Should We Lie to Protect Ourselves and Others from Persecution?

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) As Fa-rectification period Dafa Disciples, we should reject all the arrangements made by the old forces and not comply with the persecution. However. we need to do that according to the standards of the Fa. When the police find truth-clarification materials or Teacher's new articles in the possession of some practitioners, the practitioners forget to use righteous thoughts to reject the persecution, and even answer police questions about who supplied them with the materials. Some even lie to the police, making statements such as "Someone put it in my bicycle basket,"or "I found it in the milk box outside my door," and "I don't know who left it there." They think this will satisfy the police and protect the practitioners at the material centers. Sometimes they are able to get by, so they think that lying to the police is right and then pass the method to other practitioners.

We should not tell lies, and we do not need to answer the persecutors' questions. However, these practitioners may argue "Why tell the evil police the truth?" to cover up their own attachments. When they really face the challenge, they tend to fail and give out fellow practitioners' names. Several material centers were destroyed by the police due to this. Many practitioners at those material centers were arrested. Yet, the practitioners who gave out other practitioners' names did not feel remorse. What is more worrisome is that they had not paid enough attention to protecting fellow practitioners. Their view of the issue is not based on a cultivator's xinxing standard.

I once lied to the police. I can understand the dilemma that these practitioners face: On one hand, they want to protect fellow practitioners; but on the other hand, they worry whether or not they can withstand pressure from the police.

What I want to say is this: My fellow practitioners, we are Dafa disciples. Isn't whatever we run into a matter of cultivation? Does lying to the police meet the standard of Truthfulness? Is giving out fellow practitioners' names to the police a benevolent action? Doesn't this happen because of our fears and attachments? Shouldn't we cultivate further to a diamond-like state? Is the persecution that we face that of one person to another? Or are other forces involved? I think we should carefully think about these questions, and then we will find the right answers.

During the almost nine years of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) persecution against Falun Dafa, all the Dafa disciples from China have faced the challenges of being firm on the Fa, not betraying Dafa and not betraying fellow practitioners. As have so many other practitioners, I too have faced the challenge of how to protect those of us who produce our materials. For a long time, I kept studying and reciting the Fa to get rid of my attachment of fear and to remind myself to get rid of the attachment to life or death, and to become diamond-solid in my resolve. I kept ridding myself of fear and became more and more brave and firm.

I have a lot of gaps in my own cultivation, yet I still wish to share my understanding on this issue.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/4/11/176160.html

 Yearly Archive   Printer Version