(Minhui.org) I began cultivation in Falun Dafa in 1997. I’d like to take this opportunity to share a few tidbits of my cultivation journey.
Studying the Fa
The biggest challenge in my cultivation is lack of time. I work full-time and have to drive one hour to work every day. In order not to waste the commute time, I decided to listen to Master’s audio Fa-lecture. I was able to listen attentively during the first three months, but it soon became harder for me to concentrate. Even though the audio lectures were turned on, I took in very little of what Master taught. Listening to the Fa became a formality. I knew my heart wasn’t pure. I wanted to break through this, but my cultivation state was too poor to enable me to focus on listening to the Fa.
I was greatly inspired when one day I heard another practitioner talking about his experience of memorizing the Fa. I felt ashamed. I had cultivated for so many years, yet I had not even managed to memorize Zhuan Falun once. The good thing was that I was very familiar with the contents of Zhuan Falun, thanks to my reading it for so many years. An idea flashed in my mind: I could try to memorize the Fa during my commute. I talked to my wife about it, and she wasn’t too enthusiastic. After all, she wanted me to focus on driving safely.
Regardless, I decided to give it a try anyway. Maybe it’d work. I sprung into action right away. I bought a cell phone holder, which I placed on the part of the dashboard next to the steering wheel. This way I could see the screen of my phone without turning my head. Then I opened falundafa.org to find Zhuan Falun. I set it to reading mode, and I was ready to go.
I started from Lunyu on the first day. I memorized Lecture One in the past so I was very familiar with it. This time I was able to memorize the first section of it in one day. My memorizing the Fa didn’t interfere with my driving. On the contrary, I was more clearheaded since I wasn’t thinking about random things. I was greatly inspired with my first day’s Fa-memorization experience. I managed to persist in this effort. Sometimes I encountered interference as soon as I started memorizing. My mind wasn’t clear and felt numb. I didn’t feel like doing any memorization and failed to even remember one sentence after more than ten minutes of trying. I realized that I must not give up or become anxious. Even if I could only manage to memorize one paragraph, that’d be a success. As a matter of fact, as long as I managed to remember several sentences, my muddle-headedness would give way to clear-headedness and I was able to continue on.
Master said,
“Cultivation depends on one’s own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one’s master.” (Zhuan Falun)
As long as we persist in our efforts, Master will strengthen us.
I also came to understand that any resistance we met in our Fa-study was due to the part in our universe that still needed to be assimilated to the Fa. If we can break through the resistance, we can save sentient beings in our universe.
Of course, such memorization cannot replace reading the Fa. So I still read Zhuan Falun every day. As I enhanced my Fa-study, my righteous thoughts also became stronger every time I encountered interference.
Website Work
The Minghui website has managed to run smoothly amidst various kinds of dangers lurking on the internet. I truly felt that Master has been watching over us at all times.
We realized the challenges facing the internet in the early days of the Minghui website. Even though we are outside of China, the internet has no national borders. The threats from the Chinese communist regime are real and close by. The attacks on us went from sending virus-laden emails to attempts to take down our website. Faced with the CCP’s state-sponsored attacks, we’d not have been able to survive had it not been for Master’s care.
Our tech people had to endure tremendous pressure every time our website was attacked. They needed to respond quickly in times of crisis and to also persist in their efforts countering the attacks. All these also required them to have unshakable faith in Dafa and to maintain a calm heart and a mind of steel. Non-tech people kept on sending forth righteous thoughts to safeguard our website. Once a few tech people worked overnight and didn’t have time to study the Fa or send forth righteous thoughts. A coordinator noticed they were almost burnt out and asked them to take a break right away. She gathered the team to study the Fa for one hour, which helped replenish energy and strengthen the righteous thoughts of the tech team. After all, we are one body.
Every time after the attack, our tech people would sit down to reflect on themselves to see whether they had any omissions that may have harbored evil interference. Cultivation is the foundation of everything we do. Only by cultivating solidly can we effectively accomplish our tasks.
Understanding and Tolerance
I noticed that even though we are cultivating the same Fa, we have different understandings of many issues. How to approach a thing or understand a certain matter, we may all differ due to our backgrounds, knowledge level, or even different attachments. Then how to cooperate and collaborate with each other? My personal understanding is that being understanding and tolerant is critical.
There was a Q and A in “Teaching the Fa at the Conference in the Midwest-U.S.”
“Question: …questions submitted to Teacher by many of us … were taken out by those who did the “screening.” This is hard for disciples to understand.
Teacher: ...To be sure, the students who did the screening are cultivators too. It’s very possible that they screened out important questions that had to do with cultivation. That’s possible.”
My understanding is that the practitioner doing the screening was picking questions from the perspective of being responsible to the Fahui. Of course, he, and the rest of us, are still cultivating, and we may not fully appreciate the mindset of other beings. As such, the screening process may not be perfect, but it is totally understandable. Even if we ask a different person to screen questions, the new person is not guaranteed to do a perfect job. If there’s anyone who feels that he or she could achieve perfection, that person may not have fully understood the complexity of this issue.
Actually it’s the same idea when dealing with other issues in cultivation. Every practitioner’s understanding is from his or her own perspective. It may agree with mine or disagree with mine. If I am a decision maker, I’d carefully listen to others’ opinions. If I hear something different from my idea, I would not rush to rebuke that idea. The practitioner raising concerns must have felt that his understanding is correct; or else he’d not even have brought up the issue in the first place. So if I immediately kill other people’s ideas, it could be that I may have failed to understand the deeper meaning underlying that person’s idea.
If I am the one offering suggestions, I wish to put myself in the shoes of the decision maker. I’d try to clearly articulate my thoughts. As for whether my suggestion would be understood or adopted, I trust the decision-maker would make the best decision that he feels would be responsible for the Fa.
But cultivation can get very complicated. During the Fa-rectification period cultivation, we need to maintain our xinxing and take responsibility for various Dafa projects. It is not that easy to make decisions. But if our starting point is to be responsible to the Fa, our decision won’t be too far off if we let go of self and think of others more often.
(Selected Experience Sharing Paper from 2018 Minghui Fa Conference, Abridged)
