Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. International Fa Conference (Lecture Portion)

(Li Hongzhi, February 26, 2005)

(Long applause) Good afternoon ! You’ve been working hard.

Winter is over and spring is here. Just like the cycle of spring, summer, fall, and winter, changes have been happening throughout the long process of humankind’s history, and all kinds of things have been continually taking place, thereby establishing and creating for humankind the culture that would be needed at the final stage. Over the ages there have been many cultivators and many cultivation ways, but there are differences among all of the cultivation ways. During the last two thousand years or so some religions of upright faith emerged. Although the people in those religions believe in gods, the religions’ cultivation methods are different, and they even oppose and disapprove of one another. Of course, there is a reason for their opposing one another: it is so that they can keep the forms of their religions stable and unchanging. In other words, people’s upright faith in gods has taken different forms. Before the Fa-rectification began in the human world, no single cultivation way was specially designated in the cosmos as the set method that had to be uniformly [practiced], where all people in the world who believed in gods would have to follow that path. That is something that never happened before. As you’ve noticed, the cultivation way that Dafa disciples practice today is likewise different from the religions and the cultivation ways of every period throughout history. It’s not just different: in fact, when you look at it the differences are enormous. In the past the gods all saw an issue, which was that they thought human beings couldn’t cultivate successfully unless they chose to leave ordinary society and not cultivate in the secular world. When people are faced with things that involve their self-interest or practical gain, and when all kinds of human thoughts interfere with a cultivator in the “real” world, it is really hard for cultivators to improve themselves, and it makes those who are trying to save them feel hard-pressed to fulfill their aspiration. That’s why no one dared to take this path before. As for saving people on a large scale and having a large number of cultivators involved, they felt that there would be no way to manage the cultivators or to save them when they became mixed in with the ordinary society. That’s why with the cultivation methods and means of salvation of the past, no one even dared to think about, much less actually have, cultivators carry this out in the secular world.

The path Dafa disciples are taking today is unprecedented. A fixed notion has formed in the minds of many people in the world, which is that when someone is devoted to a religious faith or is a cultivator, it won’t work out unless he withdraws from society and leaves the secular world. The Dafa disciples’ way of cultivation, then, has no predecessor and no model. I have always said that in cultivation Dafa disciples have no role models. And it’s not just that in your personal cultivation you have to walk your own path—even the form of cultivation I have imparted to you has no example to follow. So you just have to blaze this path yourselves. And why is that? You might have realized it already through your experiences in cultivation, and I have spoken before in different settings about this Fa: it is because the historic responsibility that has been bestowed upon Dafa disciples is tremendous, an enormous number of sentient beings are involved, and the requirements for Dafa disciples are extremely high. In addition, in today’s world the innate foundation¹ of the sentient beings’ souls² is substantial. As you know, you are Dafa disciples, and you are part of the Dafa disciples of the Fa-rectification period. Fa-Rectification Period Dafa Disciples have enormous responsibilities, and the meaning of that title is extremely vast. Your ability as Dafa disciples to achieve that much mighty virtue is what determined the uniqueness of your cultivation way. If you weren’t to take up this form of cultivation, or if you were to take up any of the cultivation methods of the past, then you, the Fa-Rectification Period Dafa Disciples, couldn’t achieve the goals of your cultivation, you couldn’t fulfill the enormous responsibility of your missions, and even less could you reach the levels Dafa disciples are to reach or achieve the Attainment Statuses you are to achieve.

