Some Understandings about Being “Simple”

(Minghui.org) Growing up in the countryside in China, where the people were simple and honest, I was the same. I was sensible, kind, filial, and polite. I was known as a good kid in our big family clan. Of course, there was another aspect along with it—I was so used to hearing praise that I developed attachments to fame and competitiveness, and I always wanted to get the best grade when we had exams. 

I dropped out of school when I was 16 because my father would not pay for my education anymore. I went to do odd jobs in the prosperous business district of a city. The city was very different and complicated. I saw business people scheming to get an upper hand, being deceitful and hypocritical, even resorting to blows over petty personal gain. 

People could tell that I was from the countryside by the open and honest look on my face, and I was often bullied as a result. Many people I met were hypocritical. The social norms were quite different from where I came from. In the city, those who were deemed intelligent and sophisticated and were assumed to understand what was going on were envied. People were not open with one another—they might say something nice about you to your face but curse you inside. You might be chatting happily in a small group, hearing flattering comments, but as soon as one person left, the others would badmouth her and say all sorts of scandalous things about her. 

The way people acted in the city shattered my former view of life and made me question the values I grew up with—reflecting quietly upon oneself and never badmouthing others behind their backs. Even in my hometown, I never liked to hear women gossiping. 

I found it very hard to adjust to this new environment at first and found myself always at odds with others. I was among them, and yet, I felt I was far away from them at the same time. 

I started to practice Falun Dafa at the end of 1998, not long after I came to the city. I studied the Fa and did the exercises every day and felt very happy inside, regardless of the unhealthy atmosphere around me. However, all this changed after July 20, 1999, when the Chinese Communist Party launched a nationwide oppression of the practice. Things were turned upside down in an instant, and I lost the cultivation environment I so cherished.

I started to earn enough to continue my education in my spare time, so life got really busy for me. Gradually, I began to slack off in my cultivation and I developed more attachments.

I didn’t want to be bullied and looked down on anymore, so my competitiveness began to grow stronger. I also started to learn how to be tactful in dealing with people who seemed so complicated and hard to understand. Everyone seemed to keep their guard up, and they all seemed to be insecure—life is tough and tiring for everyone. I also allowed dirty things into my life because I didn’t want to be defeated. 

Some years later, I started my own business and mingled in the business sector every day. My mind was filled with complex stuff all the time. I learned how to do business like everyone else, and I did well at it, but my conscience bothered me, and I really missed my simple life in the countryside. 

Master said,

“As Master sees it, your each and every thought, and your every single action, reveals to me what your heart is like. What I least like are those who are all talk and no action. Nor do I like those who are cunning. What I like are those who are honest and simple, sincere and down-to-earth. I also hope that you can all, after so many years of cultivating, positively grow in wisdom and not grow so much in terms of knowing how to deal with worldly matters or how to conduct yourself as a human being leading a worldly life.”(“Fa Teaching Given at the 2010 New York Fa Conference,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World, Volume XI)

I felt that Master was talking about me. I had failed to “positively grow in wisdom” but had learned a lot about being cunning in “worldly matters.” Still, I wanted to be a the kind of Dafa disciple Master likes, one who is “honest and simple, sincere and down-to-earth.” But that was easier said than done. As the sayings go: “It’s easy to go from poverty to luxury, but hard to go from luxury to poverty” and, “It is easier to do bad things than good things.” However, I was determined to be a simple and down-to-earth Dafa disciple as Master expects us to be. 

After a while, I noticed that my brain was not as sharp as it used to be, and I was slower to react, as if part of my brain was locked up and not functioning. 

Master said, 

“I will tell you. A person’s brain works really astutely among ordinary people. In order not to lose out, a person’s thinking is extremely quick in this respect, and his memory is sharp. What I’m saying is, using your brain that way isn’t good, for you will generate karma. When your brain is too developed like that, it interferes with your cultivation. So what’s to be done? We use an approach whereby at first we restrain this part of your brain. In other words, we first lock it up, adjust it, replace it with the portion of your thoughts that can think like a cultivator, and have this part of your thinking develop. Then the cunning part is adjusted and we gradually loosen the restraint. At that point you will be able to handle yourself properly.”(Teachings at the Conference in Switzerland)

I came to the understanding that Master was helping me by restraining and adjusting the unhealthy part of my brain. 

