Maintain Righteous Thoughts and a Pure Heart at All Times -- My Tiananmen Experience

Matthias Slaats (Belgium)

Shared at European 2002 Conference

Greetings Master, greetings fellow practitioners.

I am Matthias Slaats, a Belgian Dafa practitioner. I'm 29 years old, happily married and work in a Belgian software company. I started practising Falun Gong about 2 years ago after reading an article in the newspaper about the persecution in China.

On February 14, 2002, I went to Tiananmen together with almost 100 other practitioners from all over the world. We went there to clarify the truth, to eliminate the evil and to support the Chinese practitioners that have been persecuted for so long.

A lot of us didn't even make it to the location of our meeting and our plans were changed by the circumstances. What initially felt like a drawback, soon proved to be an extremely valuable chance for clarifying the truth to the Beijing police. It also became a great opportunity to deepen our own understanding and to reinforce our own righteous thoughts.

Personally, I think I gained a better understanding on 3 different issues.

First, when the evil is obviously present, it is easier to distinguish good and evil. It is then also clearer for a Dafa disciple to decide what to do and how to react. It becomes much more obvious that a Dafa disciple has to stay within the Fa at all times, with every action he takes and with his complete heart and mind. The slightest deviation from Zhen Shan Ren gives the evil an opportunity to survive and even attack the Fa and Dafa disciples. Only by having a righteous heart and a clear and calm mind at all times can a Dafa disciple defeat the evil and truly assist the Fa-rectification.

At home, I had never realised so clearly that going astray in my heart and mind for even just a short while could give the evil a clear opportunity. I never realised so clearly that every bit of laziness, every attachment or every impure thought is an imperfection in what we do and thus an opportunity for the evil.

However, in the midst of the environment where the evil forces are more noticeable and more aggressive, it almost materialised in front of my eyes how every deviation from Zhen Shan Ren can have evil consequences. Although those consequences are not so obvious here in our calm and safe cultivation environment in Western Europe, I believe the principle stays the same. Even if we can't detect the evil so easily, it is here as well and even if the evil doesn't seem so harmful here, it is just the same evil. That means we have to be just as strict with ourselves here as the practitioners in Beijing have to be. The fact that we don't notice the evil so obviously in physical forms doesn't make it necessarily easier for us. We have to stay pure and clear just the same, even without this constant obvious pressure. Only if we manage to really do that, will we be able to assist in the complete eradication of the evil, without giving it any opportunity to make use of any loophole in our minds or hearts.

I now believe that Master was explaining this to us in the article "No Politics," where Master said: "Human society is a good place for cultivation, since everything here can lead to attachments. Precisely because of this, a person who is able to step out of it and get rid of all his attachments to human society is magnificent and is able to reach Consummation." This article was written particularly for students outside Mainland China.

The second thing that became clear to me in the middle of all that evil is that if we want to be able to act and think with a pure heart and clear mind at all times, it is important that we pay attention to the way we do things, more than to the result. Of course, we will not do anything if we don't want to obtain any result. We want to clarify the truth, save sentient beings, eliminate the evil and assist the Fa-rectification as a Dafa particle. In the article "To the Clear Harmony Website of Europe," Master explained to us: "The main body of Dafa disciples is in China. Everything that Dafa disciples in other areas around the world do is, other than consummating everything of their own, exposing the persecution of Dafa and Dafa disciples in China."

However, if we leave the Fa while doing these things, if we focus more on the result we want to obtain than on the way we do it, we will create possibilities for the evil to survive. If we are attached to what we will obtain, we will make mistakes and do actions that are not within Zhen Shan Ren. That means that it will not be real Fa-rectification. Only if we pay more importance to how we do it, can we be sure to be assisting the true Fa-rectification. If we do things from within Zhen Shan Ren then the result will always be good, even if it is something completely different from what we had in mind.

Again, this is more obvious when you are in the middle of an environment where the evil is physically noticeable. But that doesn't mean it is less true in the rest of the world. If we do things for Dafa without staying in Zhen Shan Ren the whole time, we may not notice our mistake very clearly here in Western Europe. But it is a mistake all the same and the result of that action cannot be real Fa-rectification. Only if we clearly realise this will we be able to avoid this mistake.

In the article "Fa-Lecture at the Conference in Florida, U.S.A." Master said: "When a cultivator's mind departs from the Fa, the evil will find its way in. Seen with the human eye, people and everything else in the human world are three-dimensional. But in reality, all matter in humankind's entire dimension--be it flowers, grass, trees, human beings, the air, etc.--everything is made up of particles of that size (molecules). And in this layer of particles, everything, including the human body, is connected. When a person himself doesn't have righteous thoughts, all the bad things in the cosmos, or in the Three Realms, will flow around continually in the human body, and even when they stay there the person doesn't realise it. That's how people are manipulated; in other words, they manipulate people when these particles are able to connect with each other."

By staying in the Fa for everything we do, we will have the opportunity to help save more beings. If we keep a pure heart we will be able to eliminate the evil and give more people an opportunity to get closer to Dafa.

The third thing that became clear to me is that eliminating the evil is not an act of revenge. It is pure compassion. Immediate retribution in this lifetime is not revenge. It is pure compassion. In the midst of aggressiveness and evilness, this becomes more and more clear. Especially if you can see and almost physically feel people change their minds, turn away from the evil and approach Dafa. This truly is a very solemn thing. No matter how many things a person has done that appear to be evil, if that person's mind can still be changed and brought back to Dafa, then we should treat that person with compassion.

These are the most important things that became clear to me during my experience in China. If you have any remarks please let me know.

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