This, then, brings about an issue: it’s extremely difficult for a person to break out of the secular world, to successfully cultivate out from among human beings. Besides, no examples from history have been left behind to refer to, and cultivating by following the religions of the past or of modern times doesn’t work. People have known how Buddhist monks cultivate, how Daoists cultivate, how Christian and Catholic cenobites cultivate, and how the world’s people should believe in god(s). But believing in god(s) is of course different from being someone who cultivates himself, because when you [just] believe in god(s), the best-case scenario is that the god(s) will watch over you to some extent and give you blessings, or, in the case of exceptionally good individuals, they can ascend to a god’s paradise and become a common being there. But in all of those scenarios no one gains an Attainment Status. Believing, in an average sense, does not equate to cultivating, and through cultivation one can achieve an Attainment Status. In other words, with an Attainment Status the person won’t be just a common being in the heavens—he will have a divine position. And as for Dafa disciples, they are required to achieve extraordinary Attainment Statuses. Since the responsibility is huge, the cultivator is pushed to that level. He has to take on that much responsibility, so the extent of the hardship that comes about is huge. Here I’m not talking about the degree of the challenges that are forced upon you by the old forces, but rather the degree of hardship caused by the cultivation way itself. You have experienced and felt the hardship involved and the tribulations to be endured in this cultivation way, and how hard it is to break out of humanness. During the course of your cultivation, you experience all sorts of human thoughts, all sorts of things involving your self-interest, and all sorts of notions that come at you [to temper you] in every regard, and intertwined with that are irrationality caused by emotion and delusion, and the feeling when you’re foggyheaded that it is hard to sever your human attachments. And, in your day-to-day life you have family, society, work, and cultivation to handle, plus the pressure on you as Dafa disciples that was brought about by the persecution and the challenges in every regard due to the persecution. In fact, all of that is only the part you are able to sense—there is also a part that you can’t sense. What you do seems ordinary, and the things you do appear very similar to what ordinary people can do by enduring hardships. But it’s different. The same thing, when done by Dafa disciples rather than ordinary people, is different, as what you bear and endure is different.

On the surface it appears as though the conditions are the same, but in fact they are different. And why is that? I’ll give you an example. There are Christians in various parts of the world who, whenever the anniversary of Jesus’ suffering and death comes around, they hold an event where some people actually nail themselves to a cross. Maybe they do that to show their god that they, too, experience that suffering. But that’s absolutely different from what Jesus suffered. So why is it different? When Jesus was crucified, human beings could not see that he was atoning for human beings’ sins, and that an enormous amount of sin and karma from a great number of people was pressing down on him—both the number and the amount were huge, and it was extremely dense. That was what caused him such enormous suffering. At that time, were he not tortured he still wouldn’t have been able to stand steadily. His burden was so great that even to breathe was a challenge. The kind of suffering that came from the pressure from sentient beings’ enormous amount of sin and karma, the horrible mental trauma, and the reactions from the harm inflicted upon each cell in his body—those are not things an ordinary person could withstand. That’s not something ordinary people could withstand. And imagine what it was like for him to be crucified on top of such agony. [Some things that seem] the same are actually beyond what ordinary people can imagine. [Some things may] appear to be very similar to ordinary people’s things, when in fact the situation behind them is completely different—they are like night and day.

Even though Master has reduced a substantial amount of the karma Dafa disciples had originally, since the responsibilities shouldered by Dafa disciples are great, during the Dafa disciples’ cultivation, except for the difficulties brought about by a certain amount of karma that they endure, basically all of their suffering results from the process of improving their xinxing. This persecution is something forced upon us by the old forces, and it’s not something that the Fa-rectification needed. Despite that, you have made it through. No matter how hard and arduous the journey has been, you have not stood by when faced with these difficulties, and you have continued on the path of divinity. Of course, some of you just keep tripping over yourselves as you go forward, stumbling and falling one time after another. Some have proceeded pretty well and steadily. No matter what, though, the situation of Dafa disciples’ cultivation overall and the situation of Dafa disciples validating the Fa have been very steady and solid. As gods look at it, they see that the situation and trend of the Dafa disciples’ cultivation cannot be thwarted. In other words, no matter how hard the journey has been, even though no cultivation way like this ever existed before, the Dafa disciples have successfully battled through the challenges. As you validate the Fa, a lot of things look similar, or identical, to the form of ordinary people’s things. However, the factors behind those things, and the Dafa disciples’ starting point for doing things, the responsibilities the disciples shoulder, and their goals, are fundamentally different from those of ordinary people.

