(Clearwisdom.net) Guangming Daily, the mouthpiece of Mainland China's State Council, first published a commentator's article criticizing Falun Gong on June 17, 1996. During the two years since July 20, 1999, [when Falun Gong was banned and the persecution began] China has been smearing and slandering Falun Gong with fabricated charges. Falun Gong has experienced smears, slanders, and accusations from Jiang Zemin's political gang of scoundrels in all aspects of public opinion. As this continued, numerous lies that were concocted have been exposed, which revealed these people's viciousness and shamelessness. To a certain degree and from a positive aspect, these unrighteous actions have served to help many people who had little interest before in Falun Gong. They started paying attention to the matter, a benefit that the vicious people never expected.
These people have selfish, jealous, vicious, and hateful natures, which have determined that they would take a path to harm others and themselves until their end. The more they fail in reaching their malicious goals, the more they become insanely aggravated. They resort to all means, especially with the media that can effectively influence the public. As Dafa disciples, besides persistently exposing the lies and clarifying the truth to eliminate the harm done to society and its people, can we further utilize the attack of the evil propaganda to purify ourselves, safeguard Dafa, and improve ourselves as a whole?
Teacher said a long time ago "...that an outsider can never undermine the Fa. Only practitioners can undermine the Fa..." ("Stability of the Fa" in Essentials for Further Advancement") In the past I always found this hard to understand. I thought, "All disciples know Dafa is good, how can they do damage?" Did it mean the spies? But the spies will remain outsiders unless they truly cultivate. They cannot be counted as disciples, so it is impossible that they cause damage. In the past months, through continuous Fa-study and sending forth righteous thoughts, I suddenly realized that the vicious people would not be able to find a gap to persecute us if we had all cultivated to the state of "non-omission." During the course of cultivation, the material field of every disciple has human thoughts, attachments, notions and karma. When we carry these impure matters and unwittingly get interfered with by evil, the evil can take advantage and interfere with Dafa's work and the Fa-rectification progress. These impure matters constitute the internal cause and the breach that the evil uses to interfere and put us through the so-called "thorough test." ["...to examine Dafa and its disciples in every detail, putting them through a comprehensive and thorough test that targets all human intentions and attachments." from Teacher's article "Towards Consummation"/added by the translator] When Dafa disciples do something to sabotage Dafa, they are damaging Dafa from the inside, regardless of their original intentions and motives.
How then can we avoid being taken advantage of by the evil forces? Furthermore, how can we comprehensively break through their arrangements?
We have noticed that, in doing their best to slander and accuse Falun Gong through broadcasting, newspapers, radios, TVs, websites, and forums, most of the slander and accusations have been targeting practitioners' sayings, writings and activities. Teacher has told us in "Towards Consummation" in June 2000,
"Do you know that one of the biggest excuses the old evil forces use at present to attack Dafa is that your fundamental attachments remain buried? So in order to identify those people, the tribulations have been made more severe. If you're attached to Dafa's consistency with humans' science, they manipulate wicked human beings to spread lies that Dafa is superstitious; if you're attached to Dafa's power to heal illness, they manipulate wicked human beings to spread lies that Dafa forbids people to take medicine and that this has led to 1,400 deaths; even if you say that Dafa isn't involved in politics, they have wicked human beings spread lies that Dafa and Li Hongzhi have foreign political forces behind them, and so forth; if you say that Dafa collects no fees, they say that Master has sought to accumulate wealth through dishonest means. Whatever you're attached to, they have evil elements concoct lies in that regard."
Then, from the perspective of cultivation, when the vicious people spread lies that Falun Gong practitioners' cultivation was seeking consummation and thus was selfish, could it indeed be that some practitioners have not been able to see the whole picture of Fa-rectification, have not given up the attachment to personal consummation, and have not broken out of the boundaries of individual cultivation? When the vicious people spread lies that practicing Falun Gong led to "suicide" or "self-immolation," could it be that under the brutal persecution, some practitioners have forgotten the Fa's principle, have not been able to properly understand the issue of "killing," and thus have been taken advantage of by the evil forces? When the vicious people spread lies that Falun Gong harms families, could it be that some practitioners have forgotten that their words and behavior should always validate Dafa, and they have not been able to perfectly harmonize the relationship between Fa-rectification cultivation and everyday life and work at the level of the human world? When vicious people spread rumors about Minghui net [Clearwisdom.net in English], could it be that a small number of practitioners still have questions and confusion about this Dafa website, and do not even know as much as the evil does about its role in the overall picture of Fa-rectification? When vicious people keep attacking the credibility of Falun Gong news, could it be that some practitioners have not sufficiently recognized the complexity and intensity of the struggle between righteous and evil beings in different dimensions, and thus have made some mistakes in confirming and documenting some news items? When the vicious people spread lies that we are "professional Falun Gong," could it be that some practitioners have neglected the fundamentals of cultivation and Fa-rectification, and have taken Dafa's work as an everyday person's job to perform and pursue? When the vicious people whitewash their human rights record and openly exclude Falun Gong from the human rights issue, could it be that we have been overly lenient with everyday people's notions on human rights and have not adequately and nobly presented Dafa's purity, loftiness, goodness or compassion, as well as the close relationship between Dafa and all lives? The reason that this persecution of Dafa is extremely vicious is not only because of the violence and tortures adopted, the vicious lies spread, and scope and extent of the persecution, all of which are intolerable in terms of everyday people's notion of human rights; but also because the persecution's targets are the good people who form a small population percentage of today's world but dare to use their lives to pursue truth and the lofty realm of selflessness. This persecution is opposing "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance," throttling sincerity, justice and kindness, and ruining humankind's wonderful hopes and future--and these are more than simple human rights issues for people of faith throughout the world.
For all of these questions, when we calmed down and looked inward, we found that the accusations were all targeted at our practitioners' attachments and omissions, or where we had a vague understanding of the principles of the Fa. The evil nature of the old forces drives them to start specifically from the places where we have omissions, and then proceed to excessively distort, overstate, and exploit the defects of some practitioners' behavior and personal understandings. Whenever we see the evil forces slander us, if all of us Dafa disciples can clarify the truth promptly and meanwhile, discover our attachments and omissions by following the principles of the Fa, correct our conduct in time, purify our own material fields with righteous thoughts, and send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the external evil forces--then we will be able to more effectively expose the evil's true colors every time they spread rumors and viciously attack, and stop them from ruining people's consciences. In addition, we will be able to use the slanders and attacks on a large scale to discover and get rid of our defects, strive forward diligently, and improve as a whole. If we can do well on this as a whole, we will be able to more completely suffocate the evil forces.
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