By a Dafa practitioner from Taiwan

(Clearwisdom.net) Recently, I heard that many fellow practitioners are in debt. Some of them have been in debt for a long time and their responses to it differ. One practitioner recently borrowed a lot of money from other practitioners privately at different times. Unaware that he had already borrowed a great deal of money from many others, all these practitioners therefore were willing to help him, thinking that a cultivator was bound to be good for the loan. Unfortunately, he never repaid anyone.

Practitioner A's financial situation was already not good, but he still borrowed money without a good reason. When he could not borrow enough from regular sources in society, he began to borrow from fellow practitioners. Practitioner B's family had a shop, so A visited and called B frequently to ask for help. Practitioner B told him that he should shoulder his own responsibility instead of asking others to assume it. In addition, not all practitioners are rich people, and those that run shops may have taken out business loans from banks. Also, B's husband is not a practitioner and would have a hard time understanding it if his wife were to loan money to A.

After sharing with practitioner B, we felt it would be a good idea to remind others in the same situation to always view things from the perspective of the Fa (1). They should not do things according to the standards of everyday people because of financial pressure. I think that many times practitioners who have made such loans keep silent about these situations because they want to protect their pride and feel that asking for the money back might destroy a relationship. Also, since they know they need to cultivate their speech as practitioners, they don't talk about it with other people. As a result of this situation, many practitioners continue to borrow money.

At present, many practitioners need money urgently. I agree that one should shoulder his responsibility by himself. Otherwise, it may turn out to be a demon that interferes with fellow practitioners, since they then might not be able to buy necessities, attend Fa conferences, and they might suffer additional unnecessary hardships because other practitioners have borrowed their money.

I hope these practitioners who have had money borrowed from them by other practitioners can come together to share their understandings. It is necessary to ask for the money back in a proper manner. The test of money can easily cause cultivators to fall down in their levels. The pressures of everyday life might distort their righteous thoughts, making it easy for them to misunderstand the Fa's principles. Many of the problems resulting from borrowing and lending money have reached beyond the limit of individual practitioners. Consequently, this has influenced much of the Fa-rectification work. Big issues in personal cultivation, to my understanding, should not be mixed with important Dafa work, particularly work that involves large sums of money.

The inappropriate borrowing and lending of money has caused a lack of trust among fellow practitioners. In fact, I think that many of us are still at the level of everyday people on this issue, many of whom have the notion that money becomes a gift after it is loaned and that one can never get it back. When practitioners cannot solve such problems well, they are not even at the level of good everyday people.

If the environment of cultivators becomes impure, practitioners will be easily interfered with. It is difficult to reach agreement in a discussion. Fortunately, we are not a group of everyday people; we are people who cultivate Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance. We understand when fellow practitioners don't do well on occasion; however, we must act to correct our mistakes in time to recover the pure environment of Dafa practitioners.

(1) Fa: Law and principles; the teachings of Falun Dafa.

Posting date: 8/29/2004
Original article date: 8/29/2004
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 8/21/2004
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/8/9/81337.html

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