Right now, due to the partition and interference brought about in human society by the old forces’ factors and the factors of the old cosmos, gods cannot openly appear here, and the interfering demons and how they are struck down and destroyed can’t be shown to sentient beings. The ways in which cultivators are completely different from ordinary people have always been blocked from view by the partition. The evil has been doing harmful things during this time before the Fa’s rectification of the human world arrives. The purpose of doing the Fa-rectification in this human world here is absolutely not to put Dafa disciples or Fa-rectification in delusion. The setting of the Three Realms was created for the Fa-rectification, the purpose being to make this the place for Fa-rectification and to not disturb the divine realms. That’s why we use this setting and use these human approaches to validate the Fa. But that doesn’t mean we approve of the old forces interfering with the Fa-rectification, it doesn’t mean we approve of the things they arranged. Human society is in delusion, and people cannot see how the cosmos truly is or the real situation of beings. That’s how beings are at this level, but the situation during the Fa-rectification is presided over by Dafa and it changes according to what is required so that Dafa can save sentient beings. The fact is, at this time Dafa disciples have to do divine things, because for Dafa disciples their personal cultivation is no longer first and foremost. Saving sentient beings and reconstructing the colossal firmament during the Fa-rectification are the purpose. You have to do Fa-rectification things and things to save sentient beings, so you need to clear away the obstacles presented by this environment and validate Dafa. In this situation where you can’t see completely, as gods do, the real changes in yourself during your cultivation, you have instead been relying—amidst interference and the trials in which you painfully sever your attachments—on righteous thoughts that come from your constant study of Dafa, and you have been forging ahead. It’s really hard to make it through, but Dafa disciples overall have made it through. That is especially remarkable given the past several years of persecution against Dafa disciples that was set up by the old forces. Dafa disciples as a whole have truly made it through. No matter what kinds of things happened with you during this period of time, and even though certain things that really shouldn’t have happened did take place and some unsatisfactory things occurred, overall it has been really good, and as a whole you have kept moving forward.

The journey has not yet been completed, and the persecution has not ended, so you have to continue on your path. In terms of the remainder of the journey, I think you have some assurance now. Although it’s too late, many of the evil beings that persecuted Dafa disciples and interfered with the Fa-rectification are deeply remorseful now: “Why did we persecute Falun Gong back then? If we hadn’t persecuted Falun Gong, we would never have been in this awful predicament.” What I am saying is, the future that lies ahead for Dafa disciples is getting brighter and brighter, and you can all see that now. The overall situation of the Fa-rectification in the cosmos has been changing rapidly, because Fa-rectification has been charging ahead at a speed that transcends all times. It is getting closer and closer to this “real” dimension, and is getting closer and closer to the range that is visible to the human eye. It has been coming closer to the surface from the microcosm, and the range [of space] that is left is very small now. Of course, although the remaining range in the surface human dimension is smaller now, as you know, the final factors are of higher levels, and the volumes of the partitioned factors are larger now. That is why the deficiency of the evil after the reduction of the low-level spirits and foul demons is being made up for now by the partitioned factors. Even though the progression is accelerating, there are still impediments. But regardless, right now it’s as though good and evil are standing on two sides of a scale, wherein the evil has completely lost the balance [that it once had] while the Dafa disciples’ side is weighing down almost to the bottom. In other words, the success of Fa-rectification and of Dafa disciples’ cultivation are inevitable realities now. Our work is not yet completely done, though, and in terms of personal cultivation, each step might be critical in determining whether each Dafa disciple can reach Consummation. I think that no matter how far things go at the end, however bad the interference gets, or if Fa-rectification makes you become completely aware of everything, you still need to cultivate in a noble and upright manner, and not be affected by any positive or negative things—make sure you’re not interfered with by any favorable turn of events brought about by the situation or by whatever situation that might arise.

Actually, having been through so much, you are quite levelheaded now, and you can look at a lot of things with righteous thoughts and calmly think things over. With the impact of your righteous thoughts you have effectively stabilized the overall situation of Dafa disciples’ validating the Fa. Since you have now matured you understand a lot of things. That prevents any waves of interference from being stirred up, and leaves no gaps for the evil factors to exploit. Whenever human thoughts emerge among Dafa disciples, it is something the evil will take advantage of, and the evil beings will use it to do the bad things they want to do. When Dafa disciples’ human thoughts become minimal, when their righteous thoughts become strong, and when they are levelheaded and steady, the evil has nothing to capitalize on then, which makes the situation of Dafa disciples’ Fa-validation more stable. Recently, unsteadiness that arises internally among Dafa disciples has been rare. And I’m not just talking about [the Dafa disciples] outside of Mainland China. The same goes for the Dafa disciples inside Mainland China: they have become steadier and steadier as well.

