(Minghui.org) I was part of a group of Falun Gong practitioners who went to a remote town in China in October 2016. While we were distributing materials about Falun Gong and its persecution by the Chinese Communist Party, someone reported us. When the police arrived, another practitioner and I managed to run away, but several of our fellow practitioners were arrested.
We later called the head of the local police substation and asked him to release the detained practitioners unconditionally. He said he could not help us because he was not physically in the substation. We then sent several messages to the officers there, asking them not to participate in the persecution.
When we found out that the practitioners were being held in a local detention center and that the case was to be tried at the local procuratorate level, we decided to hire a lawyer. We thought this was a perfect opportunity to clarify the facts about Falun Gong to the police, prosecutors, and judges. I was put in charge of contacting a lawyer.
I learned from Minghui.org that a lawyer in another area once defended a practitioner and had him quickly exonerated. I contacted the lawyer, discussed the case with him, and verbally agreed to pay him a certain fee to represent the detained practitioners in court.
We were very disappointed when we first met the lawyer in person. Not only did he not follow through on his earlier promises but he was also very irritable and did not listen to our suggestions. Some practitioners thought that we should immediately dismiss him from the case. Others said that we should look within ourselves for shortcomings.
We met with the lawyer after he had visited the detained practitioners. When we asked if he was willing to meet with the prosecutors, he promptly declined. I told him, “You did not keep your promise.”
He replied, “I generally send a letter to the local procuratorate after meeting with the defendant.” He left in a hurry after securing our payment.
Several practitioners shared their understandings and looked within. Some said that the lawyer broke his promise and should only be reimbursed for his travel expenses. Some said that we should look at the situation from a higher perspective and not argue with him. Others enlightened to the fact that the behavior of the lawyer was a reflection of our group’s cultivation state.
I looked within and noticed that I had relied too heavily on the lawyer to rescue the practitioners. I then enlightened to the fact that we are the main players on the world's stage and that we should not look outward.
Master said,
“If you have the ability of Remote Viewing it’s possible you’ll see something like the following. Whenever you meditate you see that as soon as you enter into a state of concentration, "Whoosh!"—a you who looks just like you shoots out of your body. But if you try to tell them apart, which is the real you? He’s sitting right there. Then you see that after that one goes out, his master will guide him to cultivate in a dimension that’s created by the master, and maybe it’s in the form of a past society, or in the form of today’s society, or maybe the form of a society in another dimension. The master teaches him how to practice, and he bears lots of hardships, and this happens for an hour or two every day.” (from Zhuan Falun)
I also enlightened that Master sometimes creates different scenes that help us raise our xinxing and get rid of our various human attachments.
By sharing our understandings, we improved as a whole, and the atmosphere became very peaceful.
When we tried to hire a few experienced lawyers, they all told us that they were too busy to take on our case. However, they each gave us the names of other lawyers who had recently defended Falun Gong practitioners.
Some local practitioners enlightened that we should not pursue specific results and that we should let things unfold naturally. Some thought that we should do everything in our power to move things forward and that Master would help us do the things that we could not do ourselves. “Master's arrangements are the best,” said one practitioner.
We understood that if the essence of cultivation is to get rid of our human attachments, then we didn't need to pay too much attention to the myriad of circumstances that were being presented to us.
Shortly after, we hired a few lesser-known lawyers who presented very rational and reasonable arguments in court.
The presiding judge even told one of the lawyers after the conclusion of the trial, “You laid out a very good defense strategy. We'll do our best to help these Falun Gong practitioners!”
In the end, the practitioners were each sentenced to one year in prison. However, since the term officially started from the day they were arrested almost a year ago, they were released shortly after entering prison!
Category: Improving Oneself
