PureInsight | September 21, 2025
[PureInsight.org] In recent months, my wife, also a fellow practitioner, started a new job, but things didn’t go well. Over the past month especially, she kept making mistakes. Her boss would assign one task, and she’d do something else, which infuriated him. She couldn’t understand why until one day he warned her she might be fired. Only then did she grasp how serious the issue was.
Not long before that, her phone was flooded with “sign-up for cash” promotions. She downloaded every app, earning cash rewards from each, and spent whole days chasing notifications. She even binged on videos for hours, leaving almost no time to study the Fa. Despite my reminders, nothing changed. One evening, after another slip-up at work, she came home late and told me what happened. I helped her reflect on whether it was a lapse in responsibility or a xinxing issue—and then it hit me: those videos might be clouding her mind. The moment I thought that, a surge of energy slammed into me, and I felt dazed for several seconds. I immediately knew the phone was at fault. I sat down, sent forth righteous thoughts, and urged my wife to study the Fa and strengthen her righteous thoughts.
At first, mental images appeared suggesting that phones are beneficial. Determined to expel this “demon,” I pictured the phone attacking me. A barrage of scenes flashed—finally a silhouette of a seated Buddha and a few small animals. Because I sometimes watch Buddhist-story videos, the Buddha silhouette represented my own viewing habits (“Why should I purge them?”), and the animals stood for the shows my wife watched. I realized these visions were the very video fragments filling her mind. After I cleared them, I told my wife what had happened. She was horrified and instantly decided she would never watch videos on her phone again—she even deleted every one of those cash-earning apps.
The next day at work, she watched no videos and found her mind much clearer. She answered her boss’s questions accurately and recognized that her prior confusion came from constant phone interference. Phones bombard us with fragmented information; the more we consume, the more our minds fill with disconnected bits, making coherent thought impossible. Whenever a task required clear, step-by-step reasoning, she went blank. Since then, her thinking has sharpened and her heart feels more peaceful. Now she often forgets to turn on the home Wi-Fi—without videos to watch, the phone sits idle, and that calm is liberating.
Through sending forth righteous thoughts, I was deeply shaken. As soon as I realized the phone was the culprit, it actually struck my brain, leaving me dazed. When I sent forth righteous thoughts to clear it, the phone conjured up illusions to trick me—and then attacked me with video scenes I’d watched. Isn’t that a demon? Although I used to watch only a little, I’ve now stopped entirely, using that time to study the Fa or do other meaningful things. I feel much clearer. When I pick up my phone now—aside from work—there’s nothing I want to see. It’s remarkably peaceful.
I share this as a reminder to any practitioners still glued to phone videos or other content: everything you see is poured into your mind, and when you push back, you’ll see how powerful this demon’s interference can be. Unless you completely shift your mindset and take phone addiction seriously, it will not only hamper your cultivation but seep into every aspect of your life. After all, who wants to be a slave to their phone?
Chinese version: https://www.zhengjian.org/node/297717