Of course, this being cultivation, some attachments that arise from human thinking are bound to manifest, because it is human beings cultivating, not gods. So since it is human beings cultivating, human thinking will show itself during cultivation, and that’s why we will see cases of people who are not diligent. Some students are prone to becoming impulsive, and there are some students whose righteous thoughts are quite poor. They have been used by the old forces to do some bad things. Through these lessons, you will all be attentive to this as you validate the Fa, and you won’t be used by the evil factors in the time ahead. As for those st st students who don’t study the Fa, whose righteous thoughts are weak, who have too many human thoughts, and who keep doing bad things, let me tell you: the number of chances you have left is diminishing. I know that even though you have done much that is a disservice to Dafa, you don’t truly want to leave Dafa. When all of this comes to an end and when all the Dafa disciples are reaching Consummation, though, what are you going to do? And before that happens, a weeding out of human beings will unfold on a large scale. What are you going to do when that weeding out comes? Master knows everything, but I won’t say anything. Go ahead and show how you are, whether it be something positive or negative. You can either be a noble and upright Dafa disciple or be attached to your human side. In the ordinary world you can live your life for whatever it is ordinary people pursue, or out of fear you can drag out an ignoble existence in the shadows. But since you have come close to Dafa, I hope there is a chance to save you, and that is why I keep giving you chances. I will always give you chances, but as for whether you can become a Dafa disciple, whether you want those chances, and whether you can sober up and live in a way that’s accountable to yourself… at this point in time things can’t continue to be dragged out. Even if you begin to make up for all of that and try to catch up now, very few chances are left. I think that after a short while even these few chances will be gone.

The things that Dafa disciples are doing now to counter the persecution have astounded the world’s people. People have seen the tenacity, extraordinary kindness and forbearance, and rationality that Dafa disciples have displayed while being subjected to frenzied attacks and suppression. Many people are saying: “Falun Gong students are so extraordinary. They’re such strong people, and they have withstood such enormous evil.” The entire government, which is controlled by the most wicked, malevolent party, has carried out attacks and suppression full throttle, and the country’s entire propaganda machine has fabricated lies on an overwhelming scale to deceive the public, causing nearly the entire population to take part in the persecution. Dafa disciples have managed to withstand and make it through this most malevolent suppression and such ruthless Red Terror. That has truly amazed the world’s people. And that’s despite the fact that the world’s people can only see the side that is tangible and real to them. They can’t comprehend what lies within Dafa disciples or the deeper meaning of Dafa, and they can’t understand the state of Dafa disciples as cultivators, yet the tangible manifestation is sufficient to awaken those people who are going along with the evil and not thinking clearly. How have Dafa disciples managed to act so remarkably? How have they been able to keep their righteous thoughts so steadfast amid this persecution? How have they been able to make the evil collapse on its own as it persecutes Dafa disciples? It’s because they are beings of Righteous Fa and Righteous Enlightenment who are forged by Dafa, and they are Disciples of Dafa who have great innate foundations and who are on the journey to godhood, endowed with missions. In fact, during this time before Dafa’s mighty Fa-rectification force arrives, they have effected changes in the state of this world. Also, everything that Dafa disciples have shown through their righteous thoughts and righteous actions has now created a field of Dafa in this material dimension of human beings, and this field has had an enormous, positive impact. You are all still in the process of cultivating, [and if it weren’t for that,] if another approach were taken, the manifestation of this field would have already become dominant. If it weren’t for the fact that your path of cultivation is still unfinished, this righteous field of Dafa would have made every wicked factor in this world and all of the crooked factors of the past dissolve, be cleared away, and vacate their places. You saw how rampant and vicious the evil was in persecuting Falun Gong before. Why is it acting so differently now? It’s because the evil things, the various factors that were sustaining the bad people, and the fields they formed in the past have been destroyed, and the enormous righteous factors of Dafa are restraining and destroying those evil things. The bad people have lost the driving force behind them and they are now at a loss.

In other words, there are still some people who are foggyheaded while these gigantic changes are taking place. It’s time that they wake up and become aware of what they are doing. The truths and principles that I, Li Hongzhi, have made known have never been disclosed for thousands, well, billions of years, or by any saviors before, no matter who they were, by any of the enlightened beings who came down to this world, no matter how many there have been, or by any of the immortals who enlightened to certain truths, no matter how many there have been. (Applause) This isn’t something an ordinary person could do. And what Dafa disciples have demonstrated, have shown in their cultivation, during the process of their cultivation, and what they have been able to enlighten to and validate is all beyond what ordinary people can comprehend, and it cannot be compared to the cultivation states of the past. What’s more, as for saving people on such a large scale, and this loosely organized form of cultivation—especially how people are when they cultivate under this loose management—these things, too, are unprecedented. In other words, no matter what angle you look at it from, it should lead you to calmly, really think things over for yourself and to try to clearheadedly comprehend this phenomenon in which Dafa is being spread on a grand scale.

