By a Falun Dafa practitioner from Weifang, Shandong Province

(Clearwisdom.net) At the beginning of April, the police in Weifang illegally arrested over 30 Falun Dafa practitioners after following and monitoring them. We also lost about a 1,000,000 yuan of money and materials. This is the most serious loss that we have suffered in Weifang in the past few years. We are at the final stage of Fa-rectification, yet we have suffered such a large-scale persecution. It is a serious lesson, and each one of us should reflect on this incident. Of course, the superficial reason is that one of the ringleaders of the persecution, Zeng Qinghong, came to Weifang and imposed pressure on the local authorities. Also, Xie Weijun was transferred from Zibo to Weifang to be a member of the Standing Committee of the Party and the Secretary of the Politics and Law Committee. Li Bing from the Provincial Public Security Department came to Weifang and became the Director of the Municipal National Public Security Bureau. Xie and Li and some others are very active in the persecution. However, I think that this incident happened due to the state of our Falun Dafa practitioners in Weifang. What can we learn from this, then?

I believe that the main reason for the recent events is that quite a few fellow practitioners in our area haven't paid enough attention to looking inside during our cultivation. Instead, they put too much emphasis on formality. The following are some of my observations:

1. For Fa study, some practitioners paid too much attention to time spent and formality instead of truly studying the Fa with a peaceful mind in order to ensure the quality of Fa study. It is good to have a group for Fa study, but the formality is secondary. Personally, I think under the current special conditions in China, we can achieve the same results by studying the Fa at home ourselves as long as we do it with a peaceful mind.
2. For experience sharing, we had it too frequently. Some practitioners who did well with Fa-rectification or other projects were asked to travel around to share their experiences. Some did it at least 40 times, some even 60 times. Some practitioners who survived the evil dens of persecution visited many places to share experiences instead of studying the Fa with a peaceful mind and looking inside. Later, they were illegally arrested again. Meanwhile, too many practitioners attended the experience sharing at one time, sometimes even more than sixty practitioners. I think this is deviating from the Fa. Those that shared experiences started to develop attachments of showing off. Those that enjoyed listening to the sharing weren't able to take the Fa as Teacher. They looked upon others as "models." It is not wrong to have experience sharing on a regular basis. Actually, this is one of the forms that Teacher has left us. However, it cannot be too frequent and there shouldn't be too many practitioners attending one sharing, under the current special environment in China. Also, we should have a clear agenda for each experience sharing gathering.
3. When rescuing fellow practitioners, of course it is important to encourage the families of those practitioners who were illegally arrested to demand to get them back, and to send forth righteous thought close to those evil dens. However, we need to have a right attitude and a good basis for starting off. We cannot just follow some "procedural" steps or talk to the families of those practitioners with everyday people's mentalities. In fact, some of the family members developed hatred toward those persecutors and went to extremes, and they got sent to forced labor camps as well. When sending forth righteous thoughts close to the evil, we need to keep a pure attitude instead of hatred towards those vicious people, or sentimentality towards fellow practitioners.
4. We need to be careful with communication and transportation. There are two reasons behind what has happened in Weifang in the past a few years. One, the evil got information from our cellphones, especially for the latest incident. Some with inside knowledge said that the police found out who made truth-clarification materials by analyzing the phone call records. The second is that the police have been following some practitioners' cars for a long time. Some cars were even wired. Actually, two cars were originally hidden in a very secretive place. However, the police still found them and took them away, which proved that most probably the cars were being tracked. Here I'd like to suggest that we do not use cellphones for important matters and we do not use our private vehicles for truth-clarification.

In the past a few years, practitioners in Weifang have been suffering serious persecution. The number of practitioners who died because of the persecution in Weifang is among the top handful of areas nationwide in China. We must become more mature. During the final stage, we must keep a peaceful mind and we cannot be moved by any factors. In fact, the purpose of the evil is to move and interfere with our whole body's task of eliminating the evil and saving sentient beings. It is just what the evil wanted if we were moved by sentimentality or hatred. If so, we wouldn't be able to rescue our fellow practitioners. More importantly, it would affect our efforts of saving sentient beings. We should not take the evil's bait. We should remove sentimentality towards our fellow practitioners. We can talk to the families of fellow practitioners who were illegally arrested, we can encourage them to demand their family members' safe return, and we can send forth righteous thought near the evil. However, we need to do it with a pure heart and righteous thoughts. Meanwhile, I suggest that we all collect proof on how those malicious people committed crimes against practitioners. We cannot have the thought of "we don't have the details and it's only those few practitioners' responsibilities to expose the evil." More of us should learn how to use the Internet more broadly and deeply to create, post and distribute truth-clarification materials to completely expose the evil. For those persecutors who were transferred to Weifang, we should expose their crimes and send information to their hometowns to let their relatives and friends know what they have done.

In order to achieve our goal, the most important thing is to fully immerse ourselves when studying the Fa and always look inside to cultivate ourselves well. This is very important. Teacher said in "Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles":

"Cultivation is about looking inside yourself. Whether you are right or wrong, you should examine yourself. Cultivation is about getting rid of human attachments."

Only when we cultivate ourselves well can we rescue others while not getting persecuted at the same time. It is a war between good and evil. Those practitioners who were illegally arrested must have some omissions. Otherwise, with Teacher and righteous gods' protection, they wouldn't have fallen into the evil dens.

Fellow practitioners, we are Fa-rectification period Dafa disciples. Let us talk to each other with sincere and true words. Let us eliminate separations among us to form a harmonious one body. Let us walk the final steps uprightly and steadily. Let us help our fellow practitioners out of the evil dens. Let us save more people.

Posting date: 5/28/2007
Original article date: 5/28/2007
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/5/12/154572.html

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