(Clearwisdom.net) The Minghui/Clearwisdom website recently published an article entitled "Understanding of Sending Forth Righteous Thoughts." We agree with the practitioner's opinions, but also wanted to add some additional thoughts, using some specific examples.
Whenever practitioners mention sending forth righteous thoughts, many of them think of eliminating evil using divine powers, yet they don't look inward when facing problems or issues. They consider erecting palms as a universal way of solving their problems. True righteous thoughts give Dafa practitioners wisdom. Why can't they think of proper solutions when they encounter problems?
We frequently hear practitioners use the word "interference." Here are some examples:
Certain practitioners went to a hospital with severe sickness karma. After being saved from serious situations, they didn't look inward to find any issues with their xinxing. Instead, they simply erected their palms to eliminate "interference." Because Master is living overseas, a few overseas practitioners would rather ask Master when they face issues instead of looking for root causes themselves and trying to understand and solve the problems on their own.
When specific practitioners were helping those practitioners who had sickness karma and were hospitalized, they didn't have the attitude of being responsible to practitioners and being responsible for Dafa, to encourage the practitioners to view and solve problems from the standpoint of a cultivator. They only erected their palms every day. When practitioners couldn't stay clear-minded for a long period of time, they just kept reading the Fa to them and repeatedly persuaded them to "firmly believe in righteous thoughts; don't accept any treatment." On the surface, the practitioners didn't take any medicine, but in fact, they were trying to use reading Dafa books as medicine. They made the doctors think they were weird: if you don't want to be treated, then why did you come here? As a result, when practitioners faced the risk of losing their life or when some practitioners actually lost their lives, it made their families misunderstand Dafa. Then those practitioners would say the practitioners who died "didn't have strong righteous thoughts," and they tried their best to "support them using their righteous thoughts."
Some practitioners still live in conflicts and don't solve some basic cultivation problems well, which causes misunderstanding and negatively impacts newer practitioners and non-practitioners. The effect of their Dafa work was also not good. Some practitioners didn't help others in a kind way. When practitioners had difficulties they just said, "you don't have enough righteous thoughts," "you have attachments," or "you carry too much karma," and turned their backs on those practitioners.
The 24-hour non-stop petition for stopping the persecution in front of Chinese consulates is of great support for practitioners in Mainland China. Some overseas practitioners felt though, "The duty at the Chinese Consulates is not meaningful." They thought they could take a nap in the car in front of the Consulates because it might affect their work during the day. Eventually they even refused to go anymore. The practitioners who were responsible for arranging these events often felt it to be very difficult. More evil, therefore, accumulated in front of the Chinese Consulates and it manifested as "interference." Some practitioners got beaten, some were photographed by the Chinese officials, and other such things took place.
When clarifying the truth in New York started, many practitioners viewed this as an opportunity to advance in cultivation. Initially, all of them wanted to go to New York. Even some practitioners in charge of their local Dafa work wanted to give up their local work and go to New York to "establish their mighty virtue." Some practitioners in charge even said, "We are going to New York and will leave the local opportunities of establishing mighty virtue to you ordinary practitioners." One year passed. After everybody rushed to New York, no more people went. The ones who are left in New York are overloaded with Dafa work. The duty in front of Chinese Consulates now didn't get easier because everybody is returning from New York. In fact, no matter what we do as Dafa practitioners, isn't there always a cultivation factor involved? No matter what we do, there is always a basic consideration--are we doing it to pursue something of our own, or are we doing it for validating Dafa? The tenacity needed to overcome the difficulties and the responsibilities in doing any Dafa work is reflection of a practitioner's xinxing level.
To clarify the truth from overseas to Mainland China, using everyday society's media is a quite effective method in a peaceful environment. Now that we have media companies we should operate them well. But practitioners don't put enough thinking into it and don't want to learn strategies of running businesses and think that it's "ordinary people's business; we have righteous thoughts!" Whenever any issues come up in these operations, they erect their palms. But some issues still couldn't be solved and there were increasing conflicts among practitioners. Some would exclaim, "Why are the old forces so bad and won't let Dafa practitioners make money?" But even non-practitioners would comment after seeing the things we had not done well, "You operate the company this way and still want to make money?" Let's think about it: If gods were among ordinary people, how would they operate the company?
We are not supposed to have non-practitioners' attachments, but this doesn't mean we should abandon good business strategies ordinary people utilize. Now that we are using formats that non-practitioners use to clarify the truth, we should use them well. The culture of the human world was built by Master with the aid of Dafa practitioners and was initiated for today's Fa-rectification. Then, shouldn't it include effective business management methods? We are cultivators. We should learn these things better and faster than non-practitioners. We can't have the human mentality and take "righteous thoughts" for granted, refuse to learn and hide our laziness.
In addition, some practitioners want to take shortcuts. They don't try to clarify the truth in social groups to open up situations well. Instead, they often collect donations among practitioners and then consider the contributions from practitioners their own "achievements." Their financial management is not strict from even the aspect of the ordinary society. In fact, many of the strategies Dafa practitioners use are for clarifying the truth. The process of clarifying the truth well is the process of doing things better. By contrast, though, having certain things fulfilled (such as a concert, establishing a newspaper) is viewed as the most important, it will lead to deviated cultivation and will interfere with the overall harmony.
Six years have passed since the beginning of the persecution. Have we ever examined ourselves carefully to see if we still have fundamental attachments and whether or not we have gotten rid of them? When clarifying the truth, have we used the level of righteous principles of the human realm that could move non-practitioners? Are practitioners viewing righteous thoughts only as an extraordinary thing and ignoring their daily conduct?
In fact, when our divine thought is pure, we can use our supernormal abilities as we wish. This is just one of the reflections of righteous thoughts. Righteous thoughts reflect in our daily activities and in our cultivation. In our daily life we should always be calm, no matter what we encounter, deal with things compassionately and solve issues from the perspective of offering sentient beings salvation. Non-practitioners will then view us as positive, optimistic people with wisdom. They will see the wonders of Dafa reflected in us and hence recognize Dafa and be saved. This is how we have validated Dafa.
Using divine powers and sending forth righteous thoughts is an awe-inspiring thing. In the field of compassionate righteous thoughts the evil has nowhere to go; however, the hand positions that Master taught us to use when sending forth righteous thoughts are sacred. They are the reflection of the solemn nature of the Buddha Fa. Before we hold one palm erect, we should examine our minds and see if the thoughts comply with the level of an enlightened being. If our thoughts are based on hatred, anger and fear, it would supply the evil with more energy, because we are thus combating evil with evil and we will not reach the result of eliminating the evil. That is the reason why merely having the thought of eliminating evil doesn't equate with righteous thoughts.
All the things in the old cosmos, including our parts that have not been fully cultivated, are no longer pure due to deviation. On the other hand, things are rarely completely bad, otherwise we wouldn't even talk about salvation. If we are practitioners with a pure mind for offering living beings salvation, we should then always view things optimistically, highlight the positive factors in everything we encounter and examine our own shortcomings. This will then restrain the negative factors naturally and eliminate them. Even the old forces' interference will be dispelled and positively used.
Our cultivation level is limited, so please point out anything improper.