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Breaking Away from the Bondage of Human Notions and Transcending the Human Realm

September 04, 2005 |   By a Falun Dafa practitioner from Malaysia

(Clearwisdom.net) Since beginning coordination work for truth clarification activities, I have had remarkable new understandings and personal experiences at different levels. Here I'd like to share with fellow practitioners those understandings and experiences.

At the very beginning of my coordination work, I wasn't aware that I needed to apply for a permit whenever there was an event to be organized. Later on, some fellow practitioners told me that we must first apply for the necessary permits for our activities. So, gradually, I have had many opportunities to contact the police force. Sometimes, I visited the police to apply for permits, and sometimes I went there because of certain cultivation or Fa-rectification arrangements. I began to clarify the truth to the police.

I came to realize that initially many of the police officers didn't know too much about Falun Gong. After they learned the truth about Falun Gong, these officers immediately showed their understanding and kindness towards Falun Gong practitioners, and they were quite willing to issue the permits to us. Our truth clarification could thus be carried out without delay. One example of this was our appeal in front of the Chinese Consulate. The police quickly approved our application for such an event, so we were able to deliver our appeal letter to stop the persecution to the Chinese Consulate.

My understanding was that while I was applying for a permit, it was also a good opportunity to clarify the truth to the police. So, at that time, I tried to apply for permits as often as possible. Even for those events that didn't need permits, such as merely practicing the exercises in a park, I would still submit permit applications to the police. I just wanted to take advantage of the application process to meet with the police officers and tell them the truth about Falun Gong.

However, things started to change later on. At the end of last year (2004), we tried to organize two events, one indoors and the other outdoors. When we went to apply for the permits, our applications were refused. I began to ask myself: "What's going on? Why is it different from what it used to be?"

I said to myself: "If we keep trying to get the permits from the police while the police refuse to issue the permits to us, then, how are we ever going to organize any of our activities? How are we going to clarify the truth to the public at large?"

We tried to discuss this issue with certain human rights organizations, and they gave us information about jurisdictions and human rights. I began to realize that we had to change our plan.

In Zhuan Falun, Teacher says:

"there are different Dharma at different levels, and that the Dharma at each level is not the absolute truth of the universe. Yet the Dharma at a given level assumes a guiding role at that level."

And,

"the same Fa has different transformations and forms of manifestation at different levels, and it can play different guiding roles for practitioners at different levels."

I came to realize that it was time we elevated our understandings on the issue and we applied principles from a different level. We had to cultivate ourselves even better and accomplish the truth clarification even better.

My country had always followed a strict rule in controlling people's freedom of speech. I was brought up in such an environment and certain human notions were firmly settled in me. Somehow, I had been involuntarily constrained by such notions. As a matter of fact, I started to understand that laws and government powers would play a negative role when they overstepped human rights.

First, I understood that we didn't need to apply for permits for those activities that didn't require permits at all. It was just one of our rights to hold such events. For example, for any indoor events for practitioners to engage in organizational affairs, there should be no need to apply for permits, as such an event was simply allowed by the Constitution.

The Constitution of the nation stipulates that each individual citizen should have the right to one's own beliefs, free speech and to make one's own choice in forming organizations. The laws, however, are taking control of people more and more stringently, even though it is claimed that the laws are getting more proper and closer to perfection. Right now, as soon as one steps out of his home, he might have already committed some offenses against the law without knowing what he has actually done wrong. In my opinion, the principles of human rights are derived from Dafa at the level of this human society and such principles should be used in our truth clarification. That will explain why ordinary people can understand us immediately when we try to clarify the truth to them from the perspectives of freedom of belief and human rights violations. When we are carrying out Dafa activities, we also need to defend our own human rights, and make appropriate use of our freedom of speech. In "Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. Fa Conference" (Guiding the Voyage), Teacher said: "When being treated unfairly, people should be allowed to speak--this is a human being's most basic right." My understanding is that most people in my country don't have a clear recognition of human rights. I think this is also arranged by the old forces; it is arranged in this way so as to increase the difficulties in our truth clarification.

