(Clearwisdom.net) In recent years, out of the desire to clarify the facts, some Dafa disciples outside China have established some websites and forums on the Internet intended for ordinary people, or have registered some organizations in ordinary society. The original intent was to clarify the facts and save people using the means of ordinary people. But a lot of times, because they could not solidly put effort into walking that path correctly and all the way through, the actual result fell far short of saving people. In other words, not only were these forms not truly used for clarifying the facts, they instead became a gathering place for some practitioners (inside and outside of China) to indulge their human mindsets and attachments. Some practitioners who did not study the Fa deeply, did not understand how to cultivate, or held on dearly to their many human attachments considered themselves to be ordinary people while doing things of ordinary people, seeking fame and pursuing emotional attachments. They experienced a lot of obstruction in their own cultivation, severely interfered with practitioners' cultivation, misled new practitioners and ordinary people, and even had an effect of undermining the Fa.

Let's give an example of this. There is a forum called the University of the Future China Forum, whose original intended audience is society in general, but a very large portion of its audience ended up being Falun Gong practitioners. It actually openly called Falun Gong, "Falun Gong of the Mind". When practitioners pointed this out to be an act of undermining the Fa, the response they got was, "If you call 'Falun Gong of the Mind' an act of undermining the Fa, are you saying that Falun Gong is not a method that cultivates xinxing? Who then is really undermining the Fa?" Regardless of the original intention, this kind of deceitful, fallacious argument is almost on par with the brainwashing rhetoric found in China's labor camps and brainwashing centers. Supposedly this website led cultivators within the forum, new cultivators, and non-cultivating democracy activists to engage in point-by-point "discussions" about the original work of Falun Gong, and doing so in a way that treats it like ordinary people's philosophy or scholarship. In addition, some of the analogies used in the process, as it tried to show off the authors' eloquence, had a ruinous effect. Even though a great majority of those that spent a lot of time at that website firmly believe themselves to be Falun Gong cultivators, they could not look at these phenomena with righteous thoughts, their views on many issues appeared to be right but were actually not, and they looked at things from the standpoint of protecting themselves and their small circle of people.

This is an example of undermining the Fa and severely interfering with practitioners' cultivation. The lamentable thing is that Fa-rectification cultivation has gotten to this point, but aside from the Qingxin Discussion Board that has been shut down, some media websites that practitioners have participated in setting up and maintaining still copy and promote material on these types of people and things. Cultivators truly cannot indulge the things that they take a liking to, human attachments, and demon nature. Otherwise, not only will that have a negative effect, it will produce a dark field and attract rotten demon special agents.

When projects intended to clarify the facts to ordinary people become projects focused on Dafa disciples, in searching deeply for root causes, one such root cause is recognizing the difficulties but not pushing forward, and not using Dafa disciples' mentality of "It is difficult to do, but it can be done" to serve the purpose of saving people. Instead of facing the difficulties in cultivation with righteous thoughts, they became attached to the methods that they themselves "established," they became attached to the forum that this method has brought about for their own attachments, their show-off mentality, and their desires of taking a liking to certain things, and they've forgotten that Dafa disciples must continuously improve themselves in cultivation, as well as their responsibility for saving people.

We all know that during the Age of Law's End, human minds have become deviated, ordinary people are lost in their pursuits of fame, self-interest, and various desires, and it is very difficult to clarify the facts and save people. Only when the Fa-rectification Period Dafa disciples continuously get rid of their human mindsets in cultivation, continuously develop compassion in cultivation, put themselves in other people's positions to consider things, understand the knots in ordinary people's minds, and clarify the facts with a focus, can they dissipate the confusing fog, truly explain the facts clearly, and thus save people. The process of saving people is also a process of cultivating oneself. During the process of saving people, there will be difficulties and ordeals. This requires us to continuously break through ourselves. Only when accompanied with cultivating ourselves well, can wisdom from the Fa continuously emerge, and the righteous gods in other dimensions will assist us, all of this manifesting in our getting things started and establishing a foothold in society.

Conversely, if one uses the human method of calling for support among practitioners as soon as one encounters difficulties, or intentionally or unintentionally turn projects originally intended for ordinary people into projects targeting practitioners, then on the surface it might appear quite well-attended and festive, but in reality it runs contrary to the starting point of clarifying the facts and saving people, and it becomes doing things for the sake of doing things and doing things for the sake of satisfying oneself. From the perspective of cultivation, it is running away from the tests and tribulations on the path of cultivation. It might appear to be a shortcut, but one can't improve from it and can become even more attached to it. Some of the people involved not only don't know to reflect upon their mistakes, they even think of them as their accomplishments. They wasted practitioners' time and energy, and yet they think that they were doing good things. There are also some Internet projects that have accumulated groups of practitioners with similar attachments, where they form cliques and write articles to express their ordinary human emotions. They position themselves as clarifying the facts and saving people, but in reality they are negatively affecting one another, flattering one another, expanding their attachments, and indulging their own human mindsets. When the website was shut down, they not only did not search inward, they bid one another goodbyes in sorrow, largely exhibiting the state of "carrying deep regret on and on", and they tried to think of all kinds of ways to move their cliques to other websites for "reunion." This strayed too far from the basis of cultivation and saving people.

