(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master. Greetings, fellow practitioners.
Cultivation has transformed my way of thinking and my understanding of the role of human culture in the Fa-rectification for the past nine years. As an ordinary person, I understood that culture was the arts, sciences, language, and the way people live. As a practitioner, I have enlightened to the real meaning of culture, historical cultures, and the very important role that culture is playing during the Fa- rectification. I have also become aware of the negative role being played by the culture of the Chinese Communist Party.
Historic Culture
People historically believed in and were close to gods, and lived their lives according to the will of heaven. They established cultures that were the foundation to help people improve their xinxing, safeguard their virtue, and maintain society’s moral character. Culture created living environments for all beings, which led to higher levels of social cooperation and development. A good culture is prosperous and has a bright future, because the moral character is high. You can still find people like this in small, remote areas in society, and with true Falun Dafa practitioners.
Master said,
“By suffering hardships and doing good deeds one can accumulate virtue among the masses. To achieve this, one must understand the principle of cause and effect. Knowing this can enable officials and the populace to exercise self-restraint, and prosperity and peace will thereby prevail under heaven.” (“Wealth with Virtue” from Essentials for Further Advancement)
The state of a society’s culture is a reflection of the virtue of all the individuals in a society. Today, people don’t safeguard their virtue, people are covered with karma, and society is sliding down more every day.
The Destruction Phase
The cosmos has gone through formation, stasis, degeneration, and we are now in the destruction phase. In my understanding, the old forces follow the old cosmic laws and arranged this test to ruin many beings and therefore destroy human society using a demon we call communism.
This demon set out to destroy society by ruining its foundation, which is culture. It targeted language, the arts, religion, science, and other things, warping and destroying the good nature and replacing it with wicked things, even things from the aliens with one goal—to destroy sentient beings.
Under the culture of the Party, eternal truth, religion, and morality are replaced with communism, turning society into a big dye vat that makes sentient beings destroy themselves. When fabric is dipped into a dye vat, the longer it’s in the vat, the deeper the color and the harder it is to remove—just like the Party culture. This degenerate culture is everywhere in the world, even inside practitioners who have never lived in a communist country. Master said,
“The social welfare system and its kin adopted by the developed countries of the world are also wicked communist things within capitalism. Those appear to be free societies, yet it seems that the whole world is in fact practicing communism.” (“In Reference to a Prophecy,” from Essentials for Further Advancement)
The Importance of Language and Retaining Traditional Culture
If culture is the bedrock of a society, language is the cornerstone of culture. Language is more than communication, it contains the essence of the culture, and in the case of Chinese, some of it has been divinely imparted. One evening while studying the Fa with our group, we read about how enlightened beings can communicate using a rich language of hand signs. Master said,
“Actually, they are the language of the great enlightened people. When there are many people, one uses big hand signs; they are very beautiful and made of various big hand signs. When there are only a few people, one uses small hand signs; they are also very beautiful and made of various small hand signs. They are very sophisticated and rich, because they are a language.” (Zhuan Falun, Lecture 3)
I enlightened that traditional Chinese characters use brush strokes that can visually represent these hand signs, and it was a higher language divinely imparted to humans. This is one reason why traditional Chinese characters can convey a very deep meaning and be so profound.
The Party culture simplified and transformed these characters to eliminate the inner meaning and warp the true meaning given to humans by gods. Warping language makes it more difficult for humans to assimilate to the Fa, and lowers the level of communications that can be conveyed through language. I understood that this may be one of the reasons that practitioners are sometimes so long-winded with their sharings.
The language was stripped of its divine meaning, and these practitioners want to share from their hearts, but today's language isn’t capable of conveying these things. Noticing this in others, I also realized my own need to cultivate my speech and not add extra words. When I study Master’s Fa, every word is precise with an economy of language, and there isn’t a single extra word. Why was I adding extra words? This was because of my attachments—every extra word reflected an attachment that needed to be eliminated, such as showing off, jealousy, and so on.
When I once visited a small, remote island in French Polynesia, the first thing I noticed was the way everyone smiled and greeted each other. The thinking and their hearts were very pure and simple, in part because they have retained their traditional Polynesian culture. They also learned French and attended the Catholic church. They were isolated from the dye vat of Party culture. It was very pleasant to see human beings living so peacefully.
