By a Dafa disciple in China

(Clearwisdom.net)

The family members of practitioners should have a clearer understanding of the truth about Falun Dafa than other people, but why do many practitioners' families try to stop us from stepping forward to clarify the truth and why can they not understand our actions? The key is that sometimes we simply equate righteous thoughts and righteous actions with clarifying the truth, and we fail to carefully examine whether every thought and intention of ours conforms to the standards of a cultivator.

Take the following example: In the past, I never put my income together with my husband's income. After the persecution started, I lost my job but I still had some savings. During this period of time, I also used some of my savings to copy truth-clarifying materials, and I thought I should reserve these savings for Dafa. However, there was a problem with my family's financial situation after I lost my job. When I asked my husband for living expenses, he said, "You still have money," and refused to give me any money. There was no positive result even after I talked to him several times. I started to feel uneasy in my mind and I also quarreled with him.

It was not until recently that I started to see that I still had the manifestation of selfishness at that time. It is not that I used money to do Dafa work that was the problem, but my state of mind was not pure at that time. On the surface, I had the determination to devote myself to Dafa, but later I had the mindset that I would gain for myself by contributing more towards Fa-rectification. I could have solved my family's needs myself, but I still asked my husband for money. How can we participate in Fa-rectification cultivation with such a starting point? How can we achieve good effects when we clarify the truth? In the eyes of everyday people that have been influenced by the lies and propaganda, how can they not think that we are being selfish? Moreover, under the misleading propaganda they will also conclude that such behavior of ours comes from practicing Falun Gong. Don't such results undermine our original intention to validate Dafa?

Master Li tells us to harmonize well the Fa at the human level and conform to the standards of this level's Fa. If we can help everyday people see that we practitioners indeed do the right thing under any circumstance, aren't we validating Dafa's purity and righteousness with every word and action?

I think that many fellow practitioners encounter family conflicts when validating Dafa. Maybe the format and extent of conflicts are different, but in order for the problem to reach a harmonious solution, we need to discard various attachments and rectify our understanding about righteous thoughts and righteous actions. Dafa disciples' righteous thoughts and actions not only include going out to clarify the truth, but also include every thought and intention in our daily life. We should start from the small corner that is around us.

I have written down my understanding for other practitioners' reference. Please kindly correct me if there is anything inappropriate.

Posting date: 9/27/2002
Original article date: 8/22/2002
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 9/22/2002
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2002/9/17/36696.html

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