Arhat

"He who disregards
ordinary sorrows and joys,
A cultivator is he.
He who has not attachment
to worldly loss and gain,
An Arhat is he."

 

-May 1995, Li Hongzhi

 

 

 

 

 

A Person With Great Spiritual Inclination

Now, what’s “a person with great spiritual inclination”? A person with “great spiritual
inclination” is different from somebody with “a good base.” People with great spiritual
inclination are hard to find. It’s only once in a great while that somebody like that is born.
Of course, for starters, someone with great spiritual inclination has to have a lot of virtue.
That field of his white matter has to be pretty big. You can be sure of that. And at the
same time, he has to be able to bear the hardship of hardships, he has to have great
endurance, he has to be able to make sacrifices, he has to be able to guard his virtue, and
he’s got to have good comprehension, just to give you an idea.

And what’s the hardship of hardships? In Buddhism it’s believed that being human is
suffering hardship—as long as you’re a human being you have to suffer. They say that
none of the beings in other dimensions have this kind of body that ordinary people do, so
they don’t get sick, and they don’t have the problems of birth, aging, sickness, or death.
They just don’t have that kind of suffering. The people in other dimensions can float in
the air and they’re weightless, and it’s just so wonderful. But ordinary people, exactly
because they have this body, they have these problems: if it’s cold they can’t stand it, if
it’s hot they can’t stand it, if they’re thirsty they can’t stand it, if they’re hungry they
can’t stand it, and if they’re tired they can’t stand it, and then they have to deal with birth,
aging, sickness, and death. You get the idea, it doesn’t feel good.

I read in the paper that when the Tangshan City earthquake hit, a lot of people died,
but some folks were resuscitated. A special investigation was done with that group of
people, and they were asked what it felt like to die. But, to people’s surprise, they all
talked about one unique situation—and they were all consistent on this—and that is, at
the very moment they were dying they didn’t have any fear, and just the opposite, they
suddenly felt a sense of relief and could feel an excitement brewing. Some of them felt
like they’d been suddenly freed of the restraints of their bodies, as if they’d floated up
like something buoyant and wonderful, and they saw their own bodies, some of them saw
beings in other dimensions, and some even went off to various places. They all said that
they experienced at that instant a sense of relief and a brewing excitement, and there
wasn’t any feeling of pain. So this tells us that when we have a mortal human body we’re
suffering. But since we all came to this world the same way we don’t realize that we’re
suffering.

I’ve said that a person has to bear the hardship of hardships. The other day I
mentioned that mankind’s concept of space-time is different from that of other, larger
space-times. What’s for us over here a traditional block of time, like two hours, is
actually a year for beings in another dimension. Let’s say somebody is here cultivating in
this tough environment—to them it’s just incredible. He wants to find the Dao, and he
wants to cultivate, so this guy’s just amazing to them. He suffers so much, but he hasn’t
ruined his original nature and he still wants to cultivate and return. Why can a cultivator
be helped with no conditions attached? That’s why. Say somebody meditates for a whole
night in the ordinary people’s dimension, when they see it, they can’t help but say he’s
just amazing. “He’s already been sitting there six years”—and that’s because a couple
hours for us is a year over there. The human dimension is just extremely special.

So what is “bearing the hardship of hardships”? I’ll give you an illustration. There’s
this guy who goes to work one day. His company is in a slump, and it’s got to do
something about its lack of productivity, so his company has to be restructured to
increase individual accountability, and extra employees have to be laid off. He’s one of
them, so he loses his job all of a sudden. Now how’s that feel? He has no source of
income now—how’s he going to support his family? He doesn’t have any other skills. So
he goes home depressed. When he gets home he finds out his elderly parent who lives at
his house is sick, really sick, so he gets worked into a frenzy and quickly sends his parent
to the hospital. He goes through a ton of trouble to borrow some money so he can secure
a bed at the hospital for his parent, and heads back home to get some things for him or
her. No sooner does he get home than a teacher comes and tells him, “Your son hurt
somebody in a fight, you’d better hurry over and patch things up.” He takes care of it,
goes back home, sits down, and just moments later a phone call comes, “Your wife is
having an affair.” Now of course you won’t run into that. The average person couldn’t
take the hardship, and he’d think, “Why go on? I’m gonna find a rope and hang myself—
I’ve had enough! Time to put an end to it all!” I’m saying that you have to be able to bear
the hardship of hardships. And of course it doesn’t have to take that form. You get caught
in the middle of people scheming against each other, tensions wear on your character, and
there’s all that fighting for personal gain—that’s not much easier. A lot of people just live
to prove their worth, and they’ll hang themselves when it’s too much. So if we want to
cultivate in an environment this complicated, we’ve got to be able to bear the hardship of
hardships, and we’ve also got to have great endurance.

