator, you can only improve and move up by cultivating your inner self during conflicts. Immediately I jumped outside of the complicated conflict and clearly saw the human notions and attachments that were hidden inside myself, and I really understood Teacher’s Fa lecture. When there is a conflict between two persons, the third person who witnesses it should also look inside himself. My understanding is that whenever I see a conflict happening, it’s time for me to improve my xinxing. I should improve from the conflict and make breakthroughs to higher levels. That is, I should pour out some of the bad things from my "bottle" and the bottle should float up. I should uplift myself as a whole. As cultivators we should step outside of conflicts and transcend ourselves. We should not dig into the conflicts as ordinary people do. Ordinary people’s principles are exactly opposite from the principles of cultivators.

There is another meaning here. When we step outside of the conflicts, we will not cause more pain and harm to the other party, since the conflicts were formed to eliminate our attachments and to use the other party to help us improve ourselves. After you step out of the conflict, you really should thank the other party. Furthermore, give thanks for Teacher’s painstaking arrangement to let us improve as one body. Teacher told us, "...if you can take a step back, you'll see things in a whole new light." (Zhuan Falun). Only if you step back will you see that "After passing the shady willow trees, there will be bright flowers and another village ahead!" (Zhuan Falun) Let’s look inside ourselves during conflicts, harmonize the Fa together, improve as one body and fulfill our sacred missions by saving sentient beings.