July 31, 2002
(Clearwisdom.net) On July 20, 2000, in his article "An Announcement," Master Li mentioned "clarifying the truth." He then immediately published the article, "Rationality," and emphasized "Validate the Fa with rationality, clarify the truth with wisdom, spread the Fa and save people with mercy." After that, I often pondered, "What should I clarify to the people?" In the articles and Fa lectures that followed, Master Li elaborated many times on the importance, necessity and urgency of clarifying the truth. But I was circling around the question of what to clarify.
At the beginning I spoke about the persecution that happened to me. But many people felt that I was temporarily "safe," and therefore, I should be "sensible." Then I told people about the persecution that was still going on and that many practitioners had lost their lives. Upon hearing this, people were afraid. They glanced left and right, and repeatedly told me that they would not turn me in. Then they left in a hurry. At that time, I felt that this was due to my attachment of fear, and therefore, I did not think about it further. Later, when the truth about the "self-immolation incident" and the "murder incident" came out, I exposed the flaws in those situations but people reacted with indifference, as many citizens already realized that these kinds of foolish tricks were being used all the time. The problem was that they did not associate themselves with this persecution. Sometimes they even went against their nature to go along with the evil. At that time, I felt that these people were too cold, and that their righteous minds were buried. They were treating this matter as "none of our business." I felt that their lives were in danger, but then who but themselves could they blame? I felt that it was their own choice, that I had already done my best. Through studying the Fa, I realized that this kind of thinking conformed to the old evil forces arrangements and I was not treating sentient beings with mercy. But where was the problem in my "truth clarification?"
Under the long-term compassionate guidance of Master Li, I finally realized explicitly that, although this evil persecution in the human world appears to be attacking Dafa and Dafa practitioners alone, in actuality it is persecuting everyone who is being deceived. This is the truth that people need to know--that they too are being persecuted. In the past whenever I mentioned persecution, why did I only think of the surface things endured by practitioners and not of the sentient beings? It was actually due to selfishness. In the first lecture of Zhuan Falun, Master Li said,
"In other words, a person's earliest life comes from the universe. The space of the universe is benevolent to begin with and embodies the characteristic of Zhen-Shan-Ren. At birth, one is assimilated to the characteristic of the universe. Yet as the number of lives increases, a collective form of social relations develops in which some people may develop selfishness and gradually their level will be lowered."
Therefore, this selfishness penetrates to very high levels. It was due to this selfishness that I always deviated from the Fa during truth clarification, failed to achieve the effect of "clarification," and obstructed sentient beings from being saved. Once I dug deep to the root, I realized that this selfishness did not just obstruct me in truth clarification. To some degree, it was showing up in every aspect of my cultivation. It was the fundamental reason why for a long time I was stuck in one stage and could not progress forward. It was like a wall blocking me and appeared to be impassable. Now this wall is collapsing.