By a Falun Dafa practitioner in Chongqing City

(Clearwisdom.net) Fa Rectification has progressed to today and practitioners in several regions have been doing better and better. However, several disharmonious events have transpired in Dazu County, Chongqing City. Several practitioners that appeared to be advancing well suddenly died, a few practitioners that had advanced well were arrested and sentenced, and a practitioner that was regarded by others as a very good cultivator suddenly yielded to the evil. Several things that should not happen have happened. Why? Today I have written this article to summarize the issues that have occurred in our region so that we all can learn from the lessons and remind each other and advance further and better together. I hope that we all can do the three things better and walk on the right path of Dafa cultivation. If my article has mentioned some people or things incorrectly, I apologize.

From my observation and brief analysis, I think there are several problem areas that practitioners in our region need to pay attention to and improve.

Prior to the Chinese Communist Party's persecuting Dafa, anything about Dafa was open to everyone. Whatever material you wanted, I would give it to you. And every practitioner cultivated to be a good person. Even the evil spies were unable to find any fault with Dafa. Now, however, Dafa is being persecuted. If you provide the CCP or spies with information that would have been considered ordinary prior to the CCP's persecution, such as contact numbers of practitioners, the CCP will use them as "evidence" in order to further persecute practitioners. We have to face this reality of the persecution with clear heads.

In order not to give evil any opportunities, we must pay special attention to the issues of minding own speech and being truthful. For safety purposes, do not say what we should not say and do not ask about what we should not know. Some people just like to show off. They keep asking about everything and also broadcast everything everywhere, such as mentioning who produced the truth-clarification materials, telling who they know, and so on. They unintentionally did what the evil was not able to do and caused a lot of damage to Dafa. Some people do not understand the real meaning of "truthfulness." Some provide whatever the police ask for, some purposely lie to police, while others fear the persecution and so deny their own glorious truth clarification activities.

Teacher said,

"I don't say things I don't want to say, but what I say has to be true--that's how I am." (Lecture Eight in Zhuan Falun).

Teacher also said,

"When the evil ones ask whether you practice Falun Gong, you may ignore them or use other ways to deflect their questions. Don't voluntarily let the evil take you away." (Essentials for Further Advancement II)

It is my understanding that as practitioners we must tell the truth. However, if we are asked for something that we should not tell, we don't have to answer the question, or just say, "I don't know." We should use our wisdom to clarify the truth of Dafa. We should also send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evils, so that they will not get what they want.

Some people heard that cultivation during Fa Rectification is coming to the very end and there was not much time left. They did not cherish the remaining time and wisely use it to do the three things. Instead, they spent more energy on other activities. Some people saw practitioners in other regions organize a Fa conference, so they decided that they should do the same. Some practitioners might even want to compete with other conferences, seeking to make their Fa conference bigger than those in other regions. I am not saying that we should not hold Fa conferences, but we should carefully consider how best to balance our priorities and resources when clarifying the truth and validating the Fa.

There are a lot of things that can be resolved by only a few people. Then we do not need to involve a large group, especially when you consider the issue of safety. Some people like to do superficial work. They heard some practitioners in another region were making exercise clothes, so they decided that they must make them as well. Even when there was a shortage of funds, they still rushed to make the clothes, falsely claiming that the "Fa rectifying the human world" is about to come and that they all needed to wear the exercise clothes to celebrate. In the end they were not able to make the exercise clothes or to hold a celebration ceremony, because the police were alerted. The police took away all the exercise clothes and arrested several practitioners. That caused a major loss for Fa rectification. Of course, we don't want to blame a particular person. Everyone involved bears some liability.

Some people like to watch others. Whatever someone else does, they follow. That creates "heroes" in Dafa. For example, a practitioner had been very firm. He was sentenced to several forced labor camps but was able to come out. He was highly regarded and thought of as a cultivation role model by fellow practitioners. However, when he was illegally arrested the third time, he was sentenced to 13 years. His family also had problems. His wife divorced him and his family members did not understand him. After a long period of severe torture, he could no longer endure the persecution and yielded to the authorities. We are all responsible for this practitioner's compromising with the evil. First, isn't it because we "worshiped" him and pushed him to this place? Second, when he was tortured brutally, had we done anything for him and his family? Had we really cared for him? This practitioner is still imprisoned at the detention center, but how many of us have kept sending forth righteous thoughts to help him get out?

