(Clearwisdom.net) For a long period of time, I had felt that while we should be forbearing toward non-practitioners, we should be rather strict when dealing with fellow practitioners. Sometimes because of my own inadequacies and mistakes, I had brought problems to fellow practitioners, but I did not pay much attention to the situation and thought that having them suffering a little bit would be beneficial to their cultivation. Now I have come to realize clearly that this understanding was wrong. As a matter of fact, this is not positioning the relationship between Dafa and being a cultivator well.

Recently Master repeatedly talked about the situation and behavior of the old forces of the cosmos. I feel that at the root of various displays of us cultivators' notions of self and attachments are precisely the old forces in the cosmos. The Fa has created all the beings in the entire cosmos, including high-level Gods. The old forces do not know that, and do not want to accept this fact. They treat Master as a cultivator as well and have made arrangements for everything during Fa-rectification. They have concocted this so-called test for Dafa and Dafa disciples based on the principles of the old cosmos. If we demand other people to behave according to our own understandings, isn't this precisely a display of the old forces?

If every being in the cosmos thought the way I did, "having fellow practitioners suffer a little is not a big deal and that is truly wanting what is the best for them," what kind of cosmos would it be? When dealing with other people, as long as they are not persecuting Dafa to the point where they are beyond saving, we should treat them with unconditional benevolence and should also be able to transform them benevolently. If everyone could behave like this, how wonderful would it be! We are cultivating within Dafa. We should set a strict standard for ourselves based on the Fa and our own understandings instead of doing that for other people.

I remember an elderly veteran practitioner telling me a personal story of his. This happened many years ago. He came to Master's hometown of Changchun at Master's request to deal with some Dafa matters. This veteran practitioner did not know his way around the town, so Master personally went to pick up the practitioner at the airport and then made arrangements for his lodging. At that time, it was extremely cold in Changchun. The original plan was to have this practitioner stay at Master's home. But then Master was concerned that this practitioner might be too old to deal with the cold since there was no heat at Master's home. So Master arranged to find a hotel room with a heater for this practitioner. There is another story. A practitioner was arrested by the evil when the persecution just started in China. In the face of immense pressure, he said some things that he should not have said. After it was over, he regretted his actions bitterly. While in prison, he saw Master's Fashen once. He said to Master, "I have said things that I should not have said. Will you still take care of me?" Master replied, "You are my disciple. How could I not take care of you?" Master is so protective and benevolent toward all the disciples, how could there be any excuse for us to allow our notion of "having fellow practitioners suffer a little is no big deal" to continue to exist?

When doing things, we might have different ideas and argue endlessly. Everyone thinks that he is right. From a cultivation perspective, shouldn't we treat fellow practitioners with even more benevolence and tolerance? On the other hand, we should also avoid taking the other extreme and not pointing it out when fellow practitioners have clearly deviated from the Fa. Being attached to oneself and one's own notions or looking down at other people is totally different from pointing out their problems with a purely benevolent state of mind. The results would be completely different. We should focus our attention on being responsible for Dafa and aim to let everyone improve as a whole

The above is a personal understanding. If it contains anything inappropriate, I ask my fellow practitioners to point it out to me.

Posting date: 5/30/2002
Original article date: 5/30/2002
Category: Views on Cultivation
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/5/24/30744.html

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