(Clearwisdom.net)
Recently, I have been fortunate enough to have access to the Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom). After reading many fellow practitioners' articles, I gained a deeper understanding about the attachment of fear because I have personally made my way past not studying the Fa deeply, being unclear about the Fa-rectification mission and being afraid to clarify the truth. Step by step, I have worked my way up to where I am today. Although I still have this fear, I am now making truth-clarification efforts and diligently striving forward while gradually cultivating away my attachment to fear. However, in terms of taking the Fa as the teacher, I still have a long way to go to fill the huge gap this has created in my overall cultivation.
Actually, any kind of fear in a cultivator is a result of their unwillingness to let go of ordinary people's attachments, inadequate righteous thoughts, not believing in the Fa and having omissions (1), all of which are things that a cultivator should eliminate. While still having the attachment of fear, how should we handle ourselves, as cultivators, to validate the Fa and tell people the truth about Falun Gong?
First of all, we should never stop our efforts to clarify the truth due to being afraid. There isn't time to wait until we can cultivate away our fear before clarifying the truth. Cultivating away the attachment of fear can only occur while clarifying the truth. It is like what Teacher said about "eating meat." Being attached to eating meat does not mean that you cannot practice cultivation. Instead, you are to cultivate away the attachment to eating meat, and then when you reach the point where you are no longer attached to eating meat, you can eat meat just like you would eat anything else. When you cultivate away the attachment to fear through clarifying the truth, won't doing truth-clarification work be just like doing anything else? By that time, won't your attachment to fear have disappeared? Of course, there is a process involved, but doesn't this process then become a cultivation process for our Dafa practitioners?
Yet, because it is inherent to mankind, who can say they do not have fear? However, clarifying the truth offers the best environment for eliminating one of our most human attachments, that of fear. Fellow practitioners, let's treasure this period of time. Together, let's validate the Fa and assist Teacher with the Fa-rectification as we oppose the old forces' arrangements and clarify the truth.
Secondly, we should not go to extremes in our effort to overcome fear by disregarding safety, forms or methods when we clarify the truth. We are cultivating among ordinary people, so the forms that we adopt in clarifying the truth should be modeled after those used by ordinary people. In the process of cultivating away the attachment to fear, we should not disregard safety simply because we want to cultivate away the attachment to fear. Teacher has repeatedly stressed that Dafa is all encompassing. Clarifying the truth is something that we definitely need to do, and we have to be clear about this. While being clear about doing truth-clarification work, the work should be done rationally and wisely, based on our individual conditions and environment. We should maintain a cultivator's calm and peaceful mentality, and of course, our righteous thoughts must be strong.
Lastly, we should not fool ourselves by using other excuses for not clarifying the truth, simply to avoid admitting our attachment to fear. My understanding is that behind any excuse to not clarify the truth there is always the attachment of fear, and it is an attachment that we certainly need to cultivate away. The various ways of clarifying the truth are numerous.
The above is my personal understanding. Fellow practitioners, please kindly correct me.
Notes:
- "'No omission' used to be a term in Buddhism; that is, it was cultivation language in Buddhism. For instance, human beings have all kinds of emotions, desires, and various attachments, all caused by sentimentality. There are numerous ones, such as jealousy, the mentality of showing off, hatred, etc. Every one of these attachments must be eliminated. If any one of them isn't removed, this is still considered an omission. If there's an omission, one cannot complete cultivation. A person must practice cultivation until there is no omission and no attachment left. He can complete cultivation only when there is truly no longer anything omitted." -- Li Hongzhi, "Falun Dafa Lecture at the First Conference in North America," March 1998 in New York.
