Breaking Away from the Bondage of Human Notions and Transcending the Human Realm
By a Falun Dafa practitioner from Malaysia
(Clearwisdom.net) Since beginning coordination work for truth
clarification activities, I have had remarkable new understandings and
personal experiences at different levels. Here I'd like to share with fellow
practitioners those understandings and experiences. At the very beginning of my coordination work, I wasn't aware that I needed
to apply for a permit whenever there was an event to be organized. Later on,
some fellow practitioners told me that we must first apply for the necessary
permits for our activities. So, gradually, I have had many opportunities to
contact the police force. Sometimes, I visited the police to apply for permits,
and sometimes I went there because of certain cultivation or Fa-rectification
arrangements. I began to clarify the truth to the police. I came to realize that initially many of the police officers didn't know too
much about Falun Gong. After they learned the truth about Falun Gong, these
officers immediately showed their understanding and kindness towards Falun Gong
practitioners, and they were quite willing to issue the permits to us. Our truth
clarification could thus be carried out without delay. One example of this was
our appeal in front of the Chinese Consulate. The police quickly approved our
application for such an event, so we were able to deliver our appeal letter to
stop the persecution to the Chinese Consulate. My understanding was that while I was applying for a permit, it was also a
good opportunity to clarify the truth to the police. So, at that time, I tried
to apply for permits as often as possible. Even for those events that didn't
need permits, such as merely practicing the exercises in a park, I would still
submit permit applications to the police. I just wanted to take advantage of the
application process to meet with the police officers and tell them the truth
about Falun Gong. However, things started to change later on. At the end of last year (2004),
we tried to organize two events, one indoors and the other outdoors. When we
went to apply for the permits, our applications were refused. I began to ask
myself: "What's going on? Why is it different from what it used to
be?" I said to myself: "If we keep trying to get the permits from the police
while the police refuse to issue the permits to us, then, how are we ever going
to organize any of our activities? How are we going to clarify the truth to the
public at large?" We tried to discuss this issue with certain human rights organizations, and
they gave us information about jurisdictions and human rights. I began to
realize that we had to change our plan. In Zhuan Falun, Teacher says: "there are different Dharma at different levels, and that the Dharma
at each level is not the absolute truth of the universe. Yet the Dharma at a
given level assumes a guiding role at that level." And, "the same Fa has different transformations and forms of manifestation
at different levels, and it can play different guiding roles for practitioners
at different levels." I came to realize that it was time we elevated our understandings on the
issue and we applied principles from a different level. We had to cultivate
ourselves even better and accomplish the truth clarification even better. My country had always followed a strict rule in controlling people's freedom
of speech. I was brought up in such an environment and certain human notions
were firmly settled in me. Somehow, I had been involuntarily constrained by such
notions. As a matter of fact, I started to understand that laws and government
powers would play a negative role when they overstepped human rights. First, I understood that we didn't need to apply for permits for those
activities that didn't require permits at all. It was just one of our rights to
hold such events. For example, for any indoor events for practitioners to engage
in organizational affairs, there should be no need to apply for permits, as such
an event was simply allowed by the Constitution. The Constitution of the nation stipulates that each individual citizen should
have the right to one's own beliefs, free speech and to make one's own choice in
forming organizations. The laws, however, are taking control of people more and
more stringently, even though it is claimed that the laws are getting more
proper and closer to perfection. Right now, as soon as one steps out of his
home, he might have already committed some offenses against the law without
knowing what he has actually done wrong. In my opinion, the principles of human
rights are derived from Dafa at the level of this human society and such
principles should be used in our truth clarification. That will explain why
ordinary people can understand us immediately when we try to clarify the truth
to them from the perspectives of freedom of belief and human rights violations.
When we are carrying out Dafa activities, we also need to defend our own human
rights, and make appropriate use of our freedom of speech. In "Teaching the
Fa at the Western U.S. Fa Conference" (Guiding the Voyage), Teacher
said: "When being treated unfairly, people should be allowed to speak--this
is a human being's most basic right." My understanding is that most people
in my country don't have a clear recognition of human rights. I think this is
also arranged by the old forces; it is arranged in this way so as to increase
the difficulties in our truth clarification. With such an understanding, I decided that I needed to break away from the
old forces' arrangements, and I should try to organize Dafa events even better.
