What Should Be Left to Our Later Generations?

[From the editor] Recently, Jiang Zemin and his accomplices have mobilised the vast state propaganda machine, using tactics reminiscent of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, to stir mass support for a so-called "Million Signatures Campaign" and force ordinary citizens in China, including innocent young students in schools, to sign petitions to denounce Falun Gong. [Clearwisdom.net] My small daughter was happily playing in my arms when I saw the TV program showing tens of thousands of people signing petitions denouncing Falun Gong. I was surprised and saddened to see once again how lies can mislead so many people, just as they did during the Great Cultural Revolution decades ago. The methods are the same; only costumes, terms and props have changed. How is it that we can clearly see the manipulations of the Great Cultural Revolution but not how later generations will regard this signing scene on TV now? If the pain and backwardness of the Great Cultural Revolution is still with our generation, what are we leaving to the generations to come? Embracing my daughter, I think about many, many things... It is the nature of human beings to love and cherish our children, beyond the care animals give their young. Even the tiger, the king of all animals is said to "not eat its own children." We as human beings are aware how brief our own lives are, and place our hopes in our children, seeing in the later generations an extension of our own lives. Therefore we have the tradition of trying by all means to leave certain things that we ourselves think of as good to our own descendants, including things as large as throne and sovereignty, as small as house and land properties. We hope that later generations will continue to enjoy our possessions and quality of life and pass them down generation to generation. However, life and death, illness and aging, wealth and rank, poverty and humbleness are beyond our control. Not all parents can realize their own wishes, nor can every child be safe and sound. This is true for any society, in any era. When kings and generals left sovereignty, rank and wealth to the next generation, they also passed on to their children the concept that these things were supreme. The result was dynastic struggles for power within royal families who, in fighting each other, did not scruple to secure what they wanted at the expense of the lives of thousands of people. Ordinary people handed down land, fields and houses through succeeding generations, and like the ruling classes, could also pass down a less tangible inheritance of greed for possessions and power. Properties which should have benefited the next generation, divided families instead. That brother fought brother and aging parents became liabilities, if self-centredness and selfishness ruled their actions instead of affection and duty. How sad that the good things left to children and grand-children could turn them into enemies! For the genuine happiness of our later generations, what in the end is the most important thing that we should leave to them? The old saying makes it clear that virtue, human goodness, is the key to enjoying wealth and rank. If our descendants have character, wealth can improve their quality of life. No matter how much wealth they inherit, if they don't have integrity, even mountains of gold and silver could not keep them from degeneration. If later generations don't have a foundation of virtue, the material blessings you leave to them may on the contrary bring them misfortune and even loss of life. Virtue - goodness of character is the key. It is a wonderful thing to be able to leave wealth and properties to later generations, but it is nowhere near as important as teaching them how to conduct their lives according to great principles of truth and integrity. This is genuinely taking responsibility for the generations to come. Everybody knows that Falun Dafa teaches people to cherish virtues and kindness. How is it that so many people seem to dismiss this crucial point and believe the false news without thinking it through? Is catering to politics simply easier than to insist on truth and understanding? If the authorities decreed support for Falun Dafa, how would an unthinking man react? He would take up his pen right away and add one sentence "Falun Dafa is good!" What kind of human being is that! The people that he entraps look down on him and those who make use of him also look down on him. If we behave this way, if later generations all learn to behave this way, where is human dignity? And where is the character of the Chinese nation? Where are we leading our descendants? From the perspective of the society: Society is composed of human beings and everyone is a cell in society. Therefore everyone has dual responsibility to both individual and society and has the dual losses and gains of individual and society. Looking at the development of human society, we can see that for generations the emphasis has been on the loss and gain of individuals, so that as a direct consequence our morality is unbalanced to such an extent that is hard to sustain a harmonious community. We are all responsible for it, and we all suffer from it together - and promote it, together. For example, if an official bribes his boss in order to get promoted he is certainly taking his responsibility to his family seriously and satisfies himself with fame or rank, but what about his responsibility to society, if he has not won the position on merit? Possibly someone else would have filled the position better. If other officials do the same, by the time his children grow up the continuing degeneration of the social atmosphere will mean that they will either have to participate in this corruption or see jobs which they are qualified to fill go to those who have the means to pay ever increasing bribes. There is no point in complaining about the process if both parent and child perpetuate it, and gain by it as individuals, to the detriment of the community at large. If the father and his generation could have worked actively to improve the social atmosphere and resist the practice, though he would not have the same immediate personal advantage, his community and his children would have inherited a more just and open system. Another case in point is the Great Cultural Revolution, which foreshadows the way the Chinese central government is dealing with the issue of Falun Gong. However short-sighted and self-serving the decision-makers, the reason they can mobilize so many people to come out to denounce their fellow citizens on such spurious grounds is that earlier generations left a heritage of weakness and lack of spirit. If earlier generations had half of the courage and persistence that Falun Gong shows today, maybe there wouldn't be so many people willing to take orders even though they know that they are supporting political persecution. Then from another perspective, if we do not have courage today to resist this evil, how can we be sure that the same disaster will not recur to further generations even more severely! I heard Falun Gong practitioners blamed for letting their families endure such persecution by insisting on the truth of what they believe. In fact, the balance of responsibility as well as loss and gain between society and the individual is similar to the principle of "water in great rivers and small rivers." The water in the "great river" of social morality and human justice needs everyone's efforts to maintain its cleanness and integrity. If everyone throws garbage into the river at will, when the small river becomes muddy, the great river cannot stay clean. If everyone takes a spoonful of water then in the course of the small river it will run dry. Then, when you try to get water from the great river, where can it come from? Those of us who cherish our children, when we complain that there are too many corrupted officials, when we hate the wide-spread corruption, when we sigh deeply over degeneration in our communities, how many of us can say without shame that we have never thrown garbage into the river? How many of us dare to claim that we have never added fuel to the flames? When we see what is happening today, the lies and slandering of Falun Gong used as an excuse for persecution, how many of us can be clear-minded enough not to echo others' views, without thinking it through for ourselves? How many of us can be brave enough to stand up on principle and say "no"? We cherish our children, care about their future and struggle to leave them a rich and worthwhile heritage of honor, integrity and justice. We cannot undo the past, but what we do now can benefit our future generations. This includes all of us, you, me as well as those people who are still "carrying out" and "executing" the orders. To stop this mindless exercise of political power, to free our futures from humiliation and ridicule in the whirlpool of persecution and entrapment, we need to pluck up our courage, resist this new round of political movement, resist the hypocritical test for everyone and isolate those that instigate movements for the sake of power. In order for our descendants to enjoy basic human rights and dignity, for them to live as free human beings and not as political slaves, what are we as parents prepared to do? If we love our children, then it is for us to demonstrate by example that we their parents are genuinely responsible for them. We need not be ashamed. Let's give our children kindness, integrity and a genuine human world with openness and dignity. Written by one senior public servant in the Chinese government