(Minghui.org) Recently, several events occurred in my life that helped me enlighten to the importance of being one body and cooperating with fellow Dafa practitioners. I would like to share my understandings on these issues.
1. October is considered “harvest month” in China. Some farmers whose family members were illegally incarcerated because they practiced Falun Dafa found it especially hard during this time of year, mainly because they were short on help. Many practitioners visited these families and helped them with their farm work. The practitioners' selflessness and compassion solved the shortage of manpower in those families and helped clear up the misunderstandings these families had of Dafa. Their kind assistance helped relieve the pressure on these families and promoted Falun Dafa in a positive way. This allowed people to see the righteousness and kindness of Dafa practitioners.
2. Since the local police constantly harassed practitioner A, he was forced to leave his home and stay at practitioner B's residence. Since they had different understandings of the Fa, A and B began to argue with each other. This created pressure for the practitioners who worked at the
material-making site in B's home. A's mother, also a practitioner, asked A to stay with me so that he could calmly study the Fa and quickly improve himself, making it easier for B to stay focused on what he needed to do. Two days later, after sharing with practitioner C, A regained his righteous thoughts and returned to his own home.
3. Practitioner B helped practitioner D start a new material-making site. After some time, D had second thoughts about continuing the site, due to his attachment of fear. B was troubled by D's backpedaling and told E about it. E said to B, “If D is having difficulty moving ahead with the project, we should take back the equipment and give him back his money. We shouldn't put the financial burden on D.” B said, “The printer's ink cartridge was jammed, thus it is useless.” E said, “We'll give D the original price of the printer, since we can fix that cartridge.” B replied, “There is no more room in my house, it's completely full of equipment and supplies.” E told B, “That's fine, there is room in my home.” E then told B about a story that she had read a long time ago on Minghui, about how a practitioner helped others to start a material-making site and at the same time improved himself. Both B and E started to look within. Several days later, B happily told E, “I fixed D's printer! D looked within and found his loopholes, thus his character improved and he decided to continue the material-making site.” The whole situation met with a happy ending because everyone looked within and had righteous thoughts. No one accused anyone of anything, nor did anyone complain.
These three stories made me think, “What exactly is the 'one body'?” Actually, it is not about practitioners working together every day; it's about their hearts being together every day and always caring about one another. It's about placing themselves within the one body and truly treating others' matters as their own. The practitioners in these three stories experienced different degrees of interference. However, when other practitioners saw their loopholes or deficiencies, they found ways to compensate for them. In the end, everything turned out well. This is the Fa's mighty power in action; it is also how Teacher wants us to act.
When Teacher addressed the issue of practitioners not cooperating well with each other, I only enlightened to the fact that each individual should look within. Now, when I truly place myself in the one body, I realize that in the interest of all beings, practitioners must look within unconditionally, and complement and cooperate with each other. This is harmonizing our immediate environment. I finally understand why Teacher always stresses the importance of cooperation and looking within. Each person is both special and imperfect. However, only when a practitioner places him or herself in the one body can he or she use righteous thoughts and wisdom to compensate for others' shortcomings.
When we are truly selfless—without harboring any notions of who's wrong or right—we will use the Fa to guide our thoughts and actions. Therefore, we will naturally act as one body, allowing Falun Dafa's omnipotent magnificence to manifest. The Fa can truly rectify all abnormalities. When all particles of the Fa work in unison, it is the manifestation of the mighty power of the Buddha Fa. This is my understanding of what Teacher meant by “[Dafa is] all encompassing and indestructible.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. Fa Conference”)
We should not focus on the mistakes that practitioners make or their attachments. As long as we have a tolerant, compassionate, and humble heart, we will be able to compensate for their shortcomings. Only in this way will everything we do reach its optimum state.
Teacher said,
“Then there are those who say that they raise those differing opinions in order to bring about better cooperation, and if their opinions aren’t accepted, they find it difficult to go forward with things. But that shouldn’t be the case. A Dafa disciple’s righteous thoughts stem from the Fa, and your cultivation is not a matter of how good, as a human being, your ideas are or how brilliant your approach is. Rather, your cultivation is a matter of whether you manage to have righteous thoughts in the face of challenges. If the idea that someone puts forth, or his approach, is lacking, then you can have a rational discussion, set up by the coordinator, with your project members. But, when what you bring up is not agreed upon or accepted, and yet you feel it’s obvious that your approach is necessary for things to be done more ideally, you start to become negative and passive. Actually, though, as a Dafa disciple, if in such cases your thoughts are righteous, and what you are thinking about is cultivation, about being responsible, and about how it’s something that should be done well, then you should quietly take whatever it is that you feel is lacking and do it well. That is in fact how a Dafa disciple should handle it. If all Dafa disciples could manage to handle things in this manner, everything out there would go extremely well, for sure.” … “However, if you are focused on the superficial, ordinary human things, then you are attached and are using human thinking. Don’t give weight to such things. If you can manage to quietly complete what you notice is lacking, quietly do well what you should do, and quietly do something well when you find it to have been done less than ideally, then the multitude of gods will have tremendous admiration for you and exclaim that this person is simply extraordinary. Only doing things this way counts as what a Dafa disciple should do. So, this is one aspect. As Dafa disciples, then, any time cooperation is needed and yet arguments persist, or people are arguing without coming to a decision, you need to go about things in the manner I’ve discussed. And doing so, the evil will have no way to interfere.” (“Be More Diligent”)
When we see something lacking in a Dafa project, and without complaint quietly compensate for that lack, we are using righteous thoughts, thus, what we give out to others will be righteous thoughts. This allows us to both assimilate to the characteristics of the universe and fulfill Dafa's requirements of us. Thus, the mighty power of the Fa will manifest before us and the result will naturally be good. On the contrary, if we have differing opinions or complain to each other, we are showing the selfish characteristics of the old universe. This negative way of thinking will inevitably attract bad substances into a practitioner's field.
Looking within is a valuable tool that aligns a practitioner with the indestructible and all encompassing nature of the future universe. The new universe will require everyone to look within whenever problems arise. This will enable each layer of the universe to naturally complement and cooperate with every other layer of the universe. With this, the colossal cosmic body will always be in a state of constant renewal and will therefore automatically return to its best state. It is in this way, that all beings will enjoy eternal life. Remember, we are not just individual beings; we are also a universe. This is the way we and this vast cosmic body will exist in the future.
I hope all practitioners can let go of self and stop accusing one another of this and that. We should place ourselves in Dafa and form an indestructible entity. This is what the future universe needs, and also the standard that Dafa practitioners must reach.
