(Clearwisdom.net) I have been doing the three things required of Falun Gong practitioners, but it has taken me a long time to understand the purpose of sending forth righteous thoughts. At first, I paid scant attention to sending forth righteous thoughts due to my poor understanding. In fact, in the beginning, I rarely sent forth righteous thoughts four times a day.
I repeatedly studied Teacher's lectures and read other practitioners' articles about sending forth righteous thoughts and, over time, my understanding of the Fa with respect to this issue improved. I continued to have problems from time to time, however. Sometimes, when I sent forth righteous thoughts, I fell asleep or had difficulty keeping my hands in form. After a few years of diligent Fa study and cultivation under Teacher's tutelage, I have finally felt the power of my righteous thoughts as a Falun Gong practitioner and developed a better understanding of the significance of sending forth righteous thoughts. Ultimately, my understanding, or lack of it, has been a reflection of my cultivation status at each point in time. I would like to share with you my insights on the subject. Please point out anything you find inappropriate in my understanding.
For a very long time, sitting in the full-lotus position (or sitting with crossed legs on top of each other) was agonizing to me. In less than 30 minutes, my clothes became soaking wet from the excruciating pain and sweat oozed from my hair down to my face and neck. I would feel short of breath and tremble in agony. The sharp pain in my left leg sometimes woke me up at night. I endured the pain because I believed that it must have been part of the process of karma elimination. I admired practitioners who could practice Falun Gong's sitting meditation in the full-lotus position for an hour or two but felt ashamed because I was unable to do the same. I asked around, but no other practitioner in my area seemed to experience a similar level of pain. Given that I had been practicing Falun Gong for ten years, something was not right, but then I remembered that Teacher said,
"... you have to take sending righteous thoughts very seriously, and in a timely manner purge the evil and your own problems so that you won't be taken advantage of by the evil."
(From "Righteous Thoughts")
I finally realized that the old forces must have been obstructing my cultivation practice and my efforts to do the three things by exploiting my poor understanding of the Fa. The never-ending pain in my legs for so many years was by no means caused by my karma alone.
Next, when I sent forth righteous thoughts, I started to focus on the evil factors from other dimensions that had been inflicting pain on my legs. After some time, a bump the size of a goose egg appeared at the root of my left thigh. Pus and blood with a foul stench kept oozing out of it, but I didn't feel any pain at all. After the bump went away, the pain in my left leg went away as well. I also felt less pain when I sat in the full-lotus position. After a few days, I was able to sit in the full-lotus position for 30 minutes! I figured that many evil factors that had resided in my body must have been eliminated. This experience showed the mighty power of Falun Gong and helped me understand the effect of cleansing our own dimension.
One day after I finished studying the Fa with two other practitioners, we began to send forth righteous thoughts together when I saw a human shape with a pair of green eyes suddenly appear to my right. It gave me a fright. Next I saw a light sabre coming at me from my left like a thunderbolt. Each time, I noticed the other practitioners losing proper form and dropping their heads. I figured that the evil factors from other dimensions must have targeted me because I was the only one that had not lost concentration. After we were finished, I shared my celestial visions with the other practitioners and they both confessed that they had lost concentration and dozed off. As a consequence, they were unable to send forth righteous thoughts and use supernormal powers to eliminate the evil factors from other dimensions. We all learned from this experience that the evil factors try to make us lose concentration. Only when we concentrate and stay focused are we able to disintegrate the evil factors from other dimensions with our righteous thoughts.
One day tears welled up in my eyes when I sent forth righteous thoughts towards the evil factors from other dimensions that had been manipulating the legal and penal department employees of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), causing them to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Practitioners interpret the meaning of involuntary tears in various ways, but I decided that my knowing side must have been grieving for those government employees who had vowed to come down to earth to obtain the Fa, but who ultimately persecuted Falun Gong practitioners instead.
I took a business trip to Wuxi on March 28, 2010, and learned that a Buddhism forum sponsored and organized by the CCP would take place while I was there. I know that among Falun Gong practitioners, everything happens for a reason so, when I learned that the forum would include hate propaganda against Falun Gong, I started sending forth righteous thoughts. Monks tried to communicate with me in my sleep, however, and on two occasions I woke up in the morning with Buddhist music and chanting in my head. Memories of cultivation practice in my childhood also penetrated my dreams at night. I immediately sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate this interference.
Sending forth righteous thoughts requires perseverance. After two years of persistently sending forth righteous thoughts, two of my family members started to study the Fa. I have a son who has moved to a different city and once, when he came home, he watched the videos of Teacher's nine lectures. He had watched them before when he was a small child, but he was playing then and only half-watching the videos. When he was a little older, he read Zhuan Falun once. In short, my family's attitude towards the Fa has improved.
I have looked inward and identified many attachments: desires, emotions, pursuit of comfort, an attachment to performance, zealotry and many others. I targeted them when I sent forth righteous thoughts. I had a particular problem with feeling shy about approaching strangers and talking to them about Falun Gong. When I sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate any evil factors that might be contributing to this problem, I didn't see any marked improvement. Now I realize that my own notions had prevented me from approaching people. I had regarded it as a task to be dispensed with so my intentions were not pure. If the old forces had made me feel uncomfortable about talking to strangers, then that was interference to be overcome. I must never acknowledge the arrangements of the old forces or lend credence to their notions. I should use my divine powers to eliminate the obstacles the old forces have arranged so as to clarify the truth to others about Falun Gong.
Sending forth righteous thoughts reinforces our efforts to save sentient beings. Recently I have been sending text messages via mobile phones to tell people the truth about Falun Gong. While doing so, I have been sending forth righteous thoughts with a focused, pure and calm heart. The text-messaging has been very successful. When other practitioners and I send forth righteous thoughts collectively, the text-messaging is even more successful.
Some fellow practitioners and I sent forth righteous thoughts towards a portrait of Deng Xiaoping, a former chairman of the CCP, and towards the evil red dragon, the embodiment of the CCP in another dimension, to disintegrate their negative effects on people. After a while, the portrait of Deng Xiaoping was removed from the wall.
One day I read an article entitled, "Recommend to Chinese Falun Gong Practitioners Coordinated Efforts to Send Forth Righteous Thoughts so as to Actively Eliminate the Evil Factors." When I sent forth righteous thoughts at noon that day, I saw Teacher appear before my eyes in a giant form facing sideways. I also saw many smaller Buddhas on one side of Teacher. I became excited when I realized it must have meant that Teacher was leading Falun Gong practitioners to send forth righteous thoughts! Since then, I have been very focused when I send forth righteous thoughts, losing focus on only a few occasions. Once, I felt my powerful righteous thoughts radiating outwards like waves.
One day I studied "Fa Teaching Given in Manhattan" four times before sending forth righteous thoughts. I said to myself, "I shall eliminate any secular notions in my dimensions." All of a sudden I felt a shock shoot through my body. Next, my eