By a Dafa practitioner in Mainland China

(Clearwisdom.net) Dafa practitioners are studying the Fa every day and each one of us may have different realizations at different levels. I would like to share with fellow practitioners my understanding regarding Fa-study. Please point out anything inappropriate.

Master said in the section "Whoever Practices Cultivation will Attain Gong:"

"After you watch that being leave your body, the master will take this person to practice cultivation in a dimension transformed by the master. It may be in the form of a bygone society, today's society, or a society in another dimension..." (Zhuan Falun)

My understanding is that when we study the Fa we are in a dimension Master has evolved for us. The transformation of our gong, the consummation of our world, the elimination of our karma and everything pertaining to us will finalize in this dimension. Master also said,

"I've also told you that this Fa is so powerful, and that I have melded my immense abilities into this Fa, so this Fa can do anything for you." ("Fa-Lecture during the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference")

When Dafa practitioners study the Fa these days, the whole cosmic body, "from particles and molecules to the universe, from the even smaller to the even greater," all of the countless beings are assimilating to the Fa at the same time. Therefore, when we do well in Fa-study, these beings will gather around us, listening to the Fa. They will be saved from danger, and some will even attain the Fa.

Different dimensions exist in the human domain, of which some are arranged by Master, and some are meticulous and careful age-old creations of the old forces. As long as we study the Fa well, we will stay in the dimensions evolved by Master and be able to fulfill our pre-historic pledge and save beings from danger.

If we cannot clarify the truth well, it must be because we have not studied the Fa well.

Master said in the section "Demonic Interference in Cultivation:"

"One's Primordial Spirit does not become extinct. Then, in your social activities in past lives, you might once have owed others, bullied others, or committed other wrongdoing. Those creditors will look for you. It is said in Buddhism that one lives because of karmic retribution. If you owe someone something, he will find you for the repayment. If he gets too much repayment, he will have to return the surplus to you the next time around. If a son disrespects his parents, they will trade places in the next life. This is how it cycles on and on. But we have indeed observed demonic interference, which prevents you from practicing qigong. All these have karmic relationships and are not without reason. It will not be allowed to be so without a reason." (Zhuan Falun)

I think the reason the old forces are meddling in the Fa-rectification is because they have followed that above-named principle -- the connection between predestined relationship and karmic retribution. Of course, this principle was absolutely right in the old universe prior to the Fa-rectification. Because the old forces could not see the new universe, they did their best to retain and safeguard this principle, and they have arranged Dafa practitioners' cultivation and their version of Fa-rectification according to this principle.

Today it is Master, however, who is carrying out the Fa-rectification, so we must completely negate the arrangements made by the old forces, including this before-mentioned principle. Then what did Master tell us? In the section "Cultivation Insanity" Master said,

"Psychosis occurs when a person's Main Consciousness becomes too weak. How weak can it become? It is like a person who can never take charge of himself. A mental patient's Main Spirit is just like that. It no longer wants to be in charge of the body. It is always in a daze and cannot become conscious. At this point, the person's Assistant Consciousness or foreign messages will interfere with him. There are so many levels in each dimension. All sorts of messages will disturb him. Besides, one's Main Spirit might have committed some wrongdoing in previous lives, and the creditors may want to harm him. All kinds of things can transpire." (Zhuan Falun)

I understand this paragraph of the Fa this way: when our main consciousness as Dafa practitioners is not clear-headed, "external messages" and "creditors" will follow the principles from the old universe; put in other words, the arrangements the old forces had made would rise up and interfere with us. They, in the name of "helping Dafa practitioners to improve" will "pick up an electric-shock club in his or her hand" and beat a Dafa practitioner until his righteous thoughts emerge. "Have him become clearheaded. Have his main consciousness become alert." That is how they will "educate him."

Then what is the path Master has arranged for us? Master requires Dafa practitioners to do the three things well. These are the prerequisite and guarantee for validating the Fa.

