Difficulties Indicate a Need for Cultivating Better

(Clearwisdom.net) My home province has endured some of the heaviest casualties from the persecution of Falun Gong. This made practitioners wary of the police. The situation can serve to expose practitioners' attachments, but many don’t realize it and continue to look outward for the cause of their tribulations.

The old forces think that cultivation is the most important thing so they exploit practitioners gaps with the excuse that it will help strengthen their cultivation state. If practitioners don’t understand the cause of their tribulations and blame it on the evil interfering with them, the attachments may not be identified. The result is that practitioners often form a suspicious attitude towards the police and neighborhood committee. This attachment can have grave repercussions.

Some practitioners get obsessed with the persecution. They read the persecution articles on the Minghui website every day. Driven by the attachment that has formed, they exacerbate matters by telling fellow practitioners that the persecution in a certain area is really bad right now and that they need to be extra careful.

Working on Character Instead Worrying About the Persecution

One day I chatted with the deputy chief from our local police station. I said, “I hear they are harassing Falun Gong practitioners again.” He denied it so I asked, “I hear that the police go to practitioner's homes in some areas.” He replied, “We only visit you guys when the central government is holding congress so you don't go and appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. If you do, we will be reprimanded. Personally, I like it when you go and appeal, because I get to travel.”

I asked “why do the police check identification cards?” He responded, “Why would we check on you for nothing?”

So the question is, why do they check us out? Is it for nothing, or is there something about our cultivation state that draws their attention? It could be a matter of whether or not we are solid in our cultivation and look within when faced with challenges.

There is a story about a veteran practitioner who does housekeeping. She took a few days off work and found that her hours for the days she missed had been subtracted from her paycheck. She attacked her boss, “You are so rich, why are you so stingy”? Later the boss told another practitioner, “I no longer believe that Falun Gong practitioners don't seek fame and self-interest.”

Many practitioners focus on the persecution rather than working on their character. If we do not get rid of our old attachments and keep producing new ones, how will we ever reach the standard for consummation? Perhaps, the scar from their having been persecuted is too deep that some practitioners panic as soon as they see the police.

Both the police and agents from the neighborhood committee are part of the system that the old forces arranged and their role is to carry out the persecution. But they are not as vicious as they were a few years ago. Now they even smile at practitioners. Yet some practitioners are outright rude to the police when approached by them. They ignore them and send forth righteous thoughts instead of getting to know them. These practitioners praise themselves for having strong righteous thoughts and having negated the harassment by the police.

Actually, they have negated nothing. They think their actions are righteous, but they show no respect to the police. Their behavior is no different from that of ordinary people. Police officers and government agents are among the most pitiful of all sentient beings. We practitioners are their only hope of being saved and yet we treat them badly and disappoint them time and time again.

We should not be afraid when we encounter the police. We should try to relax and say to them in our mind, “I want to save you. Let's chat. I will let you know the facts so that you can make the right choice and have a place in the future and be saved.”

With Teacher's' Fashen and Fa-guarding deities all around us, what should we afraid of?

Teacher said:

“If any of you sitting here can’t cultivate your xinxing to the point of Consummation, then I can’t do anything about it either. I can teach you the principles of the Fa, I can help you evolve gong, I can eliminate a portion of your karma for you, I can protect you, and I can do a huge range of things for you that you don’t know about but that are necessary when you Consummate and afterwards. But if your heart doesn’t change and your mind doesn’t elevate, then all of that is in vain. That’s what I mean when I say that if a person’s heart doesn’t change, even a Buddha can’t help him.” (Teaching the Fa at the conference in Europe)

Teacher can do anything for us, yet some of us complain about the persecution nonstop. We cannot substitute our cultivation with negative behavior driven by our attachments. We need to elevate ourselves and truly improve one step at a time.