To place the Fa first, always

By a UK practitioner

Sometimes I find that I’m too busy to study the Fa [The books of Falun Gong], practice the exercises and send forth righteous thoughts everyday. Therefore, my xinxing problems are more and more prominent. Sometimes I enlighten to the problems but I’m not willing to get rid of them naturally. When I encounter something, my xinxing [moral standard, heart-nature] drops down. One day while my mind was calm I read Master Li’s latest article “Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.” and “Essentials for further advancement” over and over again, I then found that the attachment of vanity which prevented me from looking inside myself was holding me back.

Actually no matter what Dafa work we’re doing, we cannot on the surface say “I am responsible for Dafa” to cover up one’s own attachments which need to be eliminated by every Dafa disciple. Everyone understands this point, but it’s unavoidable to have problems when truly doing this. To enlighten to this is actually to put more emphasis on personal matters, and put Dafa into the second place imperceptibly. Take myself as an example; at the beginning I valued my opinions. Although I didn’t say anything on the surface, I still have to think to myself “Others’ ideas are worse than mine.” Even worse, I made excuses deep down “This is from the Fa, and I can’t affect the result of the one body.” Later, although I realized my mistake and dared to admit it, I still felt uncomfortable in my heart. Looking inside deeper, it is the attachment of vanity. I wondered if anyone had noticed my attachment which was revealed earlier. Thinking about it, I feel it’s really ridiculous. My mind was blocked all that time, and I had already forgotten Dafa. My thoughts were full of what I am, how I am, etc. Recognizing I have so many attachments, I immediately studied Fa and send forth righteous thoughts; eliminating the bad thought karma, bad notions and external interference. After this my heart felt more comfortable, and didn’t have so much pressure as before. What I was thinking was to walk a righteous path and improve holistically.

After this, when I discussed with a fellow practitioner and heard he had to do a lot of Dafa work after doing his part time job every night, my tears welled up. I was dissatisfied previously, but have I done very well? Then I thought why do fellow practitioners complain to each other. We should all look at ourselves first. No wonder I felt we had good relationships, therefore we feel embarrassed to point out our shortcomings to each other, or feel they cultivate very well and can understand by themselves; in that case I look inside myself. Actually it is not contradictory to look inside ourselves and pointing out others’ shortcomings. We need to look inside ourselves firstly and recognize our shortcomings. When I hear something; when others are stuck at a level, when we know the reason, why don’t we tell them in order to help them improve? I enlightened to the fact that the bad notions and karma exposed in ourselves are connected. The evil see very clearly and will persecute us severely. They won’t give up even if there’s only one practitioner with insufficient righteous thoughts. However, Master Li has emphasized many times that we don’t admit the old forces, we don’t need their arrangement. This requires Dafa disciples to form one body. Supposing every practitioner can put others before themselves, think more kindly of other practitioners, even if they have shortcomings we tell them honestly instead of talking about them behind their backs, then what excuses can the old forces use to find the loopholes and persecute our fellow practitioners at will? Following the rectification Fa work will be done easier and sooner with better effects and our Xinxing will be upgraded

At first when I encountered these conflicts and difficulties I didn’t want to participate too much. That was irresponsible to Dafa, fellow practitioners and myself. Thinking about how chances were arranged over and over again for us to save sentient beings, eliminate the evil, let us constantly get rid of the bad substances in our bodies as well as establish our mighty virtue at the same time. Thinking about those sentient beings, who are deceived, shouldn’t we hurry up to save them? We are practitioners from the same school, and we all consummate our path of rectifying the Fa together. We should do better.
Above is only personal enlightenment, please kindly point out the shortcomings and correct them.

Chinese version can be found at (http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200301/16088.html)