Studying the Fa is to constantly strengthen our main consciousness, and on the path of validating the Fa, the stronger our main consciousness the less opportunity the "creditors" arranged for by the old forces will have to interfere with us, and all the predestined relationships and karmic retributions Dafa practitioners formed in their many past lives with sentient beings will come to a good resolution.

Therefore, by studying the Fa well, we will be able to completely cancel out the arrangements from the old forces and at the same time comprehensively save beings from danger.

Before reaching Consummation, Dafa practitioners will always have some human notions and unrighteous thoughts on their minds. Where do they come from?

They could arise from karma or be arranged by the old forces. Externally, the old forces arranged for evil beings to control wicked people in this world to sabotage the Fa-rectification. They arranged for living beings to have all kinds of ways to think and to harbor notions, including every single thought of Dafa practitioners. For example, one such thought might be, "If I don't write guarantee letters I will be sent to brainwashing class," or "distributing Dafa truth clarifying flyers may be reported and I might get arrested." Once a practitioner follows this previously arranged way of thinking from the old forces, this thought process becomes a pursuit, and the evil arrangements the old forces put in the practitioner's way will take over. In other words, the practitioner will have fallen into their thousands-of-years-old, elaborate trap. Master said in "Spirit or Animal Possession:"

"It is precisely because of one's ill intentions that one brings bad things to oneself." (Zhuan Falun)

I know that Master elucidated this Fa principle when talking about "Consecration." When a practitioner's thought is not righteous,

"Well, a complete mind will form. Since this request is made to a Buddha statue, it is instantly projected onto the Buddha statue." "Other people also come to worship the Buddha statue. With this type of worship, they will gradually give it some amount of energy. It will be more dangerous if a practitioner worships it, for this worship will gradually give it energy and enable it to form a tangible body. Yet this tangible body is formed in another dimension." "It moves freely in another dimension and can control everyday people quite easily." (Zhuan Falun)

So a Dafa practitioner's dishonorable thought corresponds to an evil, material field with some energy in another dimension, which in turn manipulates everyday people to sabotage the Fa-rectification process.

Thus, as Dafa practitioners, we need to constantly distinguish the source of our every single thought. Only by studying the Fa more and studying the Fa well can we be clearheaded and keep to our upright thoughts. Regarding this issue, Master has pointed out again and again in Zhuan Falun:

1. "Your Mind Must Be Right:" "No matter how one uses Zhouyi to predict, some of it is already no longer true anyway. Predicting one way or another with some of it being true and some of it being false, this fortune-telling is allowed to exist in ordinary human society." "The entire life of a practitioner has been rearranged. One's palm reading, face reading, birth data and all messages in one's body are already different and have been changed. If you go to a fortune-teller, you will believe him. Why else would you do it? What he can tell are some superficial things about your past. Yet their substance has already changed. Then think about it, everyone: If you go to a fortune-teller, aren't you listening to and believing him? Then, doesn't it create a psychological burden for you? Isn't it an attachment if you burden yourself with thinking about it? So how can this attachment be removed? Haven't you self-imposed an additional tribulation on yourself? Won't you have to suffer more to give up this attachment? Every test or every tribulation is related to the matter of either progression or regression in cultivation. It is already difficult, yet still you add this self-imposed tribulation. How can you overcome it? You might come across hardships or troubles as a result of it."
2. "Characteristics of Falun Dafa:" "If you casually take other people's things and add them to your practice, the foreign messages will interfere with the things in this school of practice and you will go awry. In addition, this will be reflected in ordinary human society and bring about problems of ordinary people."
3. "Spirit or Animal Possession:" "Thus, one must conduct oneself well and truly practice cultivation in a righteous way. Do not mix it with anything else in cultivation, not even with any mind intention. Some people's Falun are deformed. Why are they deformed? They claim that they have not practiced other qigong. Whenever they are practicing, however, in their minds they add things from their previous practices. Aren't those things being brought into the practice?"
4. "Cultivation of Speech:" "Cultivation of mind meant that one would not even think."