During that period of time, I also became very sensitive and I would know others’ emotions as soon as they came near me. This really interfered with my cultivation, as I was often moved by other people’s emotions, and it was very hard to remain unaffected. So I asked Master to shield me from those things. After that, I could not sense what was on other people’s minds anymore, and my cultivation state became much calmer. 

Memories Can Be a Burden

I once saw myself flying into the sky, but there were two big bundles tied to my feet that were pulling me down. I looked closely and saw that the bundles were filled with memories. I realized that memories can be a burden and can prevent us from ascending to higher levels. So I lost interest in taking photos and saved all the photos I’d taken in the past on a disc and cleared them from my phone. I only access them when I need to. I stopped looking at old photos or recalling past experiences and felt that my dimensional field was much cleaner. 

The dimension of my brain also became much cleaner. I set a wall behind me to separate me from what happened in the past, and as a result, my brain is often in a state of emptiness, with nothing in it. I really enjoy that purity of mind. I don’t want to put anything in it, just chuck out what is already there. 

The only thing is that my memory has become rather poor, as it does not store anything, nothing is kept. I checked the place where my memories were stored and saw there was nothing left, only an empty factory workshop. My memories used to be stored by way of movie screens, which are also empty now.

Master also said, 

“As I see it, in the form of this physical dimension, the human brain is only a processing factory.” (Lecture Nine, Zhuan Falun)

The brain I saw is indeed a processing factory, with many workshops producing different things. When raw materials arrive, they are supposed to go to different workshops. But people nowadays tend to chuck all the raw materials into the first workshop, which is the most complex and dirtiest of all. As a result, even the best raw materials that end up in this workshop will turn out to be something very complex, very dirty, and very cunning. I realized that the reason my brain has become empty and calm is because Master has sealed off that bad workshop for adjustment. 

For example, suppose there are ten workshops, lined up from the worst, the darkest, and the dirtiest to those that are better and even better. The last of the ten will be the most simple, most pure, most rational, and most capable of assimilating to the Fa. The reason they are lined up in this order is because the worst workshop in the brain of today’s people is the largest, and the most developed, and raw materials go straight into that workshop when they arrive. 

Master said in “Fa Teaching at the U.S. Capital,”

“But no matter how smart or cunning a person is, everything ends up the same in the end. Let’s take the case of someone who is very dumb. You may find one person stupid and naïve, while another is very cunning. But no matter how you live your life, the outcome is the same. It definitely won’t change any just because a person is cunning, nor will it change any because a person is naïve. All that being cunning can do is to turn you into a worse person, and while you create karma you will slide down. As your surroundings and you yourself become tense and strained, the minds of those around you will in turn grow even more complicated, and then their complicated thinking will in turn cause you to grow still worse.”(“Fa Teaching at the U.S. Capital,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World, Volume VIII

From studying the teachings, we all understand the Fa principle that, if I kick you once, I will give you a piece of de (virtue); if you kick me back, a piece of your de will be thrown back to me, so neither of us has gained or lost anything. Still, we have both been kicked once and it was quite painful. What is the point of doing that? Isn’t that being foolish? So, when people do bad things, they are being foolish and won’t get anything except for more karma. 

I want to return to my innate innocence, but what does that look like? I don’t really know. When I look at young children just a few years old, they look at me with pure and innocent big eyes. I find them very simple, very honest, and very direct, without any of those complicated thoughts and behaviors that adults have, and yet, we often think that they are silly. 

People may say, “Aren’t you being silly yourself to think this way? You don’t even understand what others mean.” They might have a point based on their way of thinking, but I choose not to think complicated thoughts. To me, how I treat you has nothing to do with how you treat me. How you treat me reflects your xinxing, and how I treat you is a reflection of my xinxing. The compassion of gods and Buddhas is unchanging, and they will not change how they treat people no matter how humans treat them. 

No matter how degenerate human beings become or how viciously some people attack us, Master has told us how to conduct ourselves in his recent article “A Wake-Up Call:”

“To be able to regard anyone and everyone with compassion, to have love for all people, really isn’t something the average person can achieve. Harder still is to have a sense of compassion towards all living things in everything you do. But this is something practitioners of Dafa have to be able to do!” (“A Wake-Up Call”)

Master is telling us that, in today’s complicated environment, we must conduct ourselves based our Buddha nature, not the human mind; we conduct ourselves like gods and Buddhas in the Fa-rectification of the human world. 

The above is only my personal understanding at my current level. Please kindly point out anything inappropriate. Thank you.