Giving Up Self and Harmonizing with the Group

(Clearwisdom.net) I started practicing Falun Gong in 1996. Under Teacher's benevolent protection, I have walked on the cultivation path, going through ups and downs for thirteen years. I don't have any extraordinary achievements or a moving story. I just want to share with fellow practitioners my experiences on letting go of myself, so that I can harmonize with the group. Every time I watched Teacher's "Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners" video, I always felt uneasy. Because I saw that Teacher was so concerned for us, I felt shamed and embarrassed. He was not just talking to Australian practitioners, he was also talking to me, as I also had a similar problem: I couldn't let go of the attachment to myself; I wanted to validate myself; and thus I couldn't harmonize with the group.

1. Letting Go of the Fundamental Attachment

After Teacher's article "Towards Consummation" (Essentials for Further Advancement II) was published, I could not find my fundamental attachment. Finally I realized it when we started doing the exercises with Dafa disciples all over the world at the synchronized times. I went to a practitioner's home for the group exercises. I felt that the field of the group exercise site was very good. I even said it was Teacher's benevolence that gave me a chance to participate in the group exercise. But one day, when I got up it was almost time for the exercises. I realized that I would be 5 minutes late if I walked to the practitioner's home, so I didn't go. I just did the exercises at my home. I thought, "Let those practitioners who can't do the exercise at home go." After the exercises, the hosting practitioner called to ask why I didn't go. I told her that I would have been late if I had gone. She said, "We should go even if it's late! We should harmonize with the whole group."

I felt it was not accidental for me to hear that. So, I started looking within: I always felt that I was better than others and thought that I was always right. I suddenly realized that I had found my fundamental attachment, which is to focus on myself and validate myself. Before July 20, 1999 (when the Chinese Communist Party started persecuting Falun Gong), I stopped going to a Fa-study group because I didn't agree with another practitioner's understanding of the Fa. I stayed at home to study the Fa and lost the environment for upgrading in a group, causing a loss to my cultivation. Then in 2004, under Teacher's benevolent protection, I established a Fa-study group at my home. I often boasted that I was not a parrot and always felt that my views were right. I didn't want to acknowledge or harmonize with understandings that were different from my notions. So, how could I meet Teacher's hope of holistic group improvement? I realized the severity of the result of having an attachment to self. I had to get rid of my fundamental attachment, the attachment to self.

After finding out my fundamental attachment, I paid special attention to getting rid of it. When working on projects to assist Teacher to rectify the Fa and save sentient beings, there is the process of harmonization with the group. And when you truly let go of self, you can feel it when there is no gap among practitioners and the power of the entire group. As long as practitioners were on the Fa, the collaboration went well. Sometimes there were xinxing tests and tribulations to pass, and I was able to make it.

2. It Is Very Important to Coordinate and Collaborate

Today's cultivation is unlike the personal cultivation of the past; our cultivation is the unprecedented Fa-Rectification period Dafa disciple's cultivation. We need to assist Teacher to rectify the Fa and save sentient beings, and we need to coordinate and collaborate well. In order keep up the Fa-study and exercise site, every practitioner needs to harmonize with the group, to safeguard the cultivation form that Teacher gave to us and to form one body. For a truth clarification material site to function well, the whole process needs many practitioners' coordination and collaboration, from producing the truth-clarification materials to delivering them.

The process of coordination and collaboration requires practitioners to understand each other, to be benevolent, to be tolerant, to think of others, to look within, and to harmonize and supplement quietly. Two fellow practitioners were imprisoned for writing Falun Gong messages on money, and they were rescued after our group's collaboration. During that process, we studied the Fa and then sent forth righteous thoughts for the imprisoned practitioners. We didn't think about what those practitioners' gaps were, and we didn't criticize them. We also didn't acknowledge that writing the messages is illegal. We realized that what they did is the most righteous and sacred thing in the universe and that nothing should persecute them. So the practitioners all took action to rescue them. Some went to clarify the truth to their families, some went to the police station to request their release, and some went to their work units. When the practitioners started to have illness symptoms during imprisonment and were taken to the hospital, practitioners went to the hospital to send forth righteous thoughts. From morning to night, from the first floor to the fourth floor, our practitioners could always been seen. Some practitioners exposed the evil on the Internet, some called the doctors to clarify the truth, and some put up posters on streets to expose the 610 Office and national security team's crimes. Thus, under Teacher's strengthening, and because of our coordination and collaboration, the two practitioners were released within ten days.

It is easy to see how important it is to form one strong body. I think that there are several reasons why practitioners have gaps among themselves and don't collaborate with each other well:

1. He has a strong attachment to himself and thinks that he is better than others, and thus he can't listen to opinions that do not match his own notions.

2. He can't handle correctly other practitioner' shortcomings. Actually other practitioner' shortcomings are a mirror for you to check yourself and cultivate yourself. We should give other practitioners a righteous field and believe that those shortcomings are not the practitioner's true self, but his acquired notions or what have been forced onto them by the old forces.

3. Discussing other practitioners' shortcomings behind their backs creates misunderstanding and gaps among practitioners. It also causes practitioners to be unable to coordinate and collaborate, and leads to internal friction.

4. Criticism and personal attacks from practitioners against practitioners will create great pain for those targeted practitioners and cause them to be unable to pass tribulations for a long time. Actually all these were forced upon them by the old forces, using practitioners' human attachment to "test" other practitioners.

I hope that we can all let go of the attachment to validate ourselves, eliminate the gaps, coordinate and collaborate with each other, and form an indivisible whole. Let us have more understanding of others and do less blaming, have more thinking of others and less thinking of ourselves, and together to do the {three things}} well.