The Importance of Looking Inside and Studying the Fa Often

(Clearwisdom.net) When I was at the playground with my daughter recently, I saw two teenagers strolling around, looking bored. Suddenly one of them took a small plastic bag and filled it with sand from the sandbox. When I looked a few seconds later, I saw the sand scattered on the ground, with one boy holding a torn bag in his hand. He probably had tried to throw the sand at his friend. Normally, one would get angry to see such behavior, but I wasn’t moved at all. It didn’t generate any thoughts or feelings inside me. It was as if I was watching some scene in another dimension or on television.

Then something unexpected happened (at least considering some of today’s youth) as the boys got ready to leave: One of them suggested that they should clean up the scattered sand first, and they did. I don’t know if it was related to the state of my mind, but at the very moment that it happened, Master's Fa came to my mind, “Pacify the External by Cultivating the Internal” (from Essentials for Further Advancement). I had the thought that I should pacify the situation, but without doing anything external.

1. Instruments for looking inside

In the last few weeks, whenever something happened, I noticed that this mechanism for looking inside somehow spontaneously inserted itself in my mind, between my human thoughts and my outward behavior in the human world. In other words, instead of reacting immediately to what my human mind said I should do, I didn’t do anything at first because the mechanism for looking inside kicked in, as a kind of shield, and this generated thoughts like “OK, why I am seeing this?” or “I don’t like that this is happening, but I have to pacify it by cultivating internally.”

I consider these thoughts to be something like instruments that are helping me to look inside when encountering things. I have recently been trying to include another such instrument in my arsenal: the thought “He's right, And I'm wrong” from Master's Fa ("Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong" from Hong Yin III).

In my understanding, if my mechanism for looking inside becomes even stronger and I am able to access it more frequently in the future, as the Fa requires of practitioners, then I should be able to achieve a state where my human thinking is totally blocked from determining my behavior in the human world. When that is achieved, I would do only what my main consciousness wants to do, and my spontaneous human thoughts would only be able to give me hints or trigger that mechanism of looking inside – they wouldn't be able to force me to act as an everyday person.

Master said in Hong Yin III:

“Don't Argue

Don’t argue when people argue with you
Cultivation is looking within for the cause
Wanting to explain just feeds the attachment
Breadth of mind, unattached, brings true insight”

2. The importance of studying the Fa

The above-mentioned incident at the playground also reminded me of the importance of using Dafa resources wisely. For example, the sandbox could be an analogy for Dafa resources, such as my free time. When I was not being diligent, sometimes I used this time to do things not related to Dafa, even when there was no need for that. Then, this free time was “scattered on the ground,” and even when I tried to “pick it up” later on, I could not recover it completely.

When I was reading the "Lecture at the First Conference in North America" recently, one sentence suddenly caught my attention:

“A monk would even plug his ears with cotton so that he wouldn’t hear the whole day, as he didn’t want to listen to anything.”

Immediately, one attachment of mine, which had become stronger during the past few months, came to mind: browsing everyday people's websites. When I had free time and didn’t feel like doing anything, or when I got stuck with certain problems at work, I would visit some news portals, blogs, or discussion forums, which expended precious time. It later became a habit, so sometimes I wasn't even consciously aware of opening the browser again. Of course, such behavior was already far away from Master's wish for practitioners:

“I hope that after going home everyone will make the best use of his or her time for genuine cultivation practice.” (Zhuan Falun)

Taking inspiration from Master's Fa about the monk (mentioned above), I told myself that in the following days I would not read any everyday people's websites anymore and would focus exclusively on studying the Fa, with my only other reading being the Clearwisdom website. The timing for my resolution was especially good, since articles from the Eighth Internet Experience Sharing Conference for Practitioners in China had just begun being published.

I was surprised at how much my cultivation state improved with this intervention. For example, after just one week, I discovered that certain things that I had criticized my colleagues for in the past no longer bothered me. I started to see those unpleasant factors as external phenomena that are illusory and unreal, and instead focused my attention on keeping a good state of mind, looking inside, and fulfilling my job duties as best as I could.

Another change was that I started to notice subtle hints in my mind regarding what I should do during the current stage of the Fa-rectification. In the past, I was often unsure about what Dafa projects I should focus on. Even when I tried to look inside, I couldn’t recognize anything tangible and just felt helpless regarding what Master’s arrangement for me actually was.

Then I read in Zhuan Falun,

“We have a practitioner who one day saw my fashen come to his home. He was very excited: 'Teacher’s fashen is here. Teacher, please come in.' My fashen said: 'Your room is too messy, and there are too many things.' Then, it left.”

Suddenly, I enlightened to a new meaning of this paragraph. In my own situation, there were also too many different messages and other messy things from all kinds of everyday people's websites and forums, so the fashen either couldn’t come to my mind, or I wasn’t able to hear its hints.

From this experience, I’ve gained a clearer understanding regarding how the human mind works. It is indeed just like a container – whatever we put in, those are the kinds of ideas and thoughts our mind will generate. If it is filled with the Fa and cultivation experiences, it will consider cultivation in Dafa to be very real, and the outside world will feel quite illusory and fleeting. On the other hand, if we fill it with human things, our mind will start to feel that “... in the face of actual material interests, being everyday people is practical” (Zhuan Falun), or there might even be thoughts like "So what exactly is the benefit of practicing?"

This understanding helped me to enlighten to something else. In the past, when I compared cultivation experiences from practitioners in China with my own cultivation, it was evident that I was falling behind, and the gap between the diligent practitioners and myself was even getting bigger. I often pondered what exactly was the factor that caused these diligent practitioners to continually strive forward, while I sometimes behaved like “an average person who hears the Tao” (Zhuan Falun). I initially thought that perhaps my inborn quality was not good enough, but then I dismissed this idea, since all people who have obtained the Fa in the Fa-rectification period are exceptional.

Then, it suddenly occurred to me that this perceived factor doesn’t actually exist! There isn’t such a factor. It is all about the diligent practitioners studying the Fa a lot, as Master requires. This naturally strengthens their faith in Master and Dafa, and at the same time, generates strong righteous thoughts that also help to drive their cultivation forward.

In those time periods when I didn’t study the Fa diligently, my mind got filled with everyday people's things, which acted to reduce the strength of my righteous thoughts, and, as a consequence, I failed to stay diligent. That means that I myself caused my mind to be in a less optimal state compared with the diligent practitioners. It was all because of my own doing, and I can’t blame any other factors for that.

With this understanding, I returned to Master's Fa in Zhuan Falun,

“Cultivation depends on one’s own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one’s master.”

Please, kindly point out anything not in line with the Fa.