With such an understanding, I decided that I needed to break away from the old forces' arrangements, and I should try to organize Dafa events even better. We had almost never held any major public events in clarifying the truth to the public before, such as parades, sending forth righteous thoughts in front of the Chinese Consulate, major press conferences, street anti-torture exhibits or displaying banners and exhibitions in the open. We had not organized such events because of the restrictions of the laws. The lack of such major events had already prevented us from spreading the truth to an even wider range of people.

Some time ago, we started to make some breakthroughs in this respect when we attempted to carry out a large-scale truth clarification activity-- an anti-torture exhibit. The exhibit was held inside a hotel where many people gathered. While the event was going on inside the hotel, we passed out flyers outside the hotel and many weekend shoppers came to visit and saw the exhibit. The effect was really good and many people learned of the brutal nature of the persecution of Falun Gong and its practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

On the second day after the event, we were informed by the police that we needed to go to the police department to discuss the exhibit. Prior to practicing Falun Gong, I read only books of intellectual interest to me. The other practitioner, who was also summoned by the police, was a housewife who spent most of her time educating her kids and helping out her husband at home. Both of us had no prior experience with a police summons at all. So, we first contacted certain human rights organizations and learned about our rights and some simple rules that we should follow when dealing with the police. With a heart full of determination towards Dafa and a pure single thought just to validate Dafa, we started off and went to the police department in District A to clarify the truth to the police.

The police officer that received us asked many questions about the anti-torture exhibit, such as whether we passed out flyers, whether we let in the public to the event room and some other "nit-picky" details. It seemed like we were under interrogation. From some of the judiciary knowledge we had learned from the human rights organizations, we decided to circumvent our answers to the police questions. We tried to take every opportunity to clarify the truth to the police officer. The officer told us that the police department had originally planned to dispatch police officers to take care of our event; however, on that particular day those designated police officers were assigned elsewhere. In the end, the police officer said that we needed to apply for permits for any similar future events; otherwise, we would be "breaking the law."

We knew that we had just taken our first step to break away from the interference, but we still needed to do more to push through the old forces' arrangements. Soon after the first anti-torture event, we conducted another in the same area inside an office building. We didn't even try to apply for the so-called permit. It turned out that the police didn't bother to intervene at all this time.

Later, I planned to organize an outdoor public gathering or appeal event, and I began to discuss this issue with fellow practitioners. Many practitioners didn't support my plan and complained to me, saying, "How can we display banners in the street and launch protests? Isn't such an event like those violent activities ordinary people would like to resort to?" I came to realize that such human notions were developed through the years when we were all under strict rulings from the government. It seemed that whenever someone stepped out to say something, this person would be immediately regarded as "anti-government" or "violent." As a matter of fact, all such notions had been acquired through the misleading education promoted by the government and they were also the poisons left over from the wicked CCP specters.

Nevertheless, some other practitioners were still interested in such an event, so we decided that we would no longer let the permit applications control us; we wanted to overcome such interference in our truth clarification. A few days before my country's top leader was to visit to China, we gathered right in front of the Royal Palace and submitted our appeal letter to the president, asking him to help stop the ongoing persecution.

We made some banners for the occasion, but we didn't raise them at the scene. It must be a Teacher's merciful hint that made one of the media reporters come to our group and ask: "Hey, do you have banners? Why don't you raise your banners so that we can take pictures?" We were still a little bit hesitant, and the reporter continued to say: "Why have you come over here? Don't you want to raise your banners and submit your appeal letter? Hurry up and raise your banners!" So we slowly and fearfully raised our banners.