I have been in the detention center before and I know how evil it can be. The prison and forced labor camp are even worse. Some practitioners who have not been put into prison are not even as good as ordinary people. When an ordinary person is put into prison, his friends try hard, over and over, to free him and care for him. However, some practitioners not only did not try to rescue other practitioners, but also questioned Dafa and Teacher, or thought that the persecution is never ending and therefore, became idle or even numb and felt helpless in the face of the persecution. They were not able to spend time to do the three things correctly.

What is even worse, some practitioners were spreading the lies created by those whose betrayed Dafa by spreading a fake article attributed to Teacher. If measured by Dafa, we know these things are wrong. The only thing that Dafa disciples should do is to save people. They need to cultivate themselves well in order to save others. Is it a Dafa practitioner's proper behavior to have these unrealistic dreams without following Fa's requirements?

Some practitioners woke up after sharing. Others that were not enlightened on this issue still continued spreading the fake article everywhere. They did not pay any attention to their own safety, not to mention the safety of other practitioners. There was a betrayer couple passing around fake articles. We hope they can wake up soon. Teacher is waiting for all of us to do the three things well, "And follow your Teacher to return, consummated." ("Hong Yin" - Version A) My fellow practitioners, why don't you wake up? Why do you always wait until a major mistake to start to look inwards? Why do you keep many attachments and betray Dafa? Wake up! Teacher said,

"Once the illusion that you cannot let go of disappears, you will realize what you have lost." ("Practicing Cultivation After Retirement" in Essentials for Further Advancement)

Actually, Teacher has said it very clearly in the Fa. Teacher has told us in his early articles that distributing unpublished articles undermines the Fa. Even some video recordings of Teacher teaching the Fa the needed to be destroyed on Teacher's instructions. How can people pass around those fake materials that are not Fa at all? The severity of this crime is unimaginable. We cannot take lightly Teacher's benevolence towards disciples. How can we begin to resolve this problem? I think that we need to calm down, carefully study the Fa, concentrate on the Fa, make solid progress, and improve our own "xinxing." We must understand the Fa based on the Fa, treat the Fa as the guide for our cultivation, use righteous thoughts and actions, and do not blindly follow other people. Then can we resolve these kinds of fundamental problems. By the way, let me mention that the articles and materials which our truth-clarification production center uses are all from the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. Even the articles exposing the evil CCP crimes are all published on Minghui. We are very strict on this. I hope the following quote from Teacher's Fa teaching can prove helpful to our fellow practitioners, so that they can detect any lies from betrayers and give them no room to persecute Dafa disciples:

"I suggest that every disciple immediately, on the spot, destroy everything that I have not publicly issued but that is in circulation without permission, such as: my speeches that came out of Chengde; the things about supernormal abilities that a practitioner from Beijing discussed; the speech of the assistance center coordinator in Dalian; the cave story from the coordinator of the Guizhou assistance center and other speeches; not to mention the speeches made by people in charge of different regions; what was said by students after seeing me; the speech given by people in charge of the Dafa Research Society, and so on, plus texts, recordings, videotapes, etc., that have been transcribed from my speeches without permission. All of these must be destroyed on the spot, and they cannot be kept regardless of the excuse. What is 'safeguarding Dafa'? This is most thoroughly a safeguarding of Dafa, and a test of whether you can follow what I tell you and whether you are truly my disciples! Let me tell everyone once again that the Dharma taught by Buddha Sakyamuni was sabotaged this way. This is a lesson in history. From now on, nobody should tape record or videotape speeches given by any of the people in charge in different regions or by any disciples; even less can they be edited into texts or be spread around for people to read. This is not a problem of any particular person, nor is this to criticize any person in particular here; instead, this is rectifying Dafa. Bear in mind: Except for Dafa students' experience sharing conferences for studying the Fa and activities organized by major as assistance centers with the endorsement of the Research Society, anything that does not belong to Dafa but is being circulated in Dafa undermines Dafa." ("Bear In Mind Forever" in Essentials for Further Advancement)

(To be continued)

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/5/26/128795.html