By a practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) When a fellow practitioner is being persecuted, we frequently hear such comments as, "He has strong righteous thoughts. How come this is happening to him?" Or others would question, "Why is he experiencing such an incident?" Before long, these kinds of remarks spread far and wide and circulate for quite some time. Some practitioners think, "Those who advance diligently will meet with a mishap," or, "Advancing diligently equates to meeting with a mishap." To me, when fellow practitioners are persecuted, we should not comment on it behind their backs. Besides sending forth righteous thoughts in order to rescue them, we all as one body must reflect upon ourselves and search inward.

When our fellow practitioners are persecuted, do we force our own attachments on them? For example, when someone who seems to us to have strong righteous thoughts is being persecuted, we may doubt and reverse our thinking, "Don't they say he/she has strong righteous thoughts? He/she definitely has some loophole!" In this way we unknowingly acknowledge the persecution, thereby enforcing it and helping the evil. Usually, we take the coordinator or the practitioner in charge of a truth clarification materials production site as someone superb or someone who is cultivating well and has better xinxing that other practitioners. In reality, we are all part of one organic body, and Dafa gives each of us different forms of wisdom and capacities so that everyone can be responsible for different duties. We may have different positions but each is indispensable. As Teacher put it in his comment on a disciple's article, "Do Not Differentiate Between Fa-Rectification Projects; 'A Great Way Has No Form' But Exists As a Whole (With Master's Comments),"

"Different approaches are in fact the all-encompassing way in which roles are dynamically distributed in the operations of the Fa, and the Fa-power is a reflection of the one body."

How well a fellow practitioner cultivates or how strong his or her righteous thoughts are is not determined by our lip service. Neither is it represented by his or her Dafa work, since righteous thoughts and righteous acts are interrelated and interdependent. Of course we are not going to the other extreme by saying that from now on we don't recognize the good of that fellow practitioner or we don't help that person find out the root cause of his or her incident. The key point is whether our hearts are moved and how our hearts are affected. Whoever cultivates well is doing well in Dafa. "Focus on how you study and cultivate," ("Solid Cultivation" from Hong Yin) We should learn from the Fa and not focus on learning from any one practitioner. When we see other practitioners cultivate well, we should try to find our own gaps for improvement in cultivation practice. That is what is needed.

Together with fellow practitioners, we are mutually harmonized. When we see someone's shortcomings, we should kindly and constructively point them out to him or her to help remedy the situation. We must not to exaggerate others' shortcomings and reinforce that which the evil takes advantage of. Especially for fellow practitioners being persecuted, we should take such an attitude. Otherwise, during persecution, our fellow practitioners will not only have to look for their own attachments in order to deny the persecution, but will also have to try to remove the obstacles we unintentionally set up.

Remember that "matter and mind are one thing" (Zhuan Falun). Our every thought facilitates the direction in which something will develop. It can't be said that the current detention of so many Dafa practitioners by the evil has nothing to do with our thoughts and what we think. Frequently we may hear something like, "How come practitioner so-and-so is in the detention center?" and "What can he do? Under such an evil circumstance, the way he behaves is already not too bad." It sounds as if we offer sympathy to the detained fellow practitioner. But doesn't that kind of thought offset the strength of the jailed practitioner's anti-persecution efforts? Isn't that enforcing the evil field? If too many of us have that kind of thought, isn't that restraining the practitioner being persecuted? Then the evil uses this as an excuse to aggravate and extend the persecution.

Furthermore, when we hear about a practitioner being in an unstable situation, some of us may start to comment on this and that instead of sending forth righteous thoughts to disintegrate the evil attempting to harm the practitioner or to help the fellow practitioner elevate quickly within the Fa so as to make the evil attempts fail. Our same biased attitude is applied to those who have gone astray or ceased to practice cultivation for various reasons. After a few attempts to persuade them to resume cultivation with little result, we give up on them and don't have righteous thoughts that firmly believe in their return to the Fa. When we do not achieve much in clarifying the truth of Falun Gong to people, we tend to think that they are beyond salvation and do not consider if our words were to the point, on too high a level, or were impacted by other factors. All these actions intentionally or unintentionally recognize the persecution, and thus cause trouble for others and ourselves.

Teacher says in "Teaching the Fa in San Francisco, 2005":

"No matter what happens, nobody should be affected inside. Each student should think only of giving help as a Dafa disciple as he's able, and there is nothing to get worked up about. Even if you can't help that person you should still face this issue with righteous thoughts. Continue to do whatever you are supposed to. Don't become attached to it by looking at it in a human way, don't make these problems worse in your minds, look very righteously at how it relates to everything else and don't think of it as being very important, and be very calm. The old forces will then lose interest, thinking, 'These people aren't moved. If none of them are moved, what is the point?'"

Dafa disciples are

"golden light in the mortal world, the hope of the world's people, Fa-disciples who help Master, and future Fa-Kings" ("Teacher's Congratulatory Message on 2006 New Year's Day").

We bear certain responsibilities. If our unrighteous thoughts should cause any damage to Dafa, should cause fellow practitioners to be persecuted, or should cause people to be blocked from salvation, these real impacts from our neglect in daily life could cause our hearts much grief and regret! Cultivation practice is serious business. We cannot just look at others but neglect our own cultivation. We should not think without keeping others and all sentient beings in our minds. If we really want to purify our own thoughts and thinking, we must judge our thoughts based on the Fa. We should ask ourselves, where does this thought come from? What kind of impact will it cause? This way we can clean up any warped logic planted in our thoughts by the old forces. We must do things with openness and dignity on a broad perspective according to the requirements of Teacher. We must act and talk consistently and do what a Dafa disciple do.

The above is just my personal understanding. If something is not quite right, please correct me. Thanks.

Posting date: 2/19/2006
Original article date: 2/18/2006
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 2/3/2006
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/1/22/119047.html

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