(Clearwisdom.net) As practitioners, first of all, we need to conform to righteous principles. Many practitioners and I have the following problem. We pay attention to eliminating attachments to fame, personal gain, and affection, and we normally do well at this. But we have problems with small details in everyday life, and these problems stand out. Evil forces sometimes interfere with our practice because of the gaps in our cultivation that these small omissions create.
Respecting Teacher and the Fa
If we truly respected Teacher and Dafa, we would not randomly place Dafa books somewhere, we would insist on doing the exercises every morning, regularly study the Fa, send forth righteous thoughts, and clarify the facts about Falun Dafa. The word 'respect' has a deep meaning, but many of us do not have it. If we respect our parents, spouses, friends, and fellow practitioners, then our attitudes and the way we talk to them should not be careless. Nothing could then exist that could possibly upset the other party and the atmosphere between us and others would be peaceful. When I talk to people that mean a lot to me, including my family and friends, I often speak in a careless manner, which sometimes causes unnecessary misunderstandings and people often think of me as arrogant and self-centered. The root of this problem is that I do not have a respectful heart toward others. Thus this interferes with my clarifying the facts about the persecution of Falun Dafa and could be the reason why my parents and sister have not yet quit the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).
A person should have dignity and self-confidence. Some practitioners are beaten and scolded by their family members or are looked down upon. When conflicts as such occur, we need to first of all look inward and at the same time realize that this is an opportunity to rectify principles in this human world. When we act openly and nobly, we should be given our rights to freedom of belief and no one should treat us violently, not even our spouses or children.
Some practitioners can't even practice Falun Dafa openly and nobly at home. We read stories on Minghui that non-practitioners stand up and protect practitioners when evil beings interfere. Why doesn't this happen to me? As I carefully read these articles on Minghui, I recognized that these protected practitioners were often outstanding at work and at home and did not have major flaws in their characters. When I looked at myself, I sometimes behaved very poorly. We need to be good people, and not satisfy our attachments to fame and personal gain.
Some practitioners dress sloppily and do not look pleasant. We are not attached to looking good but we have to dress appropriately. We need to take into consideration that we represent Falun Dafa's image. Most people know that we are practitioners, but can not quite understand how much effort and time we put in when doing the three things. Perhaps it is because we are lazy and overly stingy? (Those who have financial problems because of the persecution should not be counted here.) When we tell people about the beauty of Dafa and the persecution while portraying such an unpleasant image, their human notions will stop them from believing us. People may think "Look at you, how am I supposed to trust you?" "Look how miserable you look, how can I believe that practicing Falun Gong and quitting the CCP will allow me to have a good future?" "Am I supposed to believe that you have 'benefited greatly' from the practice?" Sometimes when we do not seriously care about small things, they can impede our task of saving people. We need to pay attention!
I feel that it is every practitioner's responsibility and goal to have an outstanding role in society. When people respect us, they respect Dafa, and that will be the time when every particle of the Fa demonstrates the sacredness of Dafa in the human world.
As I studied the Fa today, I realized why Teacher eliminated so much karma for us and gave us so many things. It is for us to save sentient beings. The less interference we have, the more people we can save. If we can't save as many people as we should, how do we repay for all the suffering Teacher endured eliminating our karma, and for all the things Teacher has given us? We would have been lying to Teacher and that is a serious problem. We should no longer cling to our attachments or take our time to move up slowly in our practice. It's time to wake up.