(Minghui.org) Master said:
“...compassion is a trait of righteous gods.” (“What is a Dafa Disciple” from Teaching the Fa at the Conference XI)
I, however, lacked compassion.
I hadn't developed it through cultivation and was disappointed in myself. I'm a new practitioner and didn’t have a deep understanding of the old forces. Although I superficially understood that I should completely deny the old forces’ arrangements, I discovered that my thinking was unknowingly aligned with the old forces sometimes. Master's great benevolence helped me to wake up.
I didn't really understand when Master spoke about the old forces. I knew that they were bad and persecuted Falun Dafa practitioners. They acted according to their own desires, interfered with the Fa-rectification, and we should thus completely negate them.
I hadn't studied the Fa well, didn't comprehend many Fa principles and as a result, subconsciously recognized the old forces.
For example, I hated those evil people, thought that they didn't deserve to be saved and should pay back their debts on judgment day. I was also disgusted with people’s selfishness. I knew that they would be weeded out if they continued to live like they did. I gloated over their future fate. I held grudges and wanted to retaliate against family members who had treated me maliciously. I wanted them to pay for their misdeeds.
I used to think that these thoughts weren't wrong, and just demonstrated my lack of compassion. The belief that good will be rewarded with good and evil with evil is widely held in society, and I thought people would be responsible for their own disasters and deaths. Aren't these fully righteous principles? I thought that this was the natural pattern of the universe and that bad lives should be weeded out.
I read Master's recent lectures again and had the understanding that lives that are no longer good would be eliminated and that this is the universal law of formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction. But this is a principle and shortcoming of the old universe, and aren't the old forces using this to test and persecute Falun Dafa disciples? They only want the lives that they consider good to remain. Since a large portion of sentient beings are no longer good, they want to destroy them all. This is extremely cruel and evil.
When something is no longer good, an ordinary person will throw it away, destroy it, and then buy another. Master's method is to repair us, so that we don’t get “thrown away.” This is the most amazing compassion!
I lacked compassion because my thinking was extreme and selfish. From the perspective of my inadequate and low understanding, I didn't think these lives should be kept. Is this any different from the old forces? Isn't this the same as acknowledging them?
I had so much karma and qing, and was not a good person, yet Master didn't think that I should be eliminated. On the contrary, he purified and saved me. This is the greatest mercy.
I looked inward and found my cynical view of the world, disdain of others and habit of holding grudges, and I began to change. I felt pity for the police, scoundrels, selfish people, and those who had harmed me. I was no longer disgusted with or afraid of them. After all, they were being controlled by the old forces and were lost in delusion. They would need to pay back with suffering the karma that they had ignorantly created. The saddest thing was that they originally came for the Fa, but have played negative roles and are destined to be eliminated unless they are saved.
I then understand why Master has told us to save all people and not to differentiate among them. Why fear bad people? Give them the opportunity to hear the truth. This is compassion toward all lives.
Master encouraged us in the passage below. He hopes that we will be vigilant, align our thinking with the Fa, recognize the interference, and cultivate pure thoughts toward all sentient beings.
“Then whose sins are those, really? If you ask me, those sins aren’t attributable to anyone. It’s just how beings act, given the nature of the cosmos’s formation, stasis, degeneration, destruction. It’s because the cosmos’s wisdom was lacking. So, I thought that the best approach would be to benevolently resolve things for all lives! It wouldn’t matter who owed what to whom, everyone would stop collecting their debts, since everyone has sins. If everyone were to stop collecting their debts; if everything between people were resolved in a positive way during Fa rectification; and if everyone headed to the future, how wonderful that would be! (Resounding applause) Sentient beings would like this for sure, and everyone would be happy. That’s what I had wanted to do at the beginning.”(“Fa Teaching at the 2013 Greater New York Fa Conference”)