(Minghui.org)
Greetings, Master!
Greetings, fellow disciples!
Early last year, in January 2011, Master came to San Francisco to speak to Dafa disciples about shortcomings we were facing in our cultivation and the negative effects they were having on Chinatown. Several months later, Master returned and, this time, explicitly asked us to “go make friends in Chinatown,” with instructions to go talk about this among ourselves. It was quite stunning to have two lectures from Master so close together to our local group, but He was clearly here to correct certain factors that were not right and to help us take advantage of this cultivation environment. It was a “stick wake up,” as if we were being told again to “go clean the bathtub.” It was a direct reflection of my own omissions and lack of understanding of the importance of Fa Rectification in Chinatown.
Several months ago and about a month after the beating incident, another practitioner and I met with the precinct captain at the Chinatown police station. He said a few words that shook me, “Every group from China is represented in Chinatown. We have Hong Kong, Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, Falun Gong, and communists; they are all here.” It was like Master was waking me up with these words and I suddenly enlightened to the fact that Chinatown is a microcosm of China. It’s like a miniature, a smaller but complete cosmic version of China and one with quite a bit of evil running rampant. It’s right here in front of us and it needs to be rectified just as much as Mainland China. In fact, another practitioner shared with me that his understanding was that the evil has plans to use San Francisco as a fall back location if the climate in Beijing changes. Allowing this to happen in the area we are responsible for would be completely unacceptable.
Early in my cultivation, I yearned to have been a disciple in China, to have heard the original lectures there, done group practice with thousands of others, and immersed myself in Chinese culture. Now I realized that everything I wanted to do in China I could do here in Chinatown. In fact, every practitioner in the Bay Area has a karmic connection with Chinatown, the people and the things contained in it. That’s why we are here and not somewhere else. We are all supposed to “step forward” in Chinatown and that is my understanding of why Master lectured to us twice on this important matter. This is a very good cultivation environment for those willing to step forward.
Confronting Evil
One day as I exited the elevator at Portsmouth Square, I ran into a coordinator who told me that only a few minutes before, a practitioner had been beaten and the whole thing had been video recorded in great detail. The coordinator said the practitioner was not injured, but we immediately went to the corner of Washington and Grant in Chinatown to see if we could provide any assistance. The beating was over and the police had come, so I joined the practitioners who were sending righteous thoughts and surrounding “the man in red.” He was yelling all kinds of foul words and generating bad things for everyone who passed by.
This “man in red” stood balanced on a six-gallon plastic bucket perched on top of a small fold-up chair like a circus act. He did this for hours, yelling loudly, without taking a break. According to other practitioners, he had been doing this for years.
The worst part about this was the slanderous things he said about Dafa; he said them repeatedly and loudly for everyone to hear. People who listened to him and accepted his bad messages about Dafa received bad things. Some of them might have a negative impression of Dafa and ruin their future, which would be a real shame. It could not be tolerated.
Master said in “Beyond the Limits of Forbearance:”
“Going beyond the limits of Forbearance is included in the Fa’s principles. It is just that because in cultivation, Dafa disciples have tests to pass, their Xinxing need to be improved, and they need to let go of all attachments amidst ordinary humans, Master has not talked about going beyond the limits of Forbearance. Once told, it could create obstacles for disciples who are in the process of cultivating. In particular, it could render them unable to handle themselves correctly amidst the evil’s test of Dafa. However, the way the evil beings are currently performing shows that they are now completely without human nature and without righteous thoughts. Such evil’s persecution of the Fa can thus no longer be tolerated.”
There is one thing we should never tolerate—evil that is intent on damaging the Fa. We should never have compassion for evil, it should be eliminated. Someone who intentionally and knowingly slanders Dafa is doing an evil thing and practitioners have an obligation, a duty, to protect the Fa.
I looked inward and realized the seriousness of what he was doing and that I had to stand up for Dafa. I realized this was a very serious test for me, one I had never faced and I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I told him loudly “You should stop this immediately because you are harming others and harming yourself.”
Why does such a person and situation exist at all in Chinatown? In my understanding, this has been brought on by us, ourselves, because we have not followed the Fa and Master’s instructions properly.
Master said in “20th Anniversary Fa Teaching”:
“I’ll tell you, for years I have been continually saying that Dafa disciples’ abilities are tremendous, yet many people don’t believe this since those abilities were not allowed to be seen. Under the effect of righteous thoughts, everything around you, as well as you yourself, will undergo changes. Yet you have never thought to give it a try. The old forces as well as the interference from the evil elements are precisely exploiting the gaps in your thinking. That’s what they have been doing all these years. All along the old forces have been directing rotten spirits and the factors of the evil Party to do this, causing you to fail in your efforts to save people. They do this because they don’t have the ability to defeat you in a direct fight. It wouldn’t matter what kind of mighty force they assembled, the instant you started sending righteous thoughts they would all be turned to ashes, completely destroyed and unable to amount to anything.”
An hour later, another policeman, the sergeant for the precinct, came by. Some people had complained about the noise and commotion on the street and blamed it on Falun Gong. The sergeant assured us, “I know what Falun Gong is about.”
At that point, all of us just kept a calm mind and sent righteous thoughts, and the entire situation became completely peaceful. This was the first time I had ever felt the effect of One Body with other practitioners and how effective it could be. Even amidst the stress and conflict of this situation, it felt like very still water. We had gone beyond forbearance and found real compassion.
Then, a lady who regularly walks up and down the street hawking for a restaurant came over to complain to the officer about being video recorded as she was walking by. The sergeant explained, “You can't expect privacy while on the streets in the U.S.” When she continued to complain, the sergeant loudly and curtly told her, “If you don’t like it here, you should go back to China!”
My understanding of what happened was that, because of the strong energy field and compassion among all practitioners, the police officers was able to see things clearly and he supported the practitioners. The police want to support Falun Gong. Attaining this compassion is the key to rectifying Chinatown.
Master said in “Fa Teaching at the 2009 Washington DC International Fa Conference:”
“Compassion is an enormous energy, the energy of righteous gods. The more compassion that is present, the greater this energy becomes, and it can disintegrate anything that is bad. This is something that has never been taught, be it by Shakyamuni or cultivators of the past. The greatest manifestation of Shan is compassion, and it is an expression of tremendous energy. It can disintegrate all that is not right. And naturally, the power of your compassion will grow in proportion to your level, which is to say, it is determined by your cultivation level. The strength is determined by the height of one’s ultimate rank, for sure.”
I’m hopeful we can all look inward to eliminate human notions and attachments, share openly, and practice diligently to find this compassion to meet Master’s requirements in Chinatown.
Please correct any errors or omissions.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.
