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Reminding Fellow Practitioners Not to Become Apathetic

Nov. 24, 2008 |   By a practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) I had a dream two days ago, where one of my relatives came to ask me about two Chinese characters that he did not know. I told him about the first one, but the second one had many strokes and I hadn't seen it before. My daughter came and looked at it. She said it was the character for "apathetic" but written incorrectly. I woke up at that point, and my dream was still vivid in my mind. I knew that Teacher was giving a hint to me that I was apathetic in some area.

I got up to study the Fa. After comparing my behavior against Teacher's Fa, I found a lot of attachments to get rid of, such as liking to force my ideas on others, focusing on others' weaknesses, looking for everyone's shortcomings but my own, protecting my own interests, and having strong emotions for my husband. I recited Teacher's "Disintegrate Completely All the Meddling Deities in the Three Realms that Have a Hand in Interfering with Fa-Rectification." I felt that my field was cleaned up a lot and the bad materials were disintegrated while I was reciting it. My body was getting lighter, too. However, I still did not find my apathy.

The next day I rode my bike to buy some vegetables. Teacher's words "you must not become apathetic" ("Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles") kept showing up in my head on the way. Teacher was hinting at me to look for my gaps, but where was I apathetic? As for the three things, I studied and recited the Fa every day; I sent forth righteous thoughts at the four fixed times and did more when I had time; and I kept distributing and mailing out truth-clarification materials and clarified the truth to people face-to-face. With Teacher's help, we set up a small Dafa materials production center in my home. We installed a satellite dish for New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) there, as well. My husband, who is not a practitioner, and our children have all enjoyed watching NTDTV's programs. Maybe because Teacher saw that I still did not get it, he gave me another hint. After I bought vegetables and was about to ride my bike back home, I noticed that a cover for the right pedal fell to the ground and stopped the bike. I picked it up and tried to put it back, but a screw to secure the cover was missing. The other three screws were all tightly secured. I looked around for the missing screw but could not find it. I then went to a bicycle repair shop and had the missing screw installed. Then I went home.

When I was cooking dinner, I kept thinking, "For a practitioner, there is nothing accidental. I just had a major repair job done for the bike the week before, why had the screw fallen out? These screws normally never get loose. I need to look within." I then realized that the pedals falling meant that I had made a mis-step. Where was I not solid? Cultivation is very serious and I should cultivate myself solidly.

"Let each and every thing

be measured against the Fa.

Only then, with that,

is it actually cultivation."

(Hong Yin)

That night, I read the article, "The Wise Director of a Police Station" in "Minghui Weekly". The director said, "Unlike the criminal who is normally by himself, Falun Gong practitioners are a group as a whole. When you arrest one practitioner, you are going against the whole group. In the future, even if the family of the person you arrest does not come to you for justice, any other practitioner may well come to you." My husband came home at around 11:00 p.m., and I told him this story. When I said "as a whole," I was shocked. I didn't think more about it, nor did I link it to my bike problem.

The next day, right before I finished exercising, the phrase "as a whole" came into my head. After I finished, I started to think about why that director did not dare to persecute Falun Gong. That was because he realized that all Falun Gong practitioners are as one. On April 25, 1999, Tianjin City police arrested forty-five practitioners. Then more than ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners around the nation came to Beijing to appeal. They did not know each other, but they acted as a whole. Then I thought of the incident of NTDTV's broadcasting being stopped by Eutelsat. It happened overseas, but wasn't it targeting mainland China? Wasn't this directly blocking real news to be broadcast to China and making 1.3 billion Chinese continue to live with the lies and propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Many practitioners in China were waiting for and relying on practitioners overseas to resolve the issue. Where's our thought of "being a whole?" In my own case, right after it happened, I included a thought to resume the broadcast when sending forth righteous thoughts. I also thought of writing an article to share my understanding with other practitioners and writing letters to Eutelsat. However, as time passed by, I started to lose confidence and gradually forgot about it. I stopped adding the thought to resume the broadcast when sending forth righteous thoughts, nor did I write any letter or article. So I figured out what to do, but I did not carry it out. Then I went to the Minghui website to look for articles from other practitioners sharing their understandings, but I didn't realize that I should write down my own understanding to share, too. I didn't write anything because I was afraid that my understanding was not at a very high level. Another reason was that I wanted to wait passively, relying on others.

Teacher said "Dafa disciples are one." ("Teaching the Fa at the Conference in the Midwest-U.S."). But I still could not handle it properly when faced with a real problem. When I wrote this article, I found another attachment--the attachment to the end result. My husband asked me several times why we still could not get NTDTV's signals and suggested that we ask the installer to take a look. I told him it was not a problem with the receiver, but the Eutelsat being financially influenced by the CCP. I told him that it would resume broadcasting soon. On the surface I was very confident, but I was only thinking that practitioners overseas would take care of it. When non-practitioners could no longer wait and wanted to take action, I was still apathetic and did not realize that I had a responsibility to support our group as a whole. Sentient beings are waiting!

In conclusion, let's all re-read Teacher's words from "Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles:"

"I hope everyone will do better and better at the end. Be sure not to become lax. You must not slack off, and you must not become apathetic."