My Understanding of “a Great Way Without Form”

(Minghui.org) Some practitioners have established certain formalities over the years and become attached to them. I’d like to share my understanding on this. Since my understanding is limited, please make sure to take the Fa as Master.

Before Persecution

Before the persecution began, there was the Falun Dafa Research Society in Beijing and local Falun Dafa assistance centers across the country. These centers offered assistance and facilitated communication, but in no way were they structured like an ordinary organization. There was no registration or membership. Everyone was free to come and go.

There were also center coordinators and assistants. The assistants were volunteers, and the practitioners were not their subordinates. Every practitioner followed the Fa and cultivated his or her xinxing based on the Fa. After all, we are here for cultivation. Cultivation itself is “a Great Way without form.”

No advertisements were used to spread the Fa. If the media had been used, the practice would have spread more quickly, but some people might have come for the wrong reasons, such as curing illnesses. Their hearts would not have been pure if they had started to practice with an attachment. In fact, Dafa spread quickly without any form of promotion other than word of mouth.

Fa Rectification Period

After the persecution began in July 1999, the assistance centers disappeared, but practitioners did not stop cultivating. This showed that our improvement in cultivation did not require the existence of assistance centers.

Without the assistance centers, many practitioners took their own initiatives to validate the Fa. Some went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa, some set up material production centers, and others went out to talk to people about Dafa. It was not always smooth sailing, though, as every practitioner had attachments and difficulties to overcome. Still, they improved through solid cultivation.

In contrast, if we’d had formalities in place, with organizers telling practitioners what to do, some people might simply have followed suit without understanding why they had to do certain things to validate the Fa.

Master said:

“With a Great Way that has no form, every setting provides Dafa disciples with a place to do cultivation. In each, a person can cultivate. The cultivation that you do today is not the lesser-path type that was passed on to man as a part of culture by enlightened beings, as happened in the past. Rather, ours spreads all of human society out before you and has you choose to cultivate with the form that best suits you.” (“Fa Teaching Given in Manhattan” in Teaching the Fa at the Conference X)

I think that a formality is like a container. Different schools of cultivation have different forms—different sizes of containers. The form of Shakyamuni's cultivation way was meditating in the wilderness, becoming a monk or nun, and begging for food. Dafa is so enormous that its form (its container) knows no boundary or form.

Our home-based material production centers is a good example of “a Great Way without form.” These centers are very flexible in terms of content, amount, and frequency of materials produced. The practitioners may do more or less depending on how effective the materials are and/or how supportive the practitioners’ families are.

I think that the power of “a Great Way without form” also manifested in the fact that it is accessible and not easily damaged. The CCP regime tried to eliminate Dafa by getting rid of practitioner coordinators. Even though some assistants were tortured and given long sentences, other practitioners followed Dafa and Master without being negatively affected. Practitioners still did the three things well.

There was some damage because of our shortcomings. Certain local coordinators behaved like leaders in ordinary society. Some practitioners liked to follow them instead of thinking clearly for themselves. This kind of behavior reflected the CCP culture of longing to belong to some kind of organization.

Master taught us:

“It's not like a situation where people go and do things under the direction and urging of some head assistant, not at all. Other than under special circumstances where you need to work with each other on something with the head assistant providing centralized coordination, each person should be taking initiative and walking his own path. If everything was centralized and done with everyone together, if everything was decided by the head assistant and everyone followed him and did the same thing, then whatever the head assistant cultivated into, you would become no more than sentient beings in his world. I don't want that for you. I want every Dafa disciple to become a king. Each person is to blaze his own trail, and each person is to validate and reach his own Attainment Status.” (Teaching the Fa in San Francisco, 2005)

My understanding is that a living being should do things according to the Fa and do his own thinking. He should be responsible for his own behavior.

Master told us, “In other words, the cultivation of a Great Way without form is really a formless kind of form.” (Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles)

Since “a Great Way without form” is our way of cultivation, it should not be changed. We should follow it and not think about changing it when our zealotry arises or when someone shows his “high level” state or when anything else changes.