So what’s “great endurance”? To be a practitioner you should, for starters, be able to
“not hit back when attacked, not talk back when insulted.” You have to endure. If you
don’t, what are you calling yourself a practitioner for? Some people have said, “This
endurance thing is hard to do. I’ve got a bad temper.” If you have a bad temper then just
change it. Practitioners have to endure. Some people blow up even when they’re
disciplining their kids, they’ll yell and make a big scene. You don’t have to be like that
when you’re disciplining your kids. You shouldn’t really get angry. You should teach
your kids with reason and good sense, and that’s the only way you can really teach them
well. If you can’t even get over little things, and you lose your temper, then forget about
gong. There are people who say, “If I’m walking down the street and somebody kicks
me, I can endure it, since nobody knows me.” I’d say that’s not good enough. Maybe
later on you’ll be slapped in the face a couple times in front of the very person you least
want to lose face around, and that’s to humiliate you, to see how you handle it, and to see
whether you can endure it. Maybe you can endure it but you can’t get it off your mind.
That’s not good enough. You know, when a person reaches the Arhat level he’s not fazed
by anything he comes across. He’s not the least bit concerned about any human things
and he’s always upbeat. It doesn’t matter how much he loses out, he’s upbeat and doesn’t
mind. When you can really do that, then you’ve achieved the initial Arhat Fruition.

Some people have said, “If we endure that much, ordinary people will say we’re so
weak and so easy to take advantage of.” I’d say that’s not being weak. Let’s think about
it. Even among ordinary people you find older folks and people with better education
who always exercise polite restraint and don’t stoop to the other person’s level. Then that
should be doubly so for us practitioners. How is that weak? I’d say it reflects your great
endurance, it’s a reflection of your strong willpower. Only practitioners have that kind of
great endurance. There’s a saying, “When the common man is humiliated, he draws his
sword to fight back.” He’s an ordinary person, so of course—“You insult me, I’ll insult
you. You hit me, I’ll hit you right back.” That’s an ordinary person for you. Could you
call him a practitioner? If you don’t have a will of steel, or if you aren’t able to control
yourself, you won’t be able to handle it right.

You know about General Han Xin who lived in ancient times, and how they said Han
Xin was talented. He was Emperor Liu Bang’s chief general, he was the pillar of the
state. And why was he able to do such big things? They say that from a young age Han
Xin was no average person. There’s a classic story about Han Xin being “humiliated
under somebody’s legs.” Han Xin was already practicing martial arts even in his youth,
and a martial artist would always carry a sword on him. One day Han Xin was walking
down the street when a thug blocked his path, with his hands on his hips, “What do you
have that sword slung over your shoulder for? Would you dare kill a man? If so, I dare
you to cut off my head.” And he stuck out his head as he was saying that. Han Xin
thought, “Why would I want to cut your head off?” Back then, too, you’d be reported to
the authorities for cutting off somebody’s head, and you’d have to pay for it with your
own life. Could you just kill somebody on a whim? When he saw that Han Xin didn’t
dare kill him, he said, “Since you don’t dare to kill me, crawl through between my legs.”
And Han Xin really did crawl under his legs. That showed that Han Xin had amazing
endurance, and that he wasn’t like your average guy, and that’s why he could do such big
things. “A man has to struggle to prove his worth”—those are ordinary people’s words.
Think about it, everybody, isn’t life exhausting then? Isn’t that a pain? Is it worth it? And
Han Xin was an ordinary person, after all—we cultivators should be a lot better than him.
Our goal is to reach a level beyond ordinary people, to forge ahead to even higher levels.
We won’t run into anything like he did, but when a cultivator is insulted or humiliated
around ordinary people, it’s not necessarily any easier. I’d say that those frictions with
people that wear down on your character aren’t any easier, they’re actually worse, and
they’re pretty hard to handle.

Now at the same time, a cultivator has to be able to let go—let go of all kinds of
attachments and desires that people have. You can’t up and do that in one shot, but we
can do it gradually. If you could just do it right off today, then you’d be a Buddha today.
Cultivation takes time. But you shouldn’t slack off, either. If you say, “Teacher said
cultivation takes time, so let’s take our time,” that’s not the idea! You have to really be
strict with yourself. In Buddha Law cultivation you have to boldly and vigorously forge
ahead.