We had almost never held any major public events in clarifying the truth to the
public before, such as parades, sending forth righteous thoughts in front of the
Chinese Consulate, major press conferences, street anti-torture exhibits or
displaying banners and exhibitions in the open. We had not organized such events
because of the restrictions of the laws. The lack of such major events had
already prevented us from spreading the truth to an even wider range of people. Some time ago, we started to make some breakthroughs in this respect when we
attempted to carry out a large-scale truth clarification activity-- an
anti-torture exhibit. The exhibit was held inside a hotel where many people
gathered. While the event was going on inside the hotel, we passed out flyers
outside the hotel and many weekend shoppers came to visit and saw the exhibit.
The effect was really good and many people learned of the brutal nature of the
persecution of Falun Gong and its practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On the second day after the event, we were informed by the police that we
needed to go to the police department to discuss the exhibit. Prior to
practicing Falun Gong, I read only books of intellectual interest to me. The
other practitioner, who was also summoned by the police, was a housewife who
spent most of her time educating her kids and helping out her husband at home.
Both of us had no prior experience with a police summons at all. So, we first
contacted certain human rights organizations and learned about our rights and
some simple rules that we should follow when dealing with the police. With a
heart full of determination towards Dafa and a pure single thought just to
validate Dafa, we started off and went to the police department in District A to
clarify the truth to the police. The police officer that received us asked many questions about the
anti-torture exhibit, such as whether we passed out flyers, whether we let in
the public to the event room and some other "nit-picky" details. It
seemed like we were under interrogation. From some of the judiciary knowledge we
had learned from the human rights organizations, we decided to circumvent our
answers to the police questions. We tried to take every opportunity to clarify
the truth to the police officer. The officer told us that the police department
had originally planned to dispatch police officers to take care of our event;
however, on that particular day those designated police officers were assigned
elsewhere. In the end, the police officer said that we needed to apply for
permits for any similar future events; otherwise, we would be "breaking the
law." We knew that we had just taken our first step to break away from the
interference, but we still needed to do more to push through the old forces'
arrangements. Soon after the first anti-torture event, we conducted another in
the same area inside an office building. We didn't even try to apply for the
so-called permit. It turned out that the police didn't bother to intervene at
all this time. Later, I planned to organize an outdoor public gathering or appeal event, and
I began to discuss this issue with fellow practitioners. Many practitioners
didn't support my plan and complained to me, saying, "How can we display
banners in the street and launch protests? Isn't such an event like those
violent activities ordinary people would like to resort to?" I came to
realize that such human notions were developed through the years when we were
all under strict rulings from the government. It seemed that whenever someone
stepped out to say something, this person would be immediately regarded as
"anti-government" or "violent." As a matter of fact, all
such notions had been acquired through the misleading education promoted by the
government and they were also the poisons left over from the wicked CCP
specters. Nevertheless, some other practitioners were still interested in such an
event, so we decided that we would no longer let the permit applications control
us; we wanted to overcome such interference in our truth clarification. A few
days before my country's top leader was to visit to China, we gathered right in
front of the Royal Palace and submitted our appeal letter to the president,
asking him to help stop the ongoing persecution. We made some banners for the occasion, but we didn't raise them at the scene.
