(Clearwisdom.net) I was involved in a minor incident in late 2004. I was distributing truth clarification materials and was reported to the police, then taken to the police station. The officers repeatedly asked me where I had gotten the materials and who I was in contact with. When I didn't respond, one officer got angry and said to me, "I'll tell the other Falun Gong people in the city that you have provided their information so that none of them will talk to you any longer."

I did not look inside when I heard this, but I thought that I could not allow them to detain any practitioners, and no practitioners should be persecuted. This thought was not wrong!

But afterwards, when a relative brought my son to see me in the forced labor camp, my child told me something that shocked me greatly. Roughly he said that after I had been taken away by the police, not one practitioner had come to our home. I made truth-clarification materials, and practitioners often came to my home to pick them up. One of my aunts, who is also a practitioner, met my son in the market and said to him, "Your mother was punished due to her loophole in cultivation." Hearing my son say this, I was very pained and my heart was moved. Slowly I was able to calm down and search inward for my attachments. I found many human notions and attachments. I care a lot about how practitioners perceive me. I had an attachment to fame. Although I do not care about fame in the secular world, I care a lot about how practitioners look at me. For a long time, because I was making these materials, I received more and more praise. I forgot about Teacher's caution, and gradually my attachment to zealotry and selfishness grew. In my sub-consciousness, I validated myself, and that was interfering with me.

Another incident occurred while I was in the forced labor camp. The guards told the people who monitored me to take turns trying to brainwash me. In the end, they even tortured those personal monitors. I felt pained in my heart. I knew they were trying to take advantage of practitioners' compassion in order to dissolve our strong wills, but due to my human notions and sentiments, I wanted to use human tactics and play word games to pretend to write the guarantee statement that they required of me. A practitioner should not do this at all, and I quickly realized that I was wrong in writing it. Reflecting on the conflict between righteous thoughts and selfishness that I was dealing with, and through which I was trying to protect myself, I now realize that my thoughts were not righteous enough. Those selfish notions were not my original true self. I realized that I should not write such a statement, as I already knew that doing so was wrong. That would have been protecting my selfishness, and I needed to correct it now! I should never allow negative things to happen to Dafa or myself. Therefore, when a guard talked to me for a so-called "transformation" evaluation, I told her straight out, "Falun Dafa is a righteous Fa, and Li Hongzhi is my Teacher." She immediately turned and ran out of the room and did not come back for a long time. I was surprised and wondered why she had left me alone in the room. Later, after my release, I read Teacher's lectures from the first half of 2005. I then realized that when the evil beings hear the righteous words of Dafa practitioners, they "turn and flee." I waited for a long time in that room and she eventually returned. But she was no longer as arrogant as before and said, "No matter what, I will not return your written statement to you." I told her, "That's useless. Those words no longer have any effect."

Through the above two incidents, I realized how to eliminate of the gap created by the evil beings, as well as how to eliminate misunderstandings among practitioners. I also asked myself whether I treated practitioners with compassion. This is what prompted me to share the above two examples. I wanted to share my understandings from another angle. Under all conditions we do need to look inside ourselves. At the same time we also need to harmonize the whole body on the basis of validating the Fa. My understanding is this: The evil beings are persecuting Dafa practitioners to achieve certain serious outcomes. It is directed partly toward practitioners and partly toward practitioners' human notions. The suspicions, exclusions, and gaps among practitioners are not trivial matters. Things do not happen accidentally. Teacher is not happy to see gaps among practitioners--only evil beings are happy. The evil uses our human notions, such as suspicion, jealousy, unfair discrimination, and attachment to self, to create gaps among us and thus ensure that we spend less effort on saving sentient beings.

Of course we are not asking everyone to be nice to each other and sit there in harmony. We are cultivating to a higher realm, in which we will understand, tolerate, mutually compensate, and harmonize each other. As cultivators we know the Fa principles. We should know that on the surface those people are doing bad things, but behind them are evil factors that control them. We all have watched Teacher's lecture "Fa Teaching Given to the Australian Practitioners." Similar things also exist both overseas and in China. Teacher is helping us to solve those things, and at the same time we need to understand the Fa principles and try our best to eliminate the negatives.

We can't dive into conflicts in order to resolve conflicts, because these conflicts are the result of our attachments. These conflicts expose our attachments, so we can't be trapped in those conflicts. We need to search inside, and cultivate well, thus eliminating our attachments. One practitioner shared that cultivation is in fact very easy if we stick to one method, follow Teacher's requirements, and constantly remove our attachments. Yet cultivation is not easy and along our paths, there are various attractions and interferences, like tree branches leading you to the wrong road. So we need to study the Fa, study the Fa, study the Fa.

The above is my personal understanding. Please point out anything improper. In conclusion, I would like to quote something from Teacher's lecture "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston,"

"There are many Kings in the heavens. As you know, Sakyamuni said that the number of Tathagatas is like the number of grains of sand in the Ganges River. Think about how many grains of sand India's Ganges River has! And there's more than that--what Sakyamuni said was in a figurative sense. Every Tathagata is a Fa-King. And the Buddha School isn't the only one--the Buddha School is only one widespread type that has a huge number of Gods. How many Gods are there? How many Kings like that are there? If every King handled things the way you do when something happens, that'd be big trouble. They don't have those kinds of arguments, which aren't consistent with their levels. Of course, they can see the truth and they can see the best way, but often they, too, have certain differences in some of their views. But they would never argue. They are in a state of immense tolerance, of mercy toward all beings, and of being able to understand everything with kindness. To put it in human terms, they're always able to be understanding of others. So sometimes we shouldn't 'burrow into the horn's point' with strong everyday people's attachments, be unable to get out of it for a long time, and get more attached the more we think about it--the more you think about it the more your mind seethes, and the more you think about it the more demons take advantage of you. When you're not coolheaded, I'll tell you, that's when demons are using you. I don't care how long you've cultivated for, and it doesn't matter what reputation you have among Dafa disciples, I can guarantee that's what's going on when you're not paying attention to these things. Let me tell you, no matter how well you've cultivated, as long as you still have everyday people's attachments, those are what demons can use, and when you're not paying attention they can be used at any moment. So as a Dafa disciple, you should try your best to restrain those everyday people's attachments, try your best to prevent them from having an effect, try your best to walk a righteous path, and try your best, in all environments and with everything that happens, to conduct yourself in an open and dignified manner, to be tolerant and broad-minded, to be able to understand others, and to be able to consider all perspectives. Then, I think you might be able to do a lot of things well. Acting this way is not compromising! Everybody can share their views and you can evaluate them in a kind manner."