Some Thoughts about the Effects of Charitable Fundraising Activities

By a Falun Dafa Practitioner in the U.S.

(Clearwisdom.net) In a variety of forms Falun Dafa practitioners have been, in the past few years, effectively clarifying the truth to people and helping them understand the truth. Recently in some charitable activities, however, instead of widely and solidly clarifying the truth in order to get people to attend an event, some of us took a short cut by asking practitioners to fill in the seats or buy the tickets when the tickets were not easily sold. Moreover, they tried to raise funds among practitioners and took the amount of money collected as the criteria of measuring success for the activities they held. Some overseas practitioners often respond positively whenever they learn of the activities, without thinking about whether the form or the process of the charitable activities meets the requirements of the Fa. Neither the organizers nor supporters of the activities paid good attention to how the activities are related to their own cultivation practice or the elevation of their level.

As a matter of fact, whatever a Falun Dafa practitioner does involves the elements of cultivation practice and his/her elevation in the process. What we say and what we do are all our conscious choices in the process of cultivation. We should always take the Fa as teacher. When we take the activity organizer's requirements as the criteria without thinking it over, do we take the result of the activity as part of our own responsibility or the result of our listening to the organizer? Is it right to believe that the arrangements and the final results are just the responsibility of the organizer and thus irrelevant to us?

There are no shortcuts in cultivation. Truth-clarification has to be carried out in a solid manner. Otherwise, the end result will be compromised. One will get half the result with twice the effort, and will waste both time and money. Practitioners overseas have limited manpower and financial resources, yet there is a lot of work they need to do. During the planning, preparation, holding, and reporting of the activities, if every practitioner in a project can do a solid job and spend enough effort in clarifying the truth to all people who do not understand the truth, detours can be avoided.

The purpose of holding charitable activities that target large companies and financial groups is to help more people understand the truth. The targets of such activities should be the people who do not already know the truth of Falun Dafa. It must not be the Falun Dafa practitioners. Furthermore, as a normal economic society, the U.S. has very strict accounting regulations. Even everyday people's charitable activities emphasize the use of checks instead of cash in order to facilitate the tax and accounting administration. To validate the Fa in society, Falun Dafa practitioners should impose even higher standards on themselves.

I would like to address the issue of standpoint and effect. The nature of the activities we hold is the same. Namely, by exposing the persecution and clarifying the truth directly or indirectly to people, we aim at saving sentient beings and validating Dafa. Take face-to-face truth-clarification as an example. If, after we clarify the truth to someone, the person is left with a deep impression that Dafa is great and the persecution is evil, both the process and the end result of the truth-clarification activity is truly "successful," because with cultivation in our minds, we have validated the Fa and done a solid job in saving the audience. If, on the other hand, after reading the report of our activities, readers are left with the deep impression that we are promoting some organizations or some people, we must really look inside ourselves: what have we done wrong? Which part could we have done in a purer way? If we mix in our human notions and take the truth-clarification activities as opportunities to validate ourselves, certain organizations, or to attain certain achievements for some organizations, we are in fact putting the cart before the horse.

I am writing about this as an introduction for further discussion. Having read Master Li's recent article, "The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be," I realize that doing more is not equivalent to being diligent in cultivation. Only by eliminating our notions in doing truth-clarification work and letting go of our attachments, can we be truly diligent in cultivation, do a good and solid job, and achieve positive results.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/10/11/112137.html

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