You also have to be able to guard your virtue, you have to guard your character, and
you can’t act rashly. You can’t just do whatever you want—you have to guard your
character. There’s a saying you probably hear all the time when you’re around ordinary
people, “Accumulate virtue by doing good things.” Practitioners don’t think about
accumulating virtue, though. What we do is guard our virtue. And why do we make a
point of guarding virtue? Because here’s what we’ve seen. Ordinary people make a
practice of accumulating virtue, and when they’ve accumulated virtue and done good
things they’ll get good things in their next life. But that doesn’t apply to us here—if your
cultivation’s a success you’ll attain the Dao, and there won’t be any question of the next
life. But there’s another layer of meaning to this “guarding virtue” we’re talking about
here. It’s that these two kinds of matter we carry with us on our bodies aren’t
accumulated in just one lifetime, they’ve been passed down for ages. You can scour the
city but there’s a chance you won’t run into any good deeds to do. And you could even
do that every day and maybe you still wouldn’t come across anything.

But there’s yet another layer of meaning, and a person needs to know about it if he’s
going to accumulate virtue. Maybe you see something that looks like a good thing to do,
and you go and do it, but maybe it turns out to be a bad thing. Or maybe you see
something that looks like it’s a bad thing, and you step in to stop it, but maybe it turns out
it was a good thing. And why is that? It’s because you can’t see the underlying causes.
Judicial laws govern ordinary people’s affairs, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But
being a practitioner is a higher thing. So as a higher person you have to hold yourself to
higher laws and higher logic. You can’t evaluate things with the reasoning of ordinary
people or with ordinary laws. When you don’t know the underlying causes of something
you’ll probably handle it wrong. That’s why we talk about nonaction—you can’t just do
whatever you want. Some people say, “But I just want to make sure justice is served.”
Then I’d say great, we should all just enroll in police academy then? But we’re not telling
you to do nothing when you come across terrible things like murder and arson. I’m just
explaining that when people are fighting with each other, and maybe one person even
kicks the other, or one of them slugs the other one, maybe that guy owed the other person
something, and now they’re settling the debt. So if you step in they can’t settle it, and
they’ll have to do it again the next time around. What this means, then, is that you’d
probably do the wrong thing and lose virtue since you can’t see the underlying causes.
It’s fine for an ordinary person to do something about some ordinary people’s thing.
He sizes it up with the reasoning of ordinary people. But you, on the other hand, you have
to use higher reasoning to size things up. And there’s a problem with your character if
you don’t do anything when you see something awful like murder or arson. How could
you then demonstrate that you’re a good person? If you don’t even do anything about
things like murder and arson, then what would you do something about? But one thing is,
these things don’t have a lot to do with us cultivators, so chances are that wasn’t planned
for you, and chances are you won’t be made to encounter them. When we talk about
guarding virtue, it’s to have you avoid doing bad things. Maybe you do that thing ever so
slightly, but it could still be doing a bad thing, and then you’ll lose virtue. And once you
lose virtue, how are you going to raise your level? How will you achieve your final goal?
So these kinds of questions are part of it. And also, your comprehension has to be good.
If you’ve got a good base, maybe it’ll make your comprehension good, and influences
from your environment can play a role, too.

And we’ve said, too, that if every one of us cultivates inward, if every one of us
examines his own character for causes, if when we don’t do well we look inside ourselves
for the cause, and we try to do better next time, and if we think about other people first
any time we do something, then the world will change for the better, morals will go back
up, people’s civility will improve, and crime will go down. Maybe we won’t even need
policemen. There will be no need for things like neighborhood watch, and everyone will
watch over himself, and they’ll look inside their own minds to fix things. Wouldn’t you
say that’d be great? We know how laws and regulations are now getting more and more
complete and tight over time. Then why do people still do bad things? Why don’t they
follow the law? It’s because you can’t police their minds, and when nobody is watching
they’ll still do bad things. But if everyone were to cultivate inward things would be
totally different, and you wouldn’t need to be a whistleblower all the time.

We can only teach the Law up to this level. You have to cultivate to get what’s
higher. The questions some people are asking are getting more and more specific. Now if
I were to answer every question in your life, what’d be left for you to cultivate with! You
have to cultivate for yourself, and you have to come to your own realizations. If I spelled
everything out you wouldn’t have anything left to cultivate with. But you don’t have to
worry, because the Great Law is now being spread, and you can base your actions on the
Great Law.