The situation since July 20, 1999, has been changing constantly. You have all seen that the situation of Dafa’s Fa-rectification in the cosmos has been changing faster and faster, and it is manifesting more and more in what is tangible to human beings here. But there have always been some students—and of course what I’m talking about here includes students in Mainland China—who say, “We want to keep up with the progress of Fa-rectification. Whatever Master says, we’ll do.” But in fact when something really needs to get done, I may not explicitly tell you that that is the new situation. You all know that in validating the Fa the situation does change, and that is inevitable. There is definitely a difference between this time when Master is doing Fa-rectification and the time before Master did Fa-rectification. With anything, before and after it’s done, and even during the process of it being done, things gradually change. And when something covers a large scope, it involves changes in the situation.

So everyone talks about keeping up with the progress of Fa-rectification, but when the Nine Commentaries came out, a lot of students didn’t understand. Then I wrote two short articles, including Turning the Wheel Towards the Human World. At that point everyone seemed to suddenly realize: “Oh, Master has done that, so we should do it too.” But actually, if Dafa disciples had thought about it calmly, sensibly, and without using human thinking, they would have understood it immediately: could you possibly reach Consummation with any faith in the CCP or the idea that the CCP, which suppresses Dafa disciples, is good? That’s absolutely impossible, right? Our Dafa disciples have read the Nine Commentaries, and since that party is something of that nature, think about how many people in the world have been misled by it and thus don’t believe in gods, and how many people are following it and persecuting Dafa disciples and sinning against Dafa. Could we not save those people? Could we possibly approve of it? So I could see that some students were still holding themselves back by way of human thinking, and some lacked righteous thoughts and thought that it was getting involved in politics. That’s why I wrote those two short articles. Even so, I know that in Mainland China there is still a group of students whose human thinking is acting up and they don’t want to understand. In reality, isn’t it fear and the attachment to self-interest that are causing them not to let go of it? In offering salvation, we couldn’t have made things any easier—hasn’t it been said that people could even make their declarations using aliases? It doesn’t matter what name is used, as what gods look at are people’s hearts. Gods can see what people are thinking and what they are doing. As for those with reasons that are beyond their control, they can use any name. People’s names on earth are not used in the heavens anyway. When people on earth give someone a name, do you think gods follow along and call him that? They don’t. Besides, there are a lot of people with the same name. The people on the earth are numbered, and they refer to them by number. (Audience laughs)

Bringing up these things is not to say that some students can’t keep up with things or that they are dim-witted. What it is, is that some people’s thinking is being interfered with by the evil party’s factors—the evil party’s factors are having an effect. In the midst of the party culture that was created by the evil, those people’s thoughts that would enable them to see it clearly for what it is have been muddled. That warped culture was formed through its being purposefully instilled in you since elementary school, then high school, and all the way up to adulthood, and it started even as far back as when you started to learn and remember things. In other words, nowadays everyone in Mainland China is thinking in the evil-party-culture’s way. Of course, if in Fa-rectification the malevolent party hadn’t persecuted Falun Gong, then it wouldn’t have been an issue, because a lot of confused cultures and ideas will be naturally set right in Fa-rectification. Cultivators wouldn’t have needed to do anything in that regard, and the evil specter of that party would have been rectified as well and thus saved. But once it started persecuting Falun Gong, it became the most evil specter, for this is a time when Dafa disciples are validating the Fa and Dafa is carrying out the Fa-rectification. So Dafa disciples need to see it clearly for what it is, and people that are represented by it need to clearly state their stance in terms of whether they will follow that malevolent demon or choose what is bright and an eternal life. They must understand this issue soberly now. The gods are set on purging it from humankind. And also, it has indeed been persecuting Dafa disciples and interfering with Fa-rectification over these years in a terribly evil way. So why, then, do the world’s people need to state their stance? Because everybody [from Mainland China] has said things about following it. When people took an oath as they were inducted into the [Communist] Party, the [Communist Youth] League, or the [Communist Young] Pioneers, they all raised a fist and swore that for their entire lives they would struggle for the sake of evil Communism and that they would devote their lives to the malevolent party. The evil specter of the malevolent party is seizing on this and persecuting those people to the point of death. The evil specter asserts that those people made a pledge back then that they would give their lives to it, so it uses that to persecute people. Also, the malevolent party’s factors still exist in the minds and bodies of those who don’t see it clearly for what it is. So how could you not see it clearly for what it is? And after you do that, you have to eliminate it.

