PureInsight | December 3, 2001
Shortly after the Chinese government began to suppress Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, the thought of going to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Gong came to me. But the subsequent fear and worry were just like heavy shackles that made it impossible for me to step forward at all. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to bear the merciless torture if I did go. I was afraid that I would do the wrong things and shame Master Li and Dafa. I was afraid that I would even 'enlighten' along an evil path if I couldn’t endure the huge tribulation. In such a state of mind, I found it extremely difficult to make progress in my cultivation practice as I was constantly struggling with my own fear and worry. I felt a big burden was lifted from me when I read the following words from the Teacher, 'The students outside of China are just like the students inside of China, they are one body. Overseas students' exposing the evil, spreading the Fa, and clarifying the truth are very important. As long as they do well, they are moving towards Consummation as well” (Minghui article “Serious Teachings -- Recorded from a Recent Talk by Master”). But after reading that, I found that I was still trying to come up with excuses to cover up my fear and attachment. Especially when I read articles on Minghui that described the unshakable faith and complete righteousness shown by the Dafa disciples in China, I could not keep from comparing myself with them. I started to think about myself and my own problems carefully. I asked myself why I couldn’t really step out of humanness at all times as a veteran Dafa practitioner when so many Chinese practitioners were able to go to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Gong after having obtained the Fa in relatively a short period of time. I felt very ashamed of myself, and kept wondering what was going on. In the end, I finally understood the meaning of “righteous faith.”
The original bodies of different Dafa practitioners, at the most microscopic level, are made up of different particles. As far as individual cultivation is concerned, each practitioner needs to go through a process where he achieves breakthroughs from the most superficial layers to the deepest and most microscopic layers. It is a dynamic process of reaching a deeper and deeper level. During this process, his 'righteous faith' toward the Fa should be getting stronger and dynamically deeper as well. Yet it is precisely this deeper and more powerful 'righteous faith' that determines how fast a Dafa disciple can assimilate himself to the Fa from the lowest level to the highest level in his own microscopic body.
For a Dafa practitioner who obtains the Fa very early and keeps on studying the Fa and doing Fa-rectification work, is the depth of his “righteous faith” directionally proportional to how long it has been since he first obtained the Fa? Not necessarily. If his understanding of the Fa is always based on human notions and human sensibility, his faith in Dafa and Master is only the faith at a superficial level. Because of it, he can only assimilate himself to the Fa on a superficial level. The part of him that is at a higher and more microcosmic level has not been able to assimilate to Dafa. To put it in another way, most of his body is still impure and unrighteous. Even if he has gained a certain level of rational understanding of the Fa, which is to say that his 'righteous faith' in the Fa has reached a certain level, a portion of his body on the microscopic level will become assimilated to the Fa yet the deeper portion remains untouched. On the other hand, in the case of a practitioner who can really painstakingly make progress in the Fa, no matter when he obtains the Fa- early or late- his rock-solid faith toward Dafa can even make him instantly assimilated by the Fa from the lower levels to the higher ones. What is at work here is the great power of “righteous faith.” In the cases of those practitioners who feel their levels have not been elevated fast enough or the speed of their improvement has been too slow, shouldn’t they think about whether they have developed such incomparable conviction and firm faith toward Master and Dafa as the disciples in China?
When the evil test began, the evils from different levels launched “a comprehensive and thorough test” (“Towards Consummation”) targeting Dafa disciples. The evil arranged tribulations at the microscopic levels where the evil itself exists. These tribulations are targeted directly to the parts of practitioner that haven’t been cultivated well or haven’t been cultivated at all. These parts are also the microscopic levels of the practitioners that haven’t been assimilated completely by the Fa. Because the evil is present at a more microcospic level than the parts of practitioners that have cultivated well, its power seems enormous. If the tribulation it arranged were to manifest in the human dimension, it would be a huge tribulation between life and death. Then, is that to say that the practitioners are doomed to fail those tribulations that are arranged at levels more microscopic than the levels to which practitioners have not yet cultivated? Not exactly. It is Master and Dafa that are judging everything and arranging everything for us. As a matter of fact, what we need is just one thing: righteous faith. When faced with a severe test between life and death, righteous faith could make us ascend to higher levels in a blink of eye- to levels higher than that of the evil. At that time, our more microcosmic parts would be assimilated, and we would become righteous gods of that level. The evil and the so-called tests that it arranged for us would become nothing to us, and the evil itself would be eliminated at the same time.
I have gained a deeper understanding on how important it is for us to have “righteous faith” toward Master and Dafa. It is important because we not only need to be responsible for our own individual cultivation, but, even more importantly, we need to be responsible for Dafa and the progress of Fa-rectification. We must deserve the title of “Dafa particle.”
This is just my personal understanding. If there are any mistakes, please point them out to me so they can be corrected.
Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2001/11/12/12420.html
