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My Understanding about Hunger Strikes

September 08, 2007 |   By a practitioner from Gongzuling City, Jiling Province

(Clearwisdom.net)

I often read articles on the Clearwisdom website about practitioners using hunger strikes to protest persecution in prisons and forced labor camps. However, I have a different understanding of this issue. In my opinion, going on a hunger strike is a way of cultivation by practitioners that remains within the forms of persecution arranged by the old forces, and it is not in accordance with the Fa.

While rectifying the Fa and doing the three things--studying the Fa, sending forth righteous thoughts, and clarifying the facts to people--in all kinds of situations, Dafa practitioners have to walk the path that Master arranges for us and cultivate ourselves well according to Master's requests. We have to eliminate attachments, including those to life and death, clarify the facts with dignity to all the people in the world, and save sentient beings poisoned by CCP lies.

I feel that those who are imprisoned should change their thinking, and not use the method of hunger strikes. We should eat when it is time to eat in order to maintain enough energy to clarify the facts to people, explaining how the CCP uses lies to poison people and persecutes Dafa practitioners with all kinds of brutal and vicious means. We have to tell the people of the world that we are indeed innocent. No matter how long our sentences, whether eight or ten years, we should care less about human notions, not think about our sentences, and just do whatever we are supposed to do.

In 2002, the evil regime sentenced me to three years in a forced labor camp. Many practitioners asked how the regime could sentence me to three years. But I had only one thought at that time: "The regime's words count for nothing; I only listen to Master." By holding this thought, I was released four months later with the explanation that I needed medical treatment.

I have kept it clear in my mind ever since that I should be steadfast in believing in Master and in the Fa. These years I have been doing all that I am supposed to do with a dignified attitude. I came to realize that while we are cultivating ourselves at home and are doing the three things, we have to have a clear understanding about what constitutes personal cultivation, what constitutes Fa-rectification-period cultivation, what it means to walk the path arranged by the old forces, and what it means to walk the path arranged by Master. Only when we understand these things well can we do things correctly and best help Master to rectify the Fa and to save sentient beings.