Of course, I wasn’t very explicit about the matter of the evil party before, and that’s because at the time I wanted to keep giving chances to sentient beings, including the evil-specter-possessed malevolent party. Another reason is that at the time, many, many external evil factors were taking part in interfering with Dafa and persecuting Dafa disciples, so with that great multitude of gigantic, diverse evil beings that were pressed into the Three Realms in front of us, the best approach was to concentrate on eliminating those. After they were eliminated, we needed to ferret out the one who had caused those awful demons to come here in the first place. Who initiated the persecution of Falun Gong in the world and has been playing a leading role all along? It was that evil party and that ludicrous wretch of the human race. That ludicrous evil ringleader was the head of that party, wasn’t it? Driven by jealousy, it took the lead in doing evil against Dafa disciples in this world. That thing, which resulted from a low-level spirit reincarnating as a human being, is nothing on its own. Its jealousy was just right for the evil specter of the malevolent party to make use of. So that bad person and the evil specter became partners in crime. The bad person took the lead, while the evil specter of the malevolent party has been the real culprit which has attached itself to human bodies so as to persecute Dafa disciples. And all of the evil factors that have come down from beyond the Three Realms have been using the evil specter of the malevolent party to together persecute Dafa disciples, and in the persecution all evil has been involved in it. You know these things that I’m talking about. The Nine Commentaries has been published for quite a while now, and many students are very clear about this already.

The situation during Fa-rectification is bound to change constantly. Someone once asked me, “Master, what point should we have gotten to now?” And I said, “Just do what you should be doing at present.” Fa-rectification in the cosmos won’t change momentarily as we speak. (Audience laughs) When in Fa-rectification some sort of change needs to happen, a situation will definitely arise, but the emergence of the new situation will stir up certain attachments that arise from human thinking. Because it is humans cultivating, the attachments that are still there will have an effect. That is why an emotion that isn’t right will arise inside some people, and they will even get foggyheaded and understand things as an ordinary person would. After the Nine Commentaries were published, at one point some students who didn’t understand were talking about things like whether we were getting political. In fact, the bad people who persecute you could label anything you do as “getting political,” and anything you do can get twisted around, because they are dead set on persecuting you, they’re set on doing foul things to you. So they will use anything you say and turn it around to slander you, and no matter how good something you do is, they will say that you have done something bad. When you expose their persecution they will say that you are “getting involved in politics” and use that to rile people up and to try to justify their persecution. Don’t let what those bad people say affect you. Ordinary people can’t affect cultivators. Cultivators can’t be affected by ordinary people. Having gone through all of this, you have indeed become more rational. I think that from now on none of the factors that want to interfere with Dafa and disrupt the situation wherein Dafa disciples validate the Fa and save sentient beings will be able to make Dafa disciples waver. Recently, I basically haven’t gotten involved in, and have said very little about, many of the things Dafa disciples are doing. That’s because you all know now what you should do. Just do things according to how Fa-rectification progresses.

Each person has his or her own journey of validating the Fa. A lot of students have gotten together and established different media outlets, and a lot of students have found different ways to validate the Fa as well as different ways to clarify the truth and stop the persecution. It’s fine to just go ahead and do those things. I know that you have done really well recently, and you are getting better and better. Master is truly pleased. Sometimes when I take a look on the Web, browse the newspapers, or watch the television programs, as I listen to and look at the things you are doing, I feel quite overcome. I rarely felt this way before. Now the situation is changing very fast, and Dafa disciples have matured. The righteousness that they have displayed is really extraordinary. The students who are clarifying the truth in Manhattan, in particular… in the frigid weather, under challenging circumstances, and when resources and money are very much lacking… those Dafa disciples have overcome all sorts of challenges and have been working to clarify the truth, save sentient beings, and validate the Fa. The firm resolve they have shown has shaken heaven and earth. All the gods have seen it. It’s extraordinary, truly extraordinary. Of course, the same holds true in other settings. [For example,] there are those who have continued to clarify the truth and validate Dafa at the consulates and embassies or under different circumstances. No matter where they are, Dafa disciples glow with a shining light and are playing a role in validating the Fa.

I’ll stop here. In the time that remains, if you want to ask about anything, let’s do it the usual way (applause)—you can write down your question on a piece of paper and pass it up, and I will answer it for you. I will answer some questions [you have now] based on the current situation. If you have questions, you can pass up your slips of paper.