Clarify the Truth Using the Right Words

(Clearwisdom.net)

While chatting with a couple last night, I showed them the book containing Zhang Cui Ying's drawings. The husband made a comment about a statement written in the book. He said, "It says here that China initiated the persecution against Falun Gong. Actually, I thought it was Jiang who initiated the persecution."

Master said, "All the methods employed by the evil political gang of scoundrels in the Chinese government are the most despicable, the most evil, and unknown to history." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2001 Canada Fa Conference") In this Fa lecture, Master made it very clear that it was only Jiang and his gang who, out of their personal interests, initiated the persecution, not the whole "Chinese government" nor "China" who initiated the persecution.

We often talk about being compassionate to all sentient beings. To undermine Fa-rectification is a great sin, and we cannot just casually toss words around and assign blame. As a matter of fact, Clearwisdom has always placed a very strong emphasis on selecting the right words when clarifying the truth. However, many practitioners, including some who put together truth-clarifying material, didn't pay attention to this issue.

When we print out materials or clarify the truth, we need to take extra care. If people feel upset about what we say, we will get nowhere in trying to save these sentient beings. Some practitioners haven't taken this issue seriously, following a casual way of speaking rather than clarifying the truth with carefully chosen words.

If we had emphasized in the beginning that it was Jiang who initiated the persecution against Falun Gong and "Truthfulness, Benevolence, Forbearance" from the very beginning when the persecution just started, would we still have such a huge task of exposing Jiang's evil nature now?

Although the effect of clarifying the truth depends on many factors, the fact that we sometimes failed to use the right words has had a certain negative effect. The misuse of words could easily be taken advantage of by the evil, who would accuse us of being against China and against the Chinese government.

In the future, let's all improve in this area.

The above is only my personal opinion, please point out anything inappropriate.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.cc/mh/articles/2002/8/15/34860.html

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