When You Face Other Cultivators' Attachments

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Recently, I was in a very dangerous state while handling specific conflicts in my personal cultivation. It took me two months to walk out of this state. I enlightened from this experience that cultivators at different levels have different attachments. Sometimes, it is hard to notice the attachments because the attachment is coated with, "My intention is good for him. If he were an ordinary person, I could tolerate it [his attachment], but he is a practitioner; how could he make such a lowly mistake? I have helped him by pointing out his attachment. Why hasn't he corrected it? He continued to repeat his mistakes in front of me, which means I needed to repeatedly point it out for him." This took too much of my time and was distracting me from doing the Three Things. I couldn't help but to blame him. When others pointed out my bad cultivation state, I too realized that the state I was in was not good. But I did not know how to correct it. I knew that I could only walk out of this bad state by studying the Fa.

When I re-read Master's "Fa-Lecture During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference," I saw that Master said,

When I read this, I experienced a great shock. All troubles are to pave the way for ascending to Heaven, and all troubles are only to pave the way for ascending to Heaven. So, if there are only a few steps missing in my way for ascending to Heaven, aren't the troubles a ladder for me to ascend to Heaven? How can I even distinguish which troubles are likeable or non-likable? How could I even choose the troubles that are for me to ascend to Heaven and to like or dislike them? Are they for me to choose?

Upon enlightening, I understood that Master has enlightened me through the Fa and raised my level of understanding. Later, when I encountered even bigger conflicts, my observation points and understandings were very different from before. Of course, that's not the end of it. A heart dissolved in the Fa needs to prepare for any occurrence of troubles, that is, to prepare to turn the troubles into ladders for ascending to heaven, and pave the way for ascending to Heaven.

On the other hand, isn't it a strong attachment if you cannot stand other cultivators' shortcomings? Disliking things that do not fulfill your requirements or things that do not satisfy your ideas is also a very obvious and strong human manifestation of sentimentality. Liking and disliking something, saying that someone is good or bad, all comes from sentimentality, whereas the difference between a god and a human is that a god uses the Fa-principle to handle things, not his personal likes or dislikes to handle things.

This does not mean, however, that we do not point out any faults of our fellow cultivators. Not pointing out other's obvious faults while being aware of them does not fulfill the standard of a Dafa disciple either. Nonetheless, every person's attitude may differ when they point out others' faults. Sometimes, one points out others' faults with a sincere compassion, and sometimes we may do it with the attachment of showing off, especially when the other's shortcoming is something you are good at. That's the attachment. Every disciple may have this attachment to a different extent. On the other hand, after you point out another's fault and that person does not correct it, you should not be troubled and keep dwelling on it because that too is an attachment. Everyone follows his or her own path, and a cultivator cannot change another cultivator's path.

We are saving the world's people on a large scale, but at the same time, we cannot neglect our solid personal cultivation. We need to remember to look within ourselves and find our shortcomings.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/8/18/108612.html

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