As soon as our banners were raised, I immediately felt the solemnity and supreme grandeur of Dafa. Another fellow practitioner told me that she also had such a similar feeling. I remembered once reading an article from Clearwisdom.net that talked about practitioners in China and how these practitioners went to Beijing and raised banners in Tiananmen Square. When the practitioners raised their banners, those who had their third-eye opened could see that the wicked forces in other dimensions were immediately destroyed. Those wicked forces that had been following ordinary people passing by the exhibit would also be destroyed right away. My understanding was that once we raised our banners, we had just made many breakthroughs in Malaysia. We had breakthroughs in our xinxing cultivation, a breakthrough in my country's tightly controlled environment where freedom of speech was strictly monitored and a breakthrough in negating the old forces.

Later on, we went to the Chinese Consulate and demanded that the persecution be stopped. We also presented our anti-torture exhibits in the parks and in the streets during night market times. As we held more and more such events, more and more practitioners started to venture out to take part in the activities. A very good cultivation environment was gradually established.

At the end of such an event, we would always try to further clarify the truth to the local police and let them know more about us. We noticed that whenever we organized certain public gatherings without first applying for a permit, the police would treat such events as "against the law" and come over to deal with us. When the police contacted us, it was the best time to let them learn the truth about Falun Gong and they would genuinely realize that we were a peaceful group of cultivators. We were genuinely following the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance" when interacting with others.

Once, a police officer from District B said to us: "You have finally made it through with your persistent endeavors." What the police officer meant was that all the public gatherings and appeals launched throughout the past year by Malaysian Falun Gong practitioners had eventually made the police realize what Falun Gong was. The police had finally learned the truth. I was very moved when hearing these words. It seemed that our Honorable Teacher was letting the police officer utter such words to encourage us, to confirm what we were doing.

The first time we gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate to demand the end to the persecution in China, all the police officers at the scene were very nervous. It seemed as if they would take some action against us at any moment. After we finished our activities and went over to thank the police officers for their presence, those police officers were quite surprised. They were amazed by our show of kindness to them.

In subsequent events, the police officers started to relax much more. They would just stand along beside us and watch us or chat with practitioners. It gave our practitioners very good opportunities to clarify the truth to these officers, to let them know the brutalities of the ongoing persecutions in China. When the police officers saw the pictures of China's practitioners under persecution, they couldn't believe that such things could have happened and they would become very sympathetic towards us.

An officer from District B told us that her subordinates were very sympathetic to us, because we would usually stand there quietly with the banners raised in our hands, and we always kept ourselves in very good order. Also, we were very cooperative with the police. The officer said that her subordinates just couldn't understand why the CCP had decided to persecute a group of such peaceful and kind-hearted people.

Once a policeman from District C said to me: "There won't be any problem whatsoever if your activities have fewer than five participants. It would be against the law if there are more than five participants though." When I first heard this, I said to myself: "Well, let's limit the number of participants in our activities then." However, after some time, I began to realize that I was putting myself under the restrictions of the laws. I started to break away from such a notion. When practitioners developed their intentions to validate Dafa, how could they be held back just because of the limitation on the number of participants in an event?

I also noticed that as long as our practitioners held onto their righteous thoughts and kept on doing righteous deeds, even the police officers would eventually change their minds as well. A police officer from District A used to tell us that if we didn't apply for permits, our activities would be treated as against the law. We kept on clarifying the truth to him, but he just insisted upon his own notions and kept telling us that "without permits" or "more than five participants in an event" would be regarded as a violation of the law. Once, we happened to hold an event in a community where this officer was in charge of maintaining order. About a dozen practitioners were present for the event. The officer personally witnessed how peaceful and kind our practitioners were and he finally understood that the number of participants in an event should not be used to determine whether or not the event was a violation of the law.

Later on, this same officer said to us: "If there are more than five people gathering together drinking coffee, could these people be held as being 'against the law?' " From then on this officer seemed like one of us as he chatted, and his previously condescending bureaucratic gestures had all but disappeared. He started to genuinely treat us as his friends, and was very willing to mingle with us.

Currently, there is still much interference and discord in our activities of Fa-validation, and we need to continue to break away from them. We need to break away from the bondage of our human notions and the old forces' arrangements. Let's walk well along our path arranged by our Honorable Teacher.