In the process of validating Dafa, there are often puzzling and perplexing issues, and I can always find the answer from studying the Fa.

A while ago I was puzzled over the issue whether or not practitioners should go on a hunger strike in jail. When I read the section on "Bigu" ["avoidance of grains," an ancient term for abstinence from food and water], I realized that a hunger strike is not the best way to validate Dafa. Doing the three things Master told us - studying the Fa, sending forth righteous thoughts, and clarifying the truth - is the best way to eradicate the persecution and break through the imprisonment.

Then I was faced with a new puzzle - didn't the practitioners in jail clarify the truth? Shortly after, a practitioner who had been in jail since 1999 as a result of the persecution finally gained freedom. In fact he was released because we passed the words to him through his family member to clarify the truth. From talking to him I got to know the state of many practitioners in jail. Very commonly, they have unshakable faith in Master and Dafa, and no matter what kind of abuse and mistreatment they suffer under the persecution, they act righteously and are like men of steel. On the other hand, however, they indeed seldom clarified the truth to people inside the jail.

After understanding the Fa principles, we passed our realizations to practitioners in jail. We told them we must do well the three things Master bestowed upon us as our historic mission - study the Fa, send forth righteous thoughts and clarify the truth. The path Master arranged is to stop the persecution, step out of the evil's den and rejoin the mighty current of saving beings.

There are some practitioners around me who cultivate quietly at home. Recently, when I read the Fa, I always remind myself to help those practitioners and help them become genuine disciples.

A few things happened around us lately. Practitioner A lost the Minghui Weekly, and practitioner B was hit by a taxi on her way to get truth clarifying materials. She was thrown high in the air by the impact and then fell to the ground, but fortunately had no major injuries. A car ran over practitioner C's foot when C was delivering Dafa materials and bruised an entire side of her body.

We all sat down to search inward and each found our own impure mindset when doing Dafa work.

Nevertheless, I thought that we should not just limit ourselves to searching inward. We must first discern clearly who arranged this. Dafa material was lost, and practitioners ran into car accidents when doing Dafa work. The old forces arranged these things.

Master said in "Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference:"

"As to whether there are old forces interfering, when you're changing your own most surface bodies there is a portion that you need to endure yourselves. But relatively speaking it isn't much, and it won't have too much of an impact on validating the Fa. When big hardships come along, that has to be the evil interfering, and you have to send righteous thoughts to eliminate it! Today what Dafa disciples are doing are things that validate the Fa, and they're the most sacred and most magnificent things. If you're doing Dafa things and something happens during a critical time for saving sentient beings, then it must be interference. You need to evaluate it rationally."

The old forces do damage by taking advantage of practitioners' omissions. Thus it is primary to eliminate this interference by sending forth righteous thoughts. We should never allow the old forces to take advantage of practitioners' attachments and impure thoughts, to persecute them and sabotage the Fa-rectification. The first thing we should eradicate is this kind of so-called arrangement by the old forces.

I thought about the story of "pulling teeth" in "Hospital Treatment and Qigong Treatment" in Zhuan Falun:

"When a doctor of Western medicine pulls a tooth, he first injects an anesthetic, he jabs all over the place, and the jabbing hurts badly. Then, when the anesthetic kicks in the doctor pulls the tooth with a pair of pliers. After all that pulling, whoops, the tooth might even snap off with its root still in there. So then he uses a big hammer and a chisel to dig it out, and the pounding scares you out of your wits. Then he uses this sophisticated instrument to drill into you, and it's enough to make some people jump out of their seat. It really hurts, you bleed a lot, and you keep spitting out blood for a while."