 

I think the time for my transmitting the Law is pretty much coming to a close, so I
want to leave you with the true things, and this way you’ll have the Law to guide you
from here on out as you cultivate. The whole time I’ve been transmitting the Law, I’ve
made a point of being responsible to you and to society, and we’ve really been able to
follow through on this. I won’t comment on whether we’ve done it well or not—public
opinion will tell. My wish was to spread the Great Law to the public and have more
people benefit from it, and to make it possible for those people who truly want to
cultivate to follow the Law and cultivate up to high levels. And while we’ve been
spreading the Law, we’ve spelled out how to act like a good human being, and I hope that
after you finish this class, at the very least you can be a good person even if you can’t be
somebody who cultivates by the Great Law, and that will benefit our world. Actually,
now you know how to be a good person, and after this class you can be a good person.
There have been some things that haven’t gone smoothly while I’ve been transmitting
the Law, and big-time interference has come at us from all sides. But thanks to all the
enthusiastic support from the organizers and community leaders, and also all the efforts
of our staff members, our classes have gone pretty well.

All the things I’ve taught you during the classes are to guide you in cultivating to high
levels, and nobody has ever taught these things before when they preached the Law.
What we’ve taught is really clear-cut, and we’ve incorporated things that have been put
forth by modern science and today’s human-body sciences, and what’s more, the level
we’ve explained it at is quite high. We’ve done that mainly for you all, to help you truly
obtain the Law in the time ahead, to cultivate up—that’s my starting point. While we’re
transmitting the teachings and the exercises, a lot of folks feel that the Law is pretty good,
but hard to put into action. But actually, I think that whether it’s hard depends on the
person. A really average, ordinary person doesn’t want to cultivate, and he’ll feel that
cultivation is just way too hard, that it’s unthinkable, and he’ll think it’s a waste of time.
He’s an ordinary person and he doesn’t want to cultivate, so he’ll think it’s really hard.
Lao-zi said, “When the highest type of men hear the Dao, with diligence they will
practice it. When average men hear the Dao, it seems some is kept and some is lost.
When the lowest type of men hear the Dao, they laugh at it heartily. If they didn’t laugh
at it, it wouldn’t be the Dao.” For a true cultivator, I’d say it’s easy—it’s not some
impossible mission. And in fact, a lot of our veteran students here in the audience, and a
lot of them who aren’t here, have already cultivated to levels that are quite high. I didn’t
tell you this before because I was afraid you’d form attachments, that you’d be pleased
with yourselves, and so on, and that would affect how your potency grows. For every one
of you who makes up his mind to cultivate, you will be able to endure things, and when
your personal welfare is on the line, you will be able to let go of your attachments, and
you will be able to take those things lightly. As long as you can do that it’s not hard, in
fact. Now those people who say it’s hard, it turns out, they just can’t let go of those
things. Doing the exercises isn’t hard in its own right, and there’s nothing hard about
raising your level in and of itself. They only say it’s hard because they can’t let go of
their human thoughts. The reason is, it’s hard to let those things go when your personal
welfare is on the line—that benefit is right there, in front of you, how can you let it go?
When they think it’s hard, we should know that that’s the reason why it’s hard. When we
get into conflicts with people, if you can’t swallow that anger, or you aren’t able to
handle it as a practitioner, I’d say that just doesn’t work. Back when I was cultivating, a
lot of men of great character told me this: “It’s hard to endure, but you can endure it. It’s
hard to do, but you can do it.” And that’s really how it is. When you go back you might
want to give it a try. When you’re going through an awful tribulation, or maybe a critical
juncture, give it a try. When it’s hard to endure, try to endure it. When it seems
impossible to do, or just hard to do, give it a try and see just what you can do. And when
you can really do it, just like that worn and weary traveler, you’ll see, “the shade of
willows, the blooms of flowers, a place to rest my head”!

We should probably stop here, because if I say too much it’ll be hard for you to
remember it all. So I’ll just say a few things in parting. I hope that in your cultivation that
lies ahead you’ll go about things as a practitioner and truly keep cultivating. I hope that
both our new students and veteran students are able to cultivate in Dafa, and have
complete success! I hope that after you go back home you’ll seize the day to really
cultivate.

 

From Zhuan Falun, Turning The Law Wheel by Li Hongzhi