(Clearwisdom.net) Recently, I noticed that some groups who study the Fa only put emphasis on the quantity that is read while studying.
Reading the Fa very rapidly causes some practitioners to be unable to follow and comprehend the material. Some practitioners don't even stop at the punctuation marks. Some practitioners feel that reading out loud is too slow. They fear that their progress will be too slow and thus always try to read the Fa very quickly. From my understanding, there are two reasons why practitioners do this. First, some practitioners think they are familiar with the Fa, so they read quickly, and second, other practitioners think that the more they read, the better their Fa study experience will be. Reading the Fa has become purely an objective for them. I therefore think we should read the Fa very seriously.
My inspiration came from an incident that happened to my grandson. The school my grandson attends held a competition for reciting Tang poems. I wanted to instruct him, but he said to me, "I can recite them already." He is very mischievous and quickly memorized them without any passion or emotion. I think that the Tang poems, which were written by famous Tang Dynasty poets, should not be recited with such ease. Similarly, each word of Teacher's Fa bears a heavy weight, and behind each word there are many divine beings, so we should study the Fa very seriously.
The hosts of the Shen Yun Performing Arts and NTDTV are very steady in their emotions. We should be able to read the accurate meaning of the words and understand the tones of Teacher in his lectures, instead of just reading mechanically when we study the Fa. We will then increase our understandings of the Fa more deeply through group Fa study.
Recently, a practitioner published an article with the title "Experiencing Dafa's Wonders from Reading the Fa" (http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/4/15/199023.html). The article states, "Recently, when I studied the Fa alone at home, I read very loudly. At the time, it felt just like being in group Fa study and as if many people were present. I felt very good when I read the Fa clearly and at a moderate speed. My celestial eye opened and I saw that many sentient beings were listening." I think that by reading the Fa loudly, we can eliminate the evil, as the Fa rectifies heaven and earth.
During group Fa study we spend most of the time reading the Fa and we even extend the time in order to complete a reading. I think this is going to extremes. Of course, the time used for Fa study should be longer than sharing, but it doesn't mean we can ignore sharing.
To summarize these two situations, there is one common ideological obstacle. Some practitioners think that as long as we read the Fa, even very fast - the divine beings in the Fa will enlighten us, so we will understand the Fa principles. But just think, if we don't understand the meaning of the Fa, and if some practitioners can't even follow along while we are reading so fast, how can the divine beings enlighten us?
I think that whether problems have arisen during our cultivation, or from experiences in group Fa study, or even from the inability to understand some words while reading the Fa, or some stubborn human attachments, we should study the Fa in a group with a pure environment. Practitioners can freely talk to each other and help solve each others' problems. In this cultivation environment we can learn from each other and therefore improve rapidly.