(Minghui.org) I started practicing Falun Dafa when I was 19 and in the 12th grade. After I read the book Zhuan Falun, I felt that I had been waiting for this moment all my life. I repeated to myself, “I want to cultivate!”
Master must have seen my wish, because after I finished reading Zhuan Falun, I had a clear understanding of many things about life and let them go. The things that other young people were interested in didn’t seem to appeal to me, but I did have a lot to look forward to because I was about to start college.
With dreams filling my head, I entered college in high spirits. I was attracted to different clubs and sports and thoroughly enjoyed them. But after military training, I received bad news. I was diagnosed with hepatitis B and had to take a leave of absence from school. I’m sure many practitioners who’ve had similar sickness karma have done better than I did, but I was a beginner in studying the Fa and cultivation. Thinking back, I’m grateful for Master’s painstaking arrangement. As a young man just beginning his cultivation journey, I could have been easily carried away by worldly temptations and indulged myself.
Most practitioners have had their health restored after they began cultivation, but I got “sick” after I stepped into Dafa. However, the leave from college gave me an opportunity to study the Fa with my local study group and laid a good foundation for my cultivation.
This chronic liver “disease” forced a young man with tons of attachments to give up drinking, smoking, staying up late, and doing other things young people do. It certainly put a damper on my self-complacency. Even today, despite various tribulations including imprisonment, I’m still very competitive and strive to get ahead, although I have given up a lot of attachments and won’t pursue fame, fortune, or women.
Thanks to Master’s compassionate salvation, I have changed from a 19-year-old young man into my current self by giving up many attachments instead of following the trends like ordinary people and pursuing personal interests.
Despite the extremely low cure rate associated with hepatitis B, I tested negative in 2017, almost 10 years after I was first diagnosed. By that time, I had let go of my attachment to the “disease” and had even let go of the fear of death. I had understood that everything that happens is part of the process of being tempered by Dafa, including getting “sick” and recovering.
When I read Master’s teaching about lust in Zhuan Falun for the first time, I was surprised at the example of “a young man in his 30s,” thinking that a man in his 30s should be considered middle-aged. Now I’m in my 40s, but I’m embarrassed to say I still do not cultivate as diligently as the young man in Zhuan Falun did. I still have many attachments to get rid of.
Fellow practitioners, let’s seize the time and cultivate as diligently as when we first started!
Articles in which cultivators share their understandings typically reflect an individual's perception at a point in time based on their cultivation state, and they are offered in the spirit of enabling mutual elevation.
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Category: Cultivation Insights