Every Dafa disciple corresponds to his or her own cosmic body and shoulders the mission of saving sentient beings in a certain area. The time for saving people is pressing. Every task and every project that we do should stand on the firm footing of saving people, and truly play the role of saving people. Don't continue to indulge your own attachments and human thinking. The predestined opportunity will not wait forever. We must quickly learn how to be truly responsible for ourselves, be truly responsible for our sentient beings, and be responsible to validating the Fa. Let us quickly improve as a whole body, and let us work together with one mind to solidly save more and more people.

Dafa Disciple in North America

Cleaning Up

There are two reasons why I have not said anything about these matters all along. The first is that I wanted our students to cultivate to maturity on their own, to see these problems for themselves as they go about cultivating to maturity, and to get through them on their own. The second is that [I wanted] to see just how far those who orchestrated things would deviate. I was going to say something only when the human attachments had fully revealed themselves. Now that you have seen the problem, I’m going to say a few words.

The goal of some of the activities and projects that our students run is to save people and help Master validate the Fa, but time and again the only people it reaches are our own students, rendering these as internal things. We can’t go on like this. For one thing, those efforts cannot save people, and secondly, they interfere with our students’ cultivation and saving of sentient beings. At the very least such efforts consume a great deal of manpower. Dafa disciples are to help Master rectify the Fa, and you mustn’t consume our human resources this way. If some of the websites run by students can have a positive effect saving sentient beings, then you should continue to run them and do so in a healthy way. If they cannot do this, however, then don’t let them end up serving as interference. I would especially suggest that you shut down all websites that drive a great number of new students as well as those who haven’t studied the Fa deeply or who have strong human attachments to join in. Ordinary people’s websites, things done by those who think of themselves as promoting certain activities on Dafa’s behalf, and online activities by self-proclaimed practitioners have nothing to do with Dafa disciples’ validating the Fa. From this day forth Dafa disciples should not participate in them anymore, especially the politically-oriented activities. Toppling the wicked CCP is not the goal of cultivation. Rather, for Dafa disciples the ultimate goal in cultivation is to reach Consummation. We expose the persecution in order to help people see the evil for what it is, and thus be saved. The disintegration of the wicked CCP is Heaven’s mandate and a historical inevitability, and not something worthy of Dafa disciples doing things solely to that end. There are a few people among our students who, because they believed some nonsense from ordinary people early on when they first got close to Dafa and did not realize that it was divine beings probing their minds, have long held doubts about the cultivation done by Dafa disciples. So many years have passed, yet they still keep looking at Dafa with a human mindset and cannot forsake their attachments to politics and the power and gains that may come from such things in the future. Time has waited for you too long. Don’t do Dafa things with impure human attachments. Dafa disciples’ cultivation is solemn. No matter how clearheaded you may think you are, in reality, all of your involvement stems from your wisdom having been clouded by the attachment of pursuit that you have had since early on. Though you have made it to where you are today, you have always been the object of ridicule by divine beings. How sad it is that you have come close to Dafa, but cannot enter.

Let me address another matter. The human mind is unstable, so don’t think that ordinary people are going to have righteous thoughts. There are some ordinary people who identify with Dafa’s principles, but they have not actually done cultivation that is based on Fa. They have, via the media, spoken up for Dafa disciples and opposed the persecution, and this has led some students to consider such people extraordinary, and even treat them like Dafa disciples, not making a distinction between the two. And then there are others, even more foolish still, who regard what those people say as Fa. Being flattered by more and more people, these [ordinary] people can’t help but grow delighted with themselves and forget who they are, which then leads all sorts of attachments to emerge in them. They then become so bold as to say or do anything, even to the point of disrupting Dafa disciples’ normal cultivation and validating of the Fa. The truth is, this phenomenon can’t be blamed entirely on these ordinary people. These people—who sympathized with Dafa—have been ruined by some of our students who lack righteous thoughts, are irrational, and don’t do things based on the Fa. Since what we do is to broadly save sentient beings, then people, no matter their frame of thought, are to be given a chance of salvation, and thus, human thoughts of every type are going to manifest among our students. I knew about all of this even before I first imparted the Fa. What is key for you is to study the Fa a lot. With a great deal of Fa study, you will naturally have righteous thoughts and, as you go about validating the Fa you will naturally do things based on the Fa. And only then will you take the right path. Master doesn’t want you to always take the wrong path, and even less can he bear to see you being persecuted. Oftentimes the hardships you endure really are brought about by human attachments. When your human attachments are strong and you don’t realize it, the old forces’ factors will use the evil to capture you and send you to labor camps for persecution.

After reading this student’s article, I wanted to say a few words to help you clean things up. It is still up to you yourselves to walk your paths well hereafter. When you have all become mature, the next stage will begin.

Li Hongzhi

August 6, 2009