(Clearwisdom.net) I sighed with great sorrow after reading an article published on the Minghui website (the Chinese version of Clearwisdom) on January 25 "Incidents of Persecution Conducted by Police Officer Shao Li from Gucheng County, Hebei Province." Officer Shaoli, in collaboration with other depraved police officers, arrested a dozen or so practitioners in a sheer mad manner.
With the enormous power of the Fa-rectification forging ahead, many people who have taken part in the persecution of practitioners have stopped aiding and abetting the evil-doers. They have started their lives anew after learning the truth about Falun Gong. This has been happening all over China.
In spite of this progress, some perpetrators continue to rampantly persecute practitioners. I think this is related to the cultivation states of the local practitioners. After sharing with some other practitioners on the situation in Gucheng, I have some superficial understanding. Due to the limitation of my cultivation level, please kindly help me understand any shortcomings I may have.
Believe in Teacher and Believe in Dafa and Let Go of Fear Mentality
I still remember when the persecution just started in China, practitioners all over the country plunged themselves in the tidal wave of clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings based on their righteous belief in Teacher and Dafa. The practitioners from the surrounding cities and counties of Gucheng all did a very good job clarifying the truth to the local people. The residents in these cities and countries received truth-clarification materials several times and very quickly they learned the truth. Looking from this world, you could see the sentient beings were being saved, and from other dimensions, the evil forces were eliminated. However, the practitioners in Gucheng seemed a step slower and they did not take any action. This had virtually nourished the evildoers so that they could persecute Gucheng practitioners, and also cause great harm to the practitioners in neighboring cities and counties.
It was learned that the practitioners from Gucheng dared not to step forward. They were afraid because several others had been arrested and sentenced to forced labor. Their fear made the situation even worse.
Teacher said,
"If you have fear, it will seize you; the evil will collapse when your thought is righteous". "What to Be Afraid Of" (Hong Yin II, provisional translation).
After several years of hardship and cultivation, we really experienced the power of Falun Dafa. As practitioners we should solidly follow and do what Teacher has guided us to do. In this way, we can have a new break-through in our personal cultivation and the upgrade of the practitioners as a whole, as well as the improvement of the Fa-rectification environment. This is a manifestation of how much we believe in Teacher and the Fa. Is it one hundred percent? Teacher said,
"If you hold on to humanness with one hand and won't let go, and you hold on to Buddhahood with the other hand and won't let go, just which one exactly do you want? When you can truly let go the situation will definitely be different. The students in regions that have been severely persecuted, or in places that have been seriously damaged, should really think about it: what's really going on?" (Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference)
In view of the situation in Gucheng County, I would like to cite some examples of what our local practitioners did. From these incidents we can learn lessons from or have some enlightenment so that they can help all of us to improve.
After the persecution started many local practitioners had been detained or sentenced to forced labor. The evildoers thought they had played a role of executing one as a warning to a hundred. We, however, have Teacher and the Fa In our hearts. The more frenziedly the evil became, the more urgently we clarified the truth. The evildoers fabricated lies to poison the everyday people in such a pervasive manner, therefore we accelerated the pace of our truth-clarification. We delivered to the local residents piles of truth-clarification materials. Once a non-practitioner who had learned the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong kept a 12 inch stack of truth-clarification materials. He said admiringly," You Dafa practitioners are really great. I keep these materials as a witness to history."
Facing the interference and threats from the evil forces, we clarified the truth in a dignified manner. Every practitioner posted slogans such as "Falun Dafa is good" and "The world needs the Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance" on the doors of their own houses and the gates. One practitioner who had a business in the market posted a slogan on the electric pole in front of his shop. During market days he would stand in front of his shop to clarify the truth about Falun Gong face to face, and to hand out materials to the passers-by. He felt clarifying the truth inside his shop was not enough.
When the head of the local 610 office came to his shop and saw Teacher's portraits, Dafa books, and truth-clarification materials, he tried to threaten and intimidate the shop owner. However, this practitioner kept his heart unaffected and just spoke the beauty of Falun Dafa. He started with the benefits he had received and all the way to the truth clarification that doing good deeds would be rewarded and doing bad deeds would meet with retribution. At last the "610" official sneaked away. When the practitioner found out that the evil "610" official still did not fully understand what he had talked about, the practitioner went to his home to continue to clarify the truth. He started with the spread of the Fa to the improvement of the moral standards of the practitioners and all the way to the law cases in which Jiang Zemin had been sued. Finally the "610" official said, that if it was that good you could practice at home. Now, we can see that the painstaking effort from that practitioner had changed the 610 official from being very vicious at the beginning to having no choice at the end.