Everything Exists for Dafa
Why were these remote places colonized? In my own understanding, people today are taught that colonization was always a bad thing, but this thinking is in fact a manifestation of the Party culture. I realized as I clarified the truth to a local person that many Fa concepts require a very rich language to properly convey Dafa, and many societies didn’t have a way to understand higher-level concepts with their local language, which only had 20,000 words.
I believe that the Catholic religion was imparted here by missionaries so the local people could have a suitable language to hear the Fa and learn about saints, who were cultivators. Colonial powers had strong faith in God and wanted the people living under colonialism to have access to a richer language and to understand cultivation, a path for humans to become gods. Everything is indeed for Dafa.
When selling Shen Yun tickets once, I was shocked after a practitioner told me “With Shen Yun tickets, when you pay more, you get more.” I immediately saw the attachment I had to equality, which is Party culture deeply rooted in myself. This is a particularly bad attachment because it can lead you to commit bad deeds to “make things equal,” targeting jealousy. I had the thought that all Shen Yun tickets were “equal” and everyone who sees the shows received the same thing regardless of what they paid.
Won’t you have better seats and see things very clearly if you pay more? In my understanding, during a Shen Yun performance, Master imparts a lot of energy to the audience, saving many people right on the spot. Since you paid more, shouldn’t you gain more? When people leave the show, those who paid more received more things that will stay with them longer, in my understanding.
If every practitioner shared the same understanding of this principle, the expensive tickets should sell first and the cheap seats should sell last. Sometimes the expensive seats are left unsold and the beings who were supposed to sit there may not be saved. I think of the vast numbers of beings who could be lost when we don’t sell a higher-end ticket. When this happens, we have a cultivation problem and poor understanding caused in part by the Party culture. Sentient beings are counting on every practitioner and getting to the correct seat. Each Shen Yun seat is special, but they are not all equal.
Having More Compassion
I also caught myself using ordinary thinking and Party culture when handing out flyers and at work. A practitioner said to me, “Wow, someone is taking a flyer from you nearly every time you hand it out.” For a second I had the thought, “This is good, people are taking the flyers,” but I realized that we have to look at the actual results, not the actions like an ordinary person would.
I needed to have more compassion for these beings, to take more time and care when clarifying the truth. This could be this sentient being’s only chance, and I had to be sure about the end result, that they understood from their heart. It is one thing to understand that the persecution is wrong, but when we take more care, those sentient beings can believe Falun Dafa hao, which is even better. This pointed out my attachment to increasing the effectiveness of doing a job by making it look like it was done well only on the surface, something the Party culture does. We all take care when helping practitioners; shouldn’t we show even more care with the ordinary people we are trying to save?
Doing All Things Well
When we take care of all things well, we take care of others and ourselves; we have a clean and clear mind without any Party culture because we are following the Fa. It’s easy to see the state of a society at a glance. A clean and well-ordered place like Switzerland has very little Party culture; there isn’t one piece of litter anywhere, restrooms are spotless, every light bulb in a tunnel is lit, and people are well dressed in public. They are courteous to others and the country is peaceful and prosperous. Even the ordinary people there unknowingly follow the Fa.
The Party culture has also ruined the quality of products produced by countries such as China. A person who works for me once saved money on some tools, but they broke right away and he then had to immediately replace them with higher quality American tools. These poorly-made Chinese tools reflected the state of that society. Work isn’t cultivation, but the quality of our work and care we show customers reflects our cultivation state.
My understanding is that Master and practitioners are helping beings assimilate to Dafa and establish the future culture. The western cultural tradition of music, dance, and art were originally established by kings and religions to improve the moral character of society. In China, qigong is ancient culture and it improved the moral character of society.
These traditions are now being revived to help establish the culture of the future. This is left behind by practitioners of Falun Dafa when they clarify the truth, from their righteous thoughts and actions, and especially in Shen Yun performances. Every word, action, and thought are not only watched by gods, but ordinary people’s hearts are deeply touched as well. The music, dance, and poetry in Shen Yun are high art and high-level forms of communication from Master. Every dance movement is Fa, and is carefully choreographed to communicate this culture.
The Party culture has no future, as it is an arrangement by the old forces. Only Master’s arrangements have a future. All practitioners should eliminate Party culture in themselves, point it out when they see it in other practitioners, and set examples for the future. In my understanding, the future for all sentient beings is bright because Dafa is the culture of the future.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.
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Category: Perspectives
