(Clearwisdom.net) Practitioner A and her newlywed husband B were both arrested and detained recently. They were detained along with four other practitioners, who resolved to defeat the persecution with their righteous thoughts. They sent righteous thoughts together intensively for more than 10 days. At times, though, practitioners A and B became distracted from sending righteous thoughts, lost in their romantic affection for each other. In the end, the evil took advantage of their attachments, which led to huge losses in their cultivation.
In group experience sharing, when this type of attachment was discussed, another practitioner with his celestial eye open talked about the following scene that he saw.
A fast-running train was full of practitioners, and Master Li was in the first car of the train. The name of every stop was related to a particular test of our xinxing. When the train stopped at "Lover's Valley," many practitioners got off and went into the valley. They were so immersed in it that they could not hear other practitioners calling from the train as it started to leave. By the time the lovers realized what was happening, they tried to catch the train, but it was too late. Because they did not catch the train, the mud in Lover's Valley gradually swallowed them up. Although this was only observed by one practitioner at his level, the story can serve as a reminder of the dangers of this kind of attachment.
Lust, deep affection, and desire are quite powerful in the declining human society and can drag people into an abyss of moral degradation. They can also cause cultivators, when their wills are not strong enough, to fall to these emotion-driven pitfalls.
When practitioners A and B first got married, they wanted to encourage each other and make progress in cultivation together. However, gradually they began to succumb to the attachment of lust. Due to gaps in their cultivation, their attachments gradually became stronger and eventually overwhelmed them.
We have all made progress and experienced many things, but we cannot get careless with our cultivation. Because we have gone so far in cultivation, what is right and wrong for us to do should be clear to us in the limited time left for cultivation. The attachments to various kinds of emotion can make a cultivator lose his or her rationality, which can have serious consequences. Let us all keep this in mind as we progress further in our cultivation.