It must be a Teacher's merciful hint that made one of the media reporters come
to our group and ask: "Hey, do you have banners? Why don't you raise your
banners so that we can take pictures?" We were still a little bit hesitant,
and the reporter continued to say: "Why have you come over here? Don't you
want to raise your banners and submit your appeal letter? Hurry up and raise
your banners!" So we slowly and fearfully raised our banners. As soon as our banners were raised, I immediately felt the solemnity and
supreme grandeur of Dafa. Another fellow practitioner told me that she also had
such a similar feeling. I remembered once reading an article from
Clearwisdom.net that talked about practitioners in China and how these
practitioners went to Beijing and raised banners in Tiananmen Square. When the
practitioners raised their banners, those who had their third-eye opened could
see that the wicked forces in other dimensions were immediately destroyed. Those
wicked forces that had been following ordinary people passing by the exhibit
would also be destroyed right away. My understanding was that once we raised our
banners, we had just made many breakthroughs in Malaysia. We had breakthroughs
in our xinxing cultivation, a breakthrough in my country's tightly
controlled environment where freedom of speech was strictly monitored and a
breakthrough in negating the old forces. Later on, we went to the Chinese Consulate and demanded that the persecution
be stopped. We also presented our anti-torture exhibits in the parks and in the
streets during night market times. As we held more and more such events, more
and more practitioners started to venture out to take part in the activities. A
very good cultivation environment was gradually established. At the end of such an event, we would always try to further clarify the truth
to the local police and let them know more about us. We noticed that whenever we
organized certain public gatherings without first applying for a permit, the
police would treat such events as "against the law" and come over to
deal with us. When the police contacted us, it was the best time to let them
learn the truth about Falun Gong and they would genuinely realize that we were a
peaceful group of cultivators. We were genuinely following the principles of
"Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" when interacting with
others. Once, a police officer from District B said to us: "You have finally
made it through with your persistent endeavors." What the police officer
meant was that all the public gatherings and appeals launched throughout the
past year by Malaysian Falun Gong practitioners had eventually made the police
realize what Falun Gong was. The police had finally learned the truth. I was
very moved when hearing these words. It seemed that our Honorable Teacher was
letting the police officer utter such words to encourage us, to confirm what we
were doing. The first time we gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate to demand the
end to the persecution in China, all the police officers at the scene were very
nervous. It seemed as if they would take some action against us at any moment.
After we finished our activities and went over to thank the police officers for
their presence, those police officers were quite surprised. They were amazed by
our show of kindness to them. In subsequent events, the police officers started to relax much more. They
would just stand along beside us and watch us or chat with practitioners. It
gave our practitioners very good opportunities to clarify the truth to these
officers, to let them know the brutalities of the ongoing persecutions in China.
When the police officers saw the pictures of China's practitioners under
persecution, they couldn't believe that such things could have happened and they
would become very sympathetic towards us. An officer from District B told us that her subordinates were very
sympathetic to us, because we would usually stand there quietly with the banners
raised in our hands, and we always kept ourselves in very good order. Also, we
were very cooperative with the police. The officer said that her subordinates
just couldn't understand why the CCP had decided to persecute a group of such
peaceful and kind-hearted people. Once a policeman from District C said to me: "There won't be any problem
whatsoever if your activities have fewer than five participants. It would be
against the law if there are more than five participants though." When I
first heard this, I said to myself: "Well, let's limit the number of
participants in our activities then." However, after some time, I began to
realize that I was putting myself under the restrictions of the laws. I started
to break away from such a notion. When practitioners developed their intentions
to validate Dafa, how could they be held back just because of the limitation on
the number of participants in an event? I also noticed that as long as our practitioners held onto their righteous
thoughts and kept on doing righteous deeds, even the police officers would
eventually change their minds as well. A police officer from District A used to
tell us that if we didn't apply for permits, our activities would be treated as
against the law. We kept on clarifying the truth to him, but he just insisted
upon his own notions and kept telling us that "without permits" or
"more than five participants in an event" would be regarded as a
violation of the law. Once, we happened to hold an event in a community where
this officer was in charge of maintaining order. About a dozen practitioners
were present for the event. The officer personally witnessed how peaceful and
kind our practitioners were and he finally understood that the number of
participants in an event should not be used to determine whether or not the
event was a violation of the law. Later on, this same officer said to us: "If there are more than five
people gathering together drinking coffee, could these people be held as being
'against the law?' " From then on this officer seemed like one of us as he
chatted, and his previously condescending bureaucratic gestures had all but
disappeared. He started to genuinely treat us as his friends, and was very
willing to mingle with us. Currently, there is still much interference and discord in our activities of
Fa-validation, and we need to continue to break away from them. We need to break
away from the bondage of our human notions and the old forces' arrangements.
Let's walk well along our path arranged by our Honorable Teacher.
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/8/5/107767.html
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