How to Better Help Young Practitioners Improve

(Minghui.org) I’m a young adult practitioner who started practicing Falun Dafa before the persecution began in 1999. Although I obtained the Fa at an early age, I had never been diligent. I only studied the Fa when my mother urged me. If she did not push me, I wouldn’t take the initiative to study the Fa on my own.

I had always known that Dafa is good, and I should be diligent, but I just couldn’t do it without my mother’s company. I would feel flustered when I didn’t read Zhuan Falun for a long time. I knew my life would be detached from Dafa if I didn’t study the Fa.

After I got married, I no longer lived with my mother, but I took the initiative to pick up the Dafa books and read them, but I still couldn’t persist in doing it over time. In the past six months, I overcame a sickness test. During the process, I increased my efforts to study the Fa. Only then did I change my cultivation state and realize that cultivation is a serious matter.

Through my recent experience, I would like to share with young practitioners and their Dafa practitioner parents on how to help them become more diligent in their cultivation.

Understanding the Fa Rationally Is Key in Being Diligent

I believe that many practitioners who are parents may have similar concerns. They know that Dafa is good, so they hope their children can become Dafa practitioners so they won’t be left behind in the Fa-rectification period. Due to sentimentality, they urge their children to be diligent but, oftentimes, the urging does not have a good effect. If you push too much, you fear your children will rebel. If you don’t push enough, you fear your children will not read Dafa books. My mother had the same dilemma.

However, from the perspective of a young practitioner, I would like to share my thoughts. Why could I not always maintain a state of diligence? Why didn’t I want to study the Fa? The reason is simple: I had not enlightened to the Fa principles and had only a superficial understanding of the Fa. My perceptual understanding was simply a kind of human emotion. I knew that Dafa is good and taught people to improve their character (xinxing). But this kind of understanding could only keep me going for a short time; I couldn’t continue cultivating diligently. Therefore, when my mother pushed me, I would study the Fa. If she didn’t push, I wouldn’t study since I was attracted by ordinary people’s video clips, games, novels, and shopping.

The feeling I had when reading the Dafa books was the same as reading a book written by ordinary people. My mother said the book was well written. I knew it and agreed with her. I had read Zhuan Falun many times, but felt I no longer needed to read it. Why did she always want me to read it?

I knew Master had said that this book can guide us in cultivation and teach us principles at different levels. But because I did not study the Fa on my own initiative, I could not see more of the Fa principles. The less Fa I read, the less I could progress, and I fell into a vicious cycle.

When adult practitioners’ urge their children to study Dafa, it is often out of sentimentality. You do not want your children to endure any more suffering in the endless cycle of reincarnation like ordinary people do. Or you want your children to enlighten to what cultivation is all about and help them based on the Fa principles. Those two different motives lead to entirely different results.

First of all, parents are responsible for caring for their young practitioners. At the same time, children are also mirrors of the adults’ states of cultivation. The main reason children cannot understand the Fa rationally could be that the adult practitioners also need to improve in this aspect.

Are adult practitioners’ understandings of the Fa still stuck on a superficial level? What is the reason you first entered Dafa? Do you still have this attachment now? Have you found your fundamental attachments? If these answers are unclear, your child may be in the same situation as you. You can persist in doing one thing for a long time, but your child’s ability to persist is worse than yours. But, in essence, those who do not understand the Fa rationally are in a dangerous situation and can easily be dragged down by the old forces.

Some practitioners I knew gave up their belief after being deceived by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while in detention, and some have turned to other spiritual paths, so as to avoid persecution. I believe this is caused by not truly understanding the Fa and not finding one’s fundamental attachments. In this situation, the adult practitioners have given up on cultivation. The children were pushed to study the Fa when they were younger, but then they lose their cultivation environment and will end up becoming more like ordinary people.

Given this situation, I suggest practitioners read Master’s Essentials for Further Advancement, The Essentials for Diligent Progress II, and The Essentials for Diligent Progress III a few more times and look for your own problems. The following is a quote from Master’s article “Towards Consummation” in The Essentials for Diligent Progress II.

“Some people thought that Dafa is in keeping with their own conception of science; some people thought that it agreed with their own code of conduct; some people thought that it spoke to their dissatisfaction with politics; some people thought that Dafa could salvage humankind’s degenerate morals; some people thought that Dafa could heal their sickness; some people thought that Dafa and Master have integrity, and so on and so forth. It isn’t wrong for human beings in this world to yearn with these attachments for the nice things they pursue and desire. But a cultivator definitely should not be that way. You may start on the path of Dafa with those thoughts, yet over the course of cultivation you need to regard yourself as a cultivator. During the course of cultivation, through reading the books, studying the Fa, and diligently making progress, you should manage to clearly recognize what your thoughts were when you first came to Dafa. After cultivating for a period of time, are your thoughts still the same? Are you continuing on the path because of those human attachments? If so, you cannot be counted as my disciple. It means that you have not discarded your fundamental attachments and have failed to understand the Fa from the Fa.” (“Towards Consummation,” The Essentials for Diligent Progress II)

Only by reading Master’s teachings to find your shortcomings and truly understanding why you entered cultivation can you better help young practitioners and improve together.

I found my fundamental attachment in the process of studying the Fa. My attachment was that Dafa conformed to my concepts and principles of conduct, and this was why I believed in Dafa. When Master began to ask us to clarify the truth to people so they could distance themselves from the CCP by withdrawing from its affiliated organizations, I was stuck.

I did not know how to avoid being mistaken for engaging in politics. So, whenever I spoke about quitting the CCP and its youth organizations, I hesitated and didn’t know how to talk about it. Deep down, I doubted whether quitting the Party was not involved in politics. But I never realized this problem in the beginning.

I later realized that Dafa is meant for guiding our cultivation. It is not here to conform to any principles in ordinary human society. As Dafa practitioners, we should carry out Master’s requests without hesitation, instead of using human notions to judge his words. After finding this problem, I realized why I couldn’t understand Zhuan Falun even though I had read it dozens of times as a child.

Getting Rid of Sentimentality to Better Help Young Practitioners

Suppose the problems mentioned above do not exist. In that case, adult practitioners should communicate with their children regularly on an equal footing. You can talk with them about the little things that happen around them and tell them what cultivation is, the purpose of cultivation, and what principles you have learned from the book. This communication process is also the process of cultivating for adult practitioners. Although young practitioners may be rebellious, you should not regard this as you trying to help them. You should use this opportunity to cultivate yourself at the same time.

For example, if you think your children have not learned enough Fa, you then feel they must follow your parental authority. So you have to find your attachment to parental dominance and eliminate it. When you eliminate this sentimentality, the effect of communication will be much better. Moreover, communication with fewer attachments is more powerful and influential.

The above content is my personal experience in cultivation. If there is anything not in accordance with the Fa, please point it out to me.