(Minghui.org) I am an elderly Dafa practitioner who lives in the countryside, and I obtained the Fa in 1998. Although I only had a third-grade education, I proficiently operated and upgraded all the equipment at our Falun Dafa material production site, including computers and printers. It was due to the wisdom bestowed by Master that I was able to do it.
In addition to being responsible for producing truth-clarification materials for local distribution, I also coordinated our local truth-clarification efforts. Without realizing it, I developed a lot of human notions and attachments. A small incident recently occurred when we were making Falun Dafa calendars. It truly woke me up and helped me find omissions in my cultivation.
The coordinators planned to launch a second batch of truth-clarifying desk calendars, after we had already produced and distributed one batch this year. Over the years, once such a decision was made, other practitioners typically delivered the supplies to me within a few days. This time, however, I waited at home for over 10 days, and no one showed up with any supplies. I became very anxious. I had to stay home to wait for the delivery, worried that the practitioner couldn't get inside to leave the supplies if I was not there. I started to complain about the practitioners not delivering them on time and not communicating with me.
The supplies finally arrived two weeks later. Either the practitioner who delivered them wasn't clear, or I did not hear the instructions clearly, so I printed and trimmed all the calendar pages originally requested. I packed them up and waited for another practitioner, whom I’d worked with for a few years, to pick them up. He was responsible for binding them.
He came the next day and told me he did not have as many binders as before, so we do not need to make as many calendars this year. I was furious. In the past, we always made a similar number of calendars. I’d worked very hard this year to produce them and even made 200 extra. The practitioner said, “It’s okay. We can give the extra calendars to practitioners in other areas. They haven’t started yet.”
I felt very hurt; it was a bit heart-wrenching. “We put in so much effort, and no one else bothered to help,” I said. “Why do we have to take care of them?” The practitioner replied, “You need to consider other practitioners’ difficulties.” That made me even angrier, and I said, “It takes a lot of money, time, and effort. No one considered our difficulties.” The practitioner said bluntly, “Why do you think you are doing this all by yourself?”
I still felt uneasy after the practitioner left and continued to feel that way even after sending forth righteous thoughts at 6 p.m. Then I went out to discuss the calendar issue with other practitioners. After I came back that night, my abdomen suddenly hurt, which had never happened before. The pain got so unbearable that I was sweating and breathing heavily in the bathroom. My two granddaughters kept asking me what had happened. I could not answer them, except to say, “Grandma made a mistake today.” I started to send forth righteous thoughts and asked Master to help me. Meanwhile, I looked within to find my omissions.
When I looked back over what had happened that day, I realized that I did not have righteous thoughts. Master taught us,
“What’s not a righteous mind? It refers to a person’s inability to always treat himself as a practitioner. A practitioner will come across tribulations in cultivation. When a tribulation comes, it may manifest as an interpersonal conflict. There will be mind games and the like involved, which directly affect your xinxing. There will be many cases in this regard.” (Lecture Six, Zhuan Falun)
I completely forgot that I was a practitioner and behaved like a regular person. Dafa practitioners are one body. Practitioners around the world from all backgrounds work together and use all available means to save sentient beings. How can we distinguish one’s efforts from another’s? Many practitioners outside of China clarify the truth at tourist spots, some use the telephone and media platforms to do so, some participate in parades or distribute materials and do the exercises outside the Chinese embassy, and so on, to save people, day and night. I was so narrow-minded that I separated my efforts from those of others, even in our small local area. I did not consider the whole and did not think of harmonizing with fellow practitioners’ efforts. As a local coordinator, I was ashamed of my behavior.
The other attachment I found was that I had a greedy heart and tried to take credit for things others did. The material site was funded by fellow practitioners. The majority of the work was done by the machines. Other practitioners provided technical support, and many others helped at various steps of the process. What I did was to use the wisdom Master bestowed upon me to finish the work that others had started. But I dared to take all the credit for myself. I was really surprised by my attachments after I realized it.
I also realized that the most serious attachments I had were resentment and looking down on others. The practitioners who provided the supplies had their difficulties. The supply inventory, vehicle availability, and safety concerns could all affect delivery. A practitioner told me many times that it was not easy for practitioners to deliver the supplies. But I did not listen and kept complaining about them.
The practitioner who did the binding also had his difficulties. His father was elderly, and his sister helped take care of his father. So he had to help his sister do farm work every Sunday. He worked overtime to get the calendars ready. But when I heard that the calendars in his area had not been distributed yet, I looked down on him and thought, “You went back home to do farm work, not Dafa work. We’ve already finished distributing the calendars. But you haven’t started yet.”
After about two hours of looking within, the pain in my abdomen dissipated. I looked at Master’s photo and sincerely admitted my mistakes.
This incident made me feel the subtlety of cultivation. Although this incident was not big, it reflected the level of my cultivation with a single thought. It is just as Master said in a poem,
“Secular and sacred, one creek apartForward or back: two different realms” (“One Thought,” Hong Yin III)
It made me realize that a true Dafa practitioner should pay attention to one's thoughts at all times, rectify them according to Dafa, and continuously cultivate oneself diligently. Only this way can we righteously walk the path of Dafa cultivation.
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Category: Improving Oneself
