What Are Righteous Thoughts and Righteous Actions?

By a practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Normally it is counted as righteous thoughts and righteous actions when the causes and goals of our actions are in line with Dafa teachings and Master's requirements. But why do the evil forces still dare to persecute us? My understanding is that the righteous thoughts and actions should be conducted not only at the behavioral level, but also deep in the heart.

For example, when the police came to harass practitioners in the middle of their studying the Fa, some practitioners allowed the police to arrest them in an obedient manner. Why did they do that? Studying the Fa in a group is the cultivation way that Master left for us. We follow Master's requirements, and that is righteous thoughts and actions, and the evil forces should not have been able to persecute us. However, the persecution is still going on. Moreover, those practitioners who have been arrested seemed to have been very cooperative. Let us take a look at the attitude that some of us have at that moment.

When the police come, we often take it for granted that the police should persecute us because we have not followed the regulations of the evil Chinese Communist Party (CCP). We are accepting reasons for the persecution, which in turn weakens our righteous thoughts or even denies them. This is an idea which was formed by the CCP long ago: being against the government will result in persecution. We forget that it is our right to communicate and get together with each other, and even the CCP has this written into its constitution. We are gathering together to share our experiences of how to be good people (at the ordinary people's level), which is in line with both our rights and the constitution. It is the CCP government that is the real criminal. Because we sometimes do not have this righteous thought, we may feel weak when the police come, and we accept the persecution arranged by the evil.

When I was in jail, we were forced to listen to the government's propaganda and they criticized the fact that practitioners had interrupted normal broadcasting to send truth clarification programs via satellite TV. My thought at that time was: "It must have been because the practitioners had no other choice. If they did do it, however, it is not good to interrupt people's regular TV broadcasts." The root of my thought was putting the importance of ordinary people's ordinary lives before clarifying the truth. When I discussed this with another practitioner in jail, the practitioner said: "If I had the skills, I would have done this, too, to let more people know about the truth." From this practitioner I realized my shortcoming.

Another thing this practitioner who had never given in to the evil did was to ask the jail to provide winter clothes and bedding. At first I felt it was not right, so I discussed it with the practitioner. My rationale was: "I did not want to 'beg' them for anything (for my dignity), I did not want to trouble the wardens (as if it was out of my compassion), and we should not feel any coldness as practitioners (as if it was out of my forbearance, which might not be wrong before the persecution, but it is wrong during this Fa-rectification period, because accepting the persecution is acknowledging the persecution to some degree)." The practitioner's thought was much more clear and reasonable: "They brought me in here, I do not want to be here, so they must provide me with food and daily supplies."

People may think that this request was unreasonable, but you can feel the strong righteousness and fearlessness once you think about it more deeply. Another time the wardens directed the other inmates to threaten us by saying that the food and beds were for criminal inmates only. They said: "If you have not broken the laws, you are not criminals and so you should not eat the food and use the beds here." I was speechless, thinking that this was unreasonable but hard to deny. The same practitioner replied that food was for human beings and it was my basic right to have food, so the jail should definitely provide us food! Now I realize even further about this issue, that practitioners should not have been detained in jails because we have not committed any crimes, moreover, practitioners should be set free to save sentient beings.

So what are righteous thoughts and righteous actions in clarifying the truth? My understanding is that we should fully acknowledge that clarifying the truth is saving people. It is the most important mission currently, and whoever interferes is irrational and is trying to stop those who want to save others. We should be careful about our own safety, so that we can save more people by clarifying the truth, so that people lost in the maze will not commit more sins by persecuting practitioners, reporting practitioners to the police, or interfering with truth clarification. If people do do things to persecute practitioners, we should tell them that they are committing great sins. My understanding is this action is in line with Truthfulness (telling them the facts in the Fa-rectification period), Compassion (hoping people will not hurt themselves), and Forbearance (not using violent words or behaviors).

May 19, 2007

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/5/20/155246.html

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