Thinking back, isn't this the cultivation way that the old forces arranged for the practitioners? They use such a method to "pull teeth." The way that Master arranged for the practitioners to improve is like this,

"When he pulled somebody's tooth he'd open the solution's bottle and hold it next to the person's cheek where the bad tooth was, and ask the person to suck in the vapors of the solution a few times. Barely any of the solution would be consumed, and he'd cap it and set it aside. Then he'd take a matchstick out of his pocket, and as he talked about his solution he'd just flick the tooth with the matchstick and it would pop out. It wouldn't hurt, and there'd just be a few flecks of blood, but no bleeding." [Zhuan Falun]

The different paths we take will lead to different states. The path Master arranged for us is to cultivate while living a normal life in ordinary society. For example, whenever I am greedy for food, I will spill sauce from the dish onto my clothes. When I have an omission in my understanding of the Fa and follow the old forces' arrangement from time to time, the water pipes in my home will start leaking, again and again. When I don't study the Fa well, I have headaches. When I was attached to the emotions between man and woman and didn't realize it, I received a Valentine's message on Valentine's Day from a person of the opposite sex, more than ten years younger than me, which woke me up and made me examine my conscience.

I thought to myself that Master is pointing out my attachment. If I can get rid of it, then there will be no loss to Fa-rectification. Even though we have attachments, we should not allow the evil to use them as excuses to damage Fa-rectification. Two recent Minghui Weekly issues (#106 and #107) published some information about a Dafa production materials site, at which practitioners were attached to emotions between the opposite sexes, which eventually resulted in the site being destroyed. Regarding this matter, I think that for practitioners to get rid of their attachments is one aspect, while the key point is that they didn't negate the old forces' arrangements, and hence brought losses to the Fa.

In view of what happened in France recently, isn't it again the old forces' arrangement to improve Dafa disciples' characters? Is it the case that Dafa disciples' characters can only improve when the Fa suffers losses? Isn't there any other way we can take, aside from this restriction?

We should all calm down and think about it, and understand in what kind of cultivation state we Dafa disciples should get rid of our attachments. We should be clear whose arrangements to choose. If you don't want it and you don't choose it, what could the old forces do with their arrangements?

"While a demon is one foot tall, a Tao would be one yard high." Dafa disciples' aspiration comes from the Fa. When we study the Fa, the profundities and the wisdom of the Fa will constantly reflect onto our minds and thoughts. In "Mind Intent," Master said,

"There is another form: Namely, those of you with very good inborn quality can easily be controlled by higher beings and do things." [Zhuan Falun]

We are assisting Master in Fa-rectification as practitioners in the human world. In order for Dafa disciples to validate Dafa in this world and be able to live here, there have to be some basic human elements left in us, including various kinds of attachments and desires. These things are left for such a purpose, to validate Dafa.

Yet the old forces hold onto these things Dafa disciples still harbor and take these as their so-called excuses to improve Dafa disciples, because they believe that Dafa disciples' personal improvement and reaching Consummation are the most important and they want to interfere with that.

Then how should Dafa disciples get rid of these surface manifestations?

Master said in "Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference,"

"You're still continually changing this most surface part that hasn't changed. That's why you can't go without studying the Fa. You must study the Fa well. In the process of studying the Fa you'll be able to keep clearing away bad elements in yourself, changing the last bit of stuff you have that hasn't yet been changed. Why did I always use to tell you so emphatically to study the Fa, study the Fa, and study the Fa well? Because it is of utmost importance."

The most noticeable experience in my cultivation is that whenever I become slack in Fa-study, my attachments and desires will surface.

The above are just my experiences and comprehension during Fa-study. In fact, disciples can never understand all of the boundless profundities of the Fa. But all of us have a common experience, which is that studying the Fa is extremely important. Studying the Fa is the prerequisite and guarantee for us to assist Master in Fa-rectification, to improve ourselves and to reach Consummation. I remember a practitioner once saying, "What have Dafa disciples relied on since day one till now? It is Master's Fa."

My understanding is limited to my own level. I hope fellow practitioners might kindly point out anything improper.

Posting date: 4/9/2004
Original article date: 4/8/2004
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 3/6/2004
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/2/29/68875.html

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