Teachings of Falun Gong - Cultivation

Cultivation

From the beginning, Li has asserted his absolute authority over the transmission of the teachings and the use of healing powers of Falun Gong: he said in Changchun that only he is possessed of these right, and any who violate are to be expelled. Li said: "If someone treats other people's illnesses or invites others to come to our practice point to be treated, this is a violation of the Dafa. The problem is serious: no one has the right to do so. If such a thing happens, that person is not my disciple. If an assistant does such a thing, replace him right away. These two phenomena must be resolutely eliminated." He wrote in Zhuan Falun prohibiting his followers charging fees for workshops, saying "If you collect fees, my dharma bodies will take away everything that you have, so that you will no longer belong to our Falun Dafa, and what you teach will not be our Falun Dafa."

Li Hongzhi describes Falun Gong as a "high-level cultivation practice" which, in the past, "served as an intensive cultivation method that required practitioners with extremely high Xinxing (mind-nature) or great inborn quality"; he teaches that practice will reveal the principles of the universe and life at different levels to those who dedicate themselves to its study. By cultivating xinxing to assimilate to the nature of the universe, and by eliminating karma though enduring tribulations and hardships, one can return to the "original, true self", and understand the truth of human life. In Falun Dafa, Truthfulness (Zhen 真), Compassion (Shan 善), Forbearance (Ren 忍) is seen as the fundamental characteristic of the cosmos, and the process of cultivation, one of the practitioner assimilating himself to this by letting go of attachments and negative thoughts. In Zhuan Falun, Li Hongzhi says, "As a practitioner, if you assimilate yourself to this characteristic you are one that has attained the Tao—The truth is really just that simple."

Falun Gong echoes traditional Chinese beliefs that humans are connected to the universe through mind and body, according to Danny Schechter. Li challenges "conventional mentalities", and sets out to unveil myths of the universe, time-space, and the human body. The opening statement of Zhuan Falun includes the phrase "If human beings are able to take a fresh look at themselves as well as the universe and change their rigid mentalities, humankind will make a leap forward."

Li says that raising one's xinxing is fundamental to cultivating oneself. Improving xinxing means relinquishing human attachments, which prevent people from awakening. The term attachments refer to jealousy, competitiveness, fame, showing off, pursuit of material gain, anger, lust and similar traits. In Zhuan Falun, he states "You must eliminate all ill thoughts among everyday people—only then can you move up."

Li argues that having material possessions itself is not a problem, but that the problem is with developing attachments to material things: "In our school of practice, those who practice cultivation among everyday people are required to practice cultivation precisely in ordinary human society, and to fit in among everyday people as much as possible. You are not really asked to lose anything materially. It does not matter how high your position ranks or how much wealth you own. The key is whether you can abandon that attachment." Ownby says that for Li Hongzhi, an attachment is "literally any desire, emotion, habit, or orientation which stands between a practitioner (or any human being for that matter) and the pursuit of truth and cultivation." At the beginning of Zhuan Falun Li says "the entire cultivation process for a practitioner is one of constantly giving up human attachments. In ordinary human society, people compete with, deceive, and harm each other for a little personal gain. All of these mentalities must be given up."

Li also says that loss and gain does not refer to the loss of money or the gain of comfort, rather the measure of how many human attachments one can lose, and how much one can enlighten in the course of cultivation practice.

Ownby regards as most difficult to practice Li's requirement for practitioners to reduce the attachment to sentimentality or qing(情). In Lecture Four of Zhuan Falun Li says: "Why can human beings be human? It is because human beings have sentimentality. They live just for this sentimentality. Affection among family members, love between a man and a woman, love for parents, feelings, friendship, doing things for friendship, and everything else all relate to this sentimentality. Whether a person likes to do something or not, is happy or unhappy, loves or hates something, and everything in the entire human society comes from this sentimentality. If this sentimentality is not relinquished, you will be unable to practice cultivation. If you are free from this sentimentality, nobody can affect you. An everyday person’s mind will be unable to sway you. What takes over in its place is benevolence, which is something more noble." Ownby regards this as "quite Buddhist, as it is a way out of the web of human relations...and thus a step toward individual enlightenment."

Ownby says that Li urges practitioners to abandon human attachments not for achieving selfish ends, but "quite the contrary. Practitioners are enjoined to treat others with compassion and benevolence in order to cultivate virtue and work off karma." He says that such compassion and benevolence should not be reserved to those with whom one had a prior attachment, nor should the goal be to inspire gratitude or love. "Instead, one should be good because this conforms to the nature of the universe, not for any ulterior motive, be it as innocuous as 'feeling good about oneself and others.'" Li also insists that practitioners do not withdraw from the world, and that they maintain interactions with nonpractitioners, including "even those who are hostile to practice." The point here, according to Ownby, is that before the practitioner cultivates to such a point that they are dispassionate in their compassion, the stress experienced in the secular environment "constitutes a form of suffering which will enable them to reduce their karma."