Removing stubborn career attachment by participating in media projects
By: Mainland Dafa disciple living in Malaysia
Greetings Master and fellow practitioners! I am from northern China; it has been 21 years since I obtained the Fa in 1996. Due to not trusting Master and the Fa, I had a tough 10 years. I am sharing this as a lesson to learn, and also for motivation.
I grew up in a poor family, and that could be the reason I am afraid of being poor. In addition, it was at the time of “Reform and opening,” society that was advocating in money making. I always strive to earn more money, and this has become a dream that I pursuit in my youth. After obtaining the Fa, whenever I study the second lecture (The Supernormal Ability of Precognition and Retrocognition), “Some people may wonder, “So our personal struggles and efforts to change ourselves are unnecessary?” They cannot accept it.” In my heart, I deny this notion as I do not want to be poor again, I still want to strive to be rich in life.
After joining the workforce, I was restless; I always find ways to get a higher paying job. Somehow, the results were I was jobless after a short period. I still did not realise it. When there was no job, I gathered a few friends to form a software company. With the ability that I have learnt from the ordinary society, I worked hard. To my disappointment, the company’s revenue was only just average, and after the deduction of tax and employees’ salary, there is nothing left for shareholders. It was more like we were working for our employees. However, we continued to endure for another 2 years until we could not endure anymore, I chose to quit. I had worked for nothing. These similar incidents repeated for many times until 2008, I was unable to pull myself out of this state. I became impatient; I would get angry at minor things, cultivation was not in my mind. This serious deviation from the Fa has gotten me kidnapped in 2008.
After 5 consecutive years of illegal detention, my practitioner wife and I returned home from the prison and re-education camp in 2013. Ironically, there wasn’t any home to go back to; we could only stay with my sister. We were penniless, and were a few thousands in debt including lawyer’s fee borrowed from other practitioners. At that time, I could not study Fa in peace, all I could think of was to get a job to solve our financial problem quickly. Without my wife’s consent, I decided to go work with a relative that has a business in Inner Mongolia. My relative promised a monthly wage verbally but little did I know that they were in bad shape too, they could not pay me. I had worked for nothing for half a year. On top of that, I had used up the 10,000 dollars emergency fund, out of the courtesy of my father. The situation had gotten worse!
Time flies, it was the end of 2013, Chinese New Year was around the corner, a local practitioner knew that we both were so poor that she offered a property that she wanted to rent out, to us for Free. Yet, I could not afford to pay the heating bill, we both endured the cold throughout the winter. A local coordinator saw that I did nothing and asked both of us to study Fa and clarify the truth with them. It was during this time that I started realising that whatever I have faced was due to my attachment to my career and for not trusting Master and the Fa, I wanted to get rid of them. This time, I thought, I only want a job that could pay me enough to support my family. Unfortunately, I still could not get a job.
One day, the coordinator said that there were plenty of opportunities abroad due to a shortage of people running projects. As we were young and cultured, if all else fail, we should consider going overseas. I was moved and wanted to try. However, I was marked by the 610 office; my passport was invalid, I was anxious. I had a dream on that night; a police officer stood in the middle of the prison cell that a practitioner and I were captured. I whispered to the practitioner when the police officer wasn’t paying attention, “Any other way out?” He replied “Yes.” Upon waking up, I immediately sought for the contact of that practitioner, I managed only to find his email and wasn’t sure if it was still valid. Anyhow, I sent him an email explaining my intention. It was to my surprise that he replied my email the next week. With this, a practitioner from abroad arranged my overseas itinerary.
After six days of frightening but safe journey, in April 2014, I finally arrived in Bangkok. Two days later, my wife flew by plane to reunite with me. Without the pressure from the previous environment in China, we could clarify the truth, study Fa, perform the exercises freely; we were overjoyed! Though we only have 3 months of living expenses; I wasn’t too worried as I believed we had done the impossible by coming here, and I believe that without Master’s care and arrangement, all these would have been impossible. I trust that Master will not let us go hungry.
One day after a month, a practitioner who oversaw a project in America called my wife via Skype, it was me who coincidentally picked up the call instead of my wife. We chatted for a while, upon knowing that I had worked in the network technology industry, she insisted me to join her in supporting the technical work in the project. Although I was graduated from science and engineering, I had always worked in the marketing and management department; I had never laid my hands on technical work. It was like I had never eaten pork but seen a pig running, I only knew the surface of it. Despite all these, she still insisted I join them and ensured that the allowance provided would be enough for me to support my family. However, I was not feeling confident as I had to use half of my three months expense to buy a computer for the project. It would be terrible if it fails to work out. I asked my wife: “Do you think I can do it?”, she replied: “You have a brain for this, what else would you do if not this?” I knew she was encouraging me, so I accepted the offer.
The tech-savvy practitioner was very busy, he only told me the names of the seven software (in English) for my self-learning. It was almost 20 years since my last encounter with such technologies; I had to start from scratch. All of the software information was mostly English; I stopped learning English after graduation, and I almost forgot all of them. It was difficult, but I never give up. So, I sleep very little every day, to ensure the learning effectiveness, practicing the 5 sets of exercises were a must. Though sometimes I only rest for 2-4 hours a day, I don’t feel tired at all. A month later, I began to share the workload of fellow practitioners formally. It was a miracle because I did not understand a single line of code a month ago. I knew this was a blessing from Master.
I was proud of myself being able to validate the Fa via media projects. I had endless energy every day. I felt I was the happiest individual in the world. One day, a practitioner from China called, and we spoke about a guy, he has earned a lot of monies, and his company was expanding and did very well. If it were before, I would be very envious, but that day, I had another feeling. Though he is rich, if we were to exchange position, I won’t, I felt he should be envious of what I have instead. It was the first time I noticed my attachment to Career was gone. I love the feeling of being able to be immersed in Fa. Since the persecution, that was the first time I felt I was reborn.
An attachment to “career,” some people were able to get over it in days, some don’t have the attachment at all, but for me, it was due to this attachment that I could not advance in the Fa for more than 10 years.
I remember Master said in Zhuan Falun (Lecture 5): In cultivation, one should mainly cultivate one’s xinxing. They still do not understand this and believe that they can practice cultivation by merely suffering hardships. Therefore, after a lengthy period of time and having practiced cultivation for several hundred years or more than one thousand years, they have obtained but a little bit of gong. In fact, it is not through suffering that they have gained gong. How do they get it? It resembles the case of a normal person: One has a lot of attachments in youth, but the time one becomes old, with the passage of time one’s future seems hopeless. Those attachments are naturally relinquished and worn out. These side-path practices also use this method. They find that when one relies on sitting meditation, trance, and suffering hardships to progress in cultivation, one can also increase gong. Yet they do not know that their attachments of everyday people are slowly worn out over a long and harsh period of time, and that it is through slowly giving up those attachments that gong is increased. Our practice has a focus and truly points out those attachments. By abandoning them, one will make very rapid progress in cultivation.
Because I did not follow Master’s teaching and take the initiative to get rid of my attachment, I had suffered a lot of hardships. It made my heartache thinking about it. This has taught me that to progress fast in cultivation; we must take the initiative to assimilate to the Fa to suffer less.
Here is my understanding of the Fa, my level might be limited. Kindly correct me if there is anything inappropriate.
Thank you Master and fellow practitioners!