(Clearwisdom.net)
Some practitioners have mentioned that they have trouble with the relationship between safety and righteous thoughts. To be cautious seems to show fear and a lack of righteous thoughts, but to not be cautious enough seems to indicate a lack of rationality. They feel that it is hard to balance this relationship. I think when we do work for Dafa, the issue is not whether or not we are personally afraid, but rather, whether we can be responsible to Dafa. In addition to non-omission in our xinxing (mind-nature), a concern for safety is necessary; otherwise, the evil will find excuses to persecute us.
Whether we feel afraid or not depends on our minds, not on external appearances. If we are afraid in our minds, no matter how fearless we may appear to be, we are afraid. If we are free of fear in our minds, we are not afraid no matter how fearful we may appear to be. The mind is the essence. Things are quite simple if we look at things from our xinxing (mind-nature). However, we always pay too much attention to superficial forms and often look at a problem through its outer appearance. We may often think about whether we are afraid if we do things a certain way and what we can do to become fearless. We tend to relate whether or not we feel fearful to the manifestation of our conduct, so things become complicated. In fact, the same action by different people may reflect different mentalities. Some people are cautious because they are responsible, while some are cautious because they are afraid, and still others are cautious because they are nervous. On the other hand, some practitioners appear to be fearless because they have righteous thoughts; some appear to be fearless because they are not responsible, and others appear to be fearless due to the fear of attachments. The same outward expression may have many fundamental reasons behind it. Cultivation is to cultivate the mind, and the ability to position oneself also depends on this mind. The external expression is to show other people, but only the internal essence can genuinely decide everything for an individual. Therefore, in our cultivation during Fa-rectification, we need to be responsible for our own minds, not just for external expressions. To judge things from appearances instead of discerning the issue itself is a manifestation of a failure to cultivate ourselves solidly and/or an unclear understanding of the Fa.
Several days ago, practitioners in some areas were arrested. According to indirect inquiries, the practitioners said that in those areas practitioners were attached to doing grand and spectacular things, none of which conformed to the Fa. Looking at it from the current perspective, whenever problems arose at Dafa truth-clarifying publication sites, they were caused either by the fact that practitioners' mind-natures essentially did not conform to the Fa (Fa also doesn't allow us to do such sacred things with impure hearts), or by loopholes exploited by the evils due to a lack of the sense of security. All external reasons are similar to the explanations of everyday people's diseases, which never consider the fundamental cause. If our minds assimilate to the Fa and our actions conform to the Fa, then we will carry the power of Fa. If we do things in the human world in a cautious and responsible manner, the evil will not be able to find any excuse to persecute us. Dafa is harmonious. If we failed to harmonize, the reason is very simple: we failed to act according to the Fa, and did many things motivated by our own notions or attachments, which is very dangerous.
To be fearless is only to get rid of the attachment of fear, and this cannot represent all of our attachments or everything in our cultivation. Failure to be responsible to Dafa or for other practitioners is also due to attachments and selfishness. If we do not discard these, we will also not be able to attain the grand perfection that Fa-rectification requires. Today, it is very important for those practitioners who are charged with providing Dafa materials to be very responsible for their own cultivation and at the same time have the sense of responsibility to other practitioners, to society and to Dafa. If not, we may not be cautious when we need to be, and just to prove our own fearlessness, we may cause big losses to Dafa and also bring great negative influences to fellow practitioners. This is a lesson for those practitioners who are responsible for preparing Dafa materials. Once the starting point is wrong, all other things will be wrong no matter how righteous we appear to be. If the starting point is selfishness, what appears to be fearlessness will be something that is degenerated.
Practitioners complained that some of their local practitioners have failed to step forward. From the situations in certain areas, some of these problems in fact have direct relationships with ourselves. Some practitioners have not stepped forward, not because they did not want to participate in the Fa-rectification, but because we have too many shortcomings. They feel that we are not stable and will cause unnecessary losses.
In order to change this situation, we need to change ourselves. To rectify others, we need to rectify ourselves first, and to rectify ourselves, we need to rectify our own minds. We need to help fellow practitioners establish their own connections with Clearwisdom and at the same time make sure our own practice groups play stable, low-key roles. In this way, more practitioners and exercise sites that provide Dafa materials can show their own power in Fa-rectification responsibly and without going astray.
The above is just my personal understanding. I look forward to your comments and corrections.
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