Another practitioner was also doing very well with righteous thoughts and righteous actions. At the very beginning her family members could not understand her, but after many setbacks and tremendous effort they began to help with Dafa activities out of their own initiative. At many busy intersections and bus stops, streams of buses, vehicles and countless passengers passed by daily. Large banners with the words "Falun Dafa is good" and "The world needs Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" were hung high up on the electric poles.
When the evil was rampant one could see a very moving scene with a female practitioner walking in front with banners and glue in her hand and her husband followed with a ladder. They came out every day rain or shine. If the banners were torn down, they would be back up again shortly. Sometimes the police would assign someone to guard these places. Her husband even asked to go to put up the banners all by himself. He said that since he was not a practitioner and even if he was arrested, the perpetrators could do nothing about him. When the guards were not looking, banners with the words "Falun Dafa is good" were posted up nicely. We truly understand the profound meaning of "keeping your heart unaffected, you will be able to handle all situations."
In the past years of persecution, fellow practitioners firmly kept their righteous belief and righteous thoughts in Teacher and the Dafa. Thus, they continued their group study and group practice of the five sets of exercises. This came from a solid foundation laid down by their persistent and earnest Fa study before the persecution. During the inhuman persecution this foundation helped them to keep a rock-solid belief in Dafa and paved the way for them to shift from self cultivation to Fa-rectification period cultivation.
Understanding on Exposing the Local Evildoers
Just exposing police officer Shao Li and the local perpetrators who took part in the persecution of Falun Gong was far from enough. We simply disclosed from the angles of fines, the number of arrests, and the number of practitioners who had been sentenced to forced labor, but failed to expose how the victims were tortured, how their physical and mental health were harmed and the misery brought to family, neighbors, relatives, and friends of practitioners. In individual cases, we failed to provide detailed information about the evildoers, especially the telephone numbers. To these evildoers, phone calls from overseas practitioners were just thunder bolts which scared the wits out of them. In addition, the pressure from the victims' families and friends who had learned the truth left them with no breathing room. As a result, there would be a fundamental change in the local environment.
After the Minghui website published the article with Teacher's comments "Expose the Evil Happening Locally to the Local People," we had interference caused by our fear. We were afraid that if we dredged up their past crimes they would fly into rage from shame. Thus, it brought interference to the environment we had just rectified. After repeated Fa study and sharing our understanding as a whole, soon we were on the same wavelength on this issue and everyone was mobilized to take immediate action. We wrote the facts of our personal persecution, collected all kinds of data and sorted them out for publication. Data to expose the evil was made public all over the county, especially in the neighboring areas of the evildoers' work units, their residences, their relatives, and friends. This shocked and frightened the evildoers so much that they ran for cover. Once when their evil deeds were exposed in broad daylight, they had no place to hide.
Coordinated Well as a Whole and Let Go of Fear and Dependency
A bad environment is the result of failing to understand the Fa from the Fa principles and failing to keep up with the process of the Fa-rectification. When the tidal wave of Fa-rectification required us as a whole to clarify the truth and expose the evil, the practitioners in the Gucheng County took no action. Instead, they adopted a wait-and-see attitude. The process of Fa-rectification was delayed again and again. On learning the situation in Gucheng County, the practitioners from the neighboring cities and counties traveled as far as one hundred miles to Gucheng County many times to deliver truth-clarification materials to innumerable households there.
After the persecution started, the practitioners in various parts of the country quickly deepened their understanding of the situation and everyone became a coordinator. If the coordinator fails to keep up with the situation, should we do the same? This is a manifestation of taking the Fa as a Teacher or taking a human being as a Teacher.
Finally, I call on the practitioners in Gucheng County to step forward to take action. I also call on the practitioners in neighboring cities and counties to share with the practitioners in Gucheng, so that we can improve ourselves together. I hope the practitioners outside China can help in eliminating the rotten ghosts, demons, and the evil spirits of the Communist Party in Gucheng, and rectify the environment with phone calls, faxes and emails.
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