July 1, 2003
(Clearwisdom.net) "The students in regions that have been severely persecuted, or in places that have been seriously damaged, really should think about it: what's really going on?" ("Lecturing on and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference") Since April, there have been several serious incidents in which Dafa materials production sites were damaged and practitioners taken away. A few days ago, another materials production site was damaged, and a couple of practitioners in charge of Dafa work were arrested while they were outside.
I didn't realize the seriousness of this issue until now. After I studied the Fa for a few days, especially after studying Master's lectures since February, I seem to have awakened. Now I am writing down my thoughts, hoping to provide my fellow practitioners with some insights.
We've been discussing the topic of "one body" for a long time, but we have yet to reach a clear understanding of that term. At the 2003 Lantern Festival Fa Conference, Master clearly told us to "coordinate with each other." But if we look at our actual actions, it is obvious that we have not completely understood Master's words. We have entered a wrong area. We have turned "improving as a whole" into a mere formality and surface level work. We have taken doing things in unison as the entire meaning of "whole body."
When Master talked about the third eye in Zhuan Falun, he said, "That's why we have to stress character, and make a point of improving your whole self, of elevating your whole self." I find that when we quote this sentence, we have been using the second half, and ignoring the part of "that's why we have to stress character." As I understand it, this part is the genuine requirement of "improving as a whole" in Fa- rectification period cultivation. It is the essence of "improving as a whole," which is to improve the character of the whole, and to upgrade the character of the whole. It is not that we simply coordinate our actions on one thing or a few things. In other words, coordination with each other is just a natural manifestation of having improved the character of the whole body. Yet there is the simplest and most fundamental issue here, which is that the basic prerequisite to improving as a whole is the improvement of character of each individual within the whole body. At "Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference," Master talked about this, "You know, I never talk about the word 'solidarity,' and that's because that's about ordinary people forcing something, it's a form. What cultivators talk about is improvement in xinxing, a fundamental improvement."
Based on the above thinking, I believe there are two reasons that these practitioners fell into trouble. One is the environment of our area. For all this time, we have been short of materials for our and neighboring areas. We have few people who work on producing the materials, and few material centers. The situation has brought rather heavy pressure onto the practitioners who work on the materials and those who are in charge of contacting and coordinating. The overwhelming workload has reduced their time of Fa study. But I don't think this is the most important reason for the problem. On the one hand, because they had not studied the Fa enough, they developed some unnecessary attachments during their busy work. And practitioners doing this type of work are most inclined to development the attachment of doing work. Such attachments will generate jealousy, vanity, and the show off mentality. If things go on like this, practitioners will form an unhealthy mental state of one-sidedly stressing the importance of Fa-rectification work, and ignoring the improvement of one's own xinxing. The most terrible thing is using the excuse of doing work to conceal the attachments that we don't want to let go of. No matter how big or how important the project is that we are working on, we are cultivating in Fa-rectification. It is essential to improve our xinxing in Fa-rectification cultivation and to reach consummation in cultivation. Master mentioned this point at the beginning of the Vancouver Fa Conference lecture. If we stray from this point, will any amount of work we do matter?
(To be continued)
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