(Clearwisdom.net) Some fellow practitioners are delighted by the progress of the investigations of the persecution of Falun Gong by groups outside China. Some even wait for the information daily and estimate the course of Fa rectification; some practitioner seem to be merely waiting for the mighty power of Fa rectification. They are waiting for something to happen. This is a selfish behavior. For example, if you have a house full of filth and someone tells you that Master will come for a visit, what will you do? Are you waiting for Master to clean the house for you, waiting for someone else to clean it or waiting for the house to clean itself?

Master taught us in Zhuan Falun:

"Let me give you an example. There was a story about Sakyamuni in his early years. One day Sakyamuni was going to take a bath in a forest, and he asked a disciple to clean the bathtub. His disciple went to the bathtub and found it full of insects crawling everywhere. The insects would be killed if he cleaned the bathtub. The disciple came back to Sakyamuni and said: " The bathtub is full of insects." Sakyamuni did not look at him and replied: "You should go and clean the bathtub." The disciple went back to the bathtub and did not know how to clean it, as doing so would kill the insects. He again came back to Sakyamuni and said: "Master, the bathtub is full of insects, if I clean it, the insects will be killed." Sakyamuni looked at him and said: "What I asked you to do was to clean the bathtub." The disciple understood all of a sudden, and he went and cleaned the bathtub right away."

This is similar to some of our Dafa practitioners' behavior in Fa rectification. It was once our solemn wish to save sentient beings. We should understand the urgency and be more diligent. We should not be such disciples who hesitate in cleaning the bathtub or even have poorer enlightenment than this monk.

We have already learned many lessons about placing our hopes in ordinary people. If it were not for Master who safeguards the entire cultivation environment, we cannot imagine what kind of situation we would be in now.

Who are the sentient beings we are saving? Are they Dafa practitioners or the ordinary people who support Dafa practitioners? Some fellow practitioners' notions relate to the superficial and neglect the essential things that seriously affect Fa rectification, and the course of saving sentient beings. This creates much more trouble than necessary for Master. Is the persecution going on because we tacitly go along with old force arrangements so it can gain power to poison the world's people? When we were persecuted financially, did we conclude that things would be difficult from now on? When the persecutors seized our belongings and felt at ease and justified, their excuse was: "Dafa practitioners let us do that!"

We are now following Master's Fa rectification, and yet in some areas we are even worse off than Sakyamuni's disciple mentioned above. Master has taught us all the Fa and opened up all our abilities, but we are still held up in our various notions without recognizing this. At the same time, the persecution is rampant in some areas, seriously affecting our ability to save the world's people.

We should carefully examine ourselves: What kind of notions do we hold that cause this persecution environment? Some fellow practitioners might say that it was a mess to begin with--but Master told us to rectify it a long time ago. How well have we done this? How well have we cultivated ourselves?

Master will rectify the Fa. He gives us the chance to establish mighty virtue. We should follow Master and finish well the three things that Master has given us to do. Master does not acknowledge the existence of the persecution, so we of course also deny it. Even though during our past descent in levels, due to the old force's influence, we created some variant notions, but when Master opened our wisdom with the Fa, that should have been enough to eliminate all evil.

Posting date: 7/4/2007
Original article date: 7/4/2007
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 6/27/2007
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/6/21/157281.html

 Yearly Archive  Printer Version