Trying to Understand the Recent Mass Arrest of Harbin City Practitioners

By a Dafa practitioner in Heilongjiang Province, China

(Clearwisdom.net) The police arrested more than fifty Falun Dafa practitioners at the end of September 2005 in Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province. New information about the arrests is coming to light. Some practitioners were killed in police custody. According to reliable sources, arrests of practitioners and their family members in the Harbin area continued until at least the beginning of November.

During the frenzied, two-month long arrest campaign, the authorities arrested more than one hundred practitioners in the Harbin area. Many of them were coordinators, the kind of practitioners who are very capable in solving technical issues encountered during truth clarification, and those who have been very steadfast during the Fa rectification. This huge loss is unprecedented in the Harbin area.

Why did such mass arrests in the Harbin area occur? Why did they happen over such a long period of time? Why did the arrests spread to so many areas? There must be some lessons that we practitioners need to learn and draw conclusions from. In a sharing meeting among several practitioners we had the following understandings:

One reason was that practitioners had strong human attachments and idolized the "well-known" practitioners. In the cultivation experience sharing meeting that was held in September in Hegang City, the "main speaker" invited had been released from the Harbin City Women's Prison only several months prior.

After release from prison, this practitioner was not able to promptly calm herself down so as to study the Fa well, find her own shortcomings and catch up with the rapid progress of the Fa rectification. She was bogged down in holding experience-sharing meetings in different areas, where she talked about her self-centered "experience and understandings." Her deviation from the Fa was, of course, one reason for her doing things that way.

What cannot be ignored, however, was that practitioners in those areas had failed to take the Fa as the teacher and had a strong mentality of idolizing this kind of practitioner. This mentality finally led to the subsequent sweeping arrest of more than fifty in Hegang City.

After the arrests, some practitioners were still unable to have a strong sense of being responsible to the Fa and to practitioners. They showed a lack of righteous thoughts and viewed the persecution from the perspective of human mentalities. They even guessed or gossiped who the spies might be, or why this practitioner was arrested while the other practitioner who had also attended the experience sharing meetings was not. In the meantime their attachment to fear was also revealed. All these made the persecution appear quite serious.

We as Dafa practitioners must consider the following. Have we, at such times, forgotten the basic principle that we, being Dafa practitioners, should always look within ourselves whenever a problem arises? Why haven't we sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil elements behind the persecution and help the detained practitioners? Why haven't we used righteous thoughts to negate all of the evil arrangements and attempts? Why haven't we promptly searched within ourselves to find our own human attachments that had already been exposed, and then worked hard to eliminate them?

Perhaps the real reason for the persecution was that these human attachments had surfaced and the practitioners had fear. The evil in other dimensions, after seeing our attachments and loopholes, would definitely do something bad to us. Additionally, we, being Dafa disciples during the Fa-rectification era, have the urgent task to rescue sentient beings.

So, persecuting Dafa practitioners is the same as persecuting non-practitioners who have a predestined relationship with Dafa. This includes as well the numerous sentient beings inside these people's corresponding cosmic bodies, which are infinitely enormous. How could the evil forces who have committed these monstrous crimes against Dafa and Dafa practitioners be qualified to persecute the Dafa practitioners, who are created by the cosmos' Fa?

"As I've said, everything that happens today in the ordinary society is the result of Dafa disciples' thoughts. Even though the old forces do exist, if you don't have those thoughts they can't do anything. When your righteous thoughts are strong enough the old forces can't do a thing." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.")

After all, the persecution happened because of problems existing in ourselves. Even so, we still failed to look within ourselves. We still, under the influence of the human mentalities, spread hearsay and wasted the precious opportunities of helping the detained practitioners and eliminating the evil. These recent losses are simply a result of us displaying too many human attachments. We were making the losses even worse. This resulted in the evil being reinforced and in the prolonged duration of the persecution. The evil had found excuses to do evil while we were still unaware of what we had empowered them to do.

Additionally, the mentality of equating taking safety precautions with fear was also a reason for repetitive persecution episodes. In the vicious environment of the persecution, some practitioners temporarily moved away from their homes and went to other places. Their moving away was a manifestation of many things.

If they moved to a safe place out of their safety concerns, as they were already aware that the authorities had been watching them, or if they moved to prevent the authorities from having chances to engage in persecution, their moving was a manifestation of their being responsible to the Fa. By doing that, they could effectively foil the evils' plans.

By contrast, if they moved because of fear, that is, seeing the situation becoming worse, recklessly hurrying to hide themselves, as if the evil would arrest us all--if they moved because of this mentality, they could only make the persecution worse. The evil would definitely do evil things, targeting this human mentality. Any actions that are driven by human mentalities essentially play no roles in negating the evil. The greatest effect can be achieved by our doing well the three things.

Some practitioners assume that a practitioner who has raised the issue of safety has the attachment of fear, does not have enough righteous thoughts, and fails to keep up with the changes of the Fa-rectification. In fact, it is crucial and necessary for us to take proper measures to ensure our own safety and the safety of other practitioners, and to thereby create a stable environment for our Fa validation. We should not confuse taking safety precautions with having the attachment of fear.

There were also some practitioners who had said or done something not in line with the Fa. When others pointed out the problem, the person still used excuses such as "using a righteous mind and righteous actions to negate the old force arrangements" to hide his own problems. He thus missed the opportunity to look inward and improve himself and in the end, the evildoers persecuted him. The situation was, in fact, caused by the practitioner's human attachments and their clouded comprehension of the Fa.

Having the mentality of relying on pure luck was another obvious reason for the persecution to occur. A certain practitioner had already learned that the evildoers had been looking for him, but seeing no abnormalities in the short run, he let down his guard. In fact, the evildoers were taking the approach of "using a long fishing line to catch big fish" and were monitoring some practitioners so as to aggravate the persecution against us. Some practitioners were clearly aware that they were being followed. Others were reminded and warned by fellow practitioners or the neighbors, and some were given repeated hints from Master. Nevertheless, they still did not pay enough attention to their safety, which finally led to the big loss. Relying on luck is a detrimental attitude that cannot be overlooked. Some practitioners knew that the authorities were going to arrest him, so he went to other places to hide. After several days he thought the danger had passed and then returned to his home without further verifying if that was really the case. In the end, the police arrested him. They were waiting in ambush.

The sustained and recurring events of persecution in the Harbin area are closely tied to every Dafa practitioner in the region. We should truly do well by starting with ourselves. Getting rid of our human mentalities is, in fact, effectively inhibiting and eliminating the evil factors in other dimensions. Every of us must become steadfast and exhibit personal growth. If each one of us is able to view every incident according to the Fa and negate the existence of the old forces, the evil will lose the environment favorable to it and no longer have an excuse to exist.

November 22, 2005

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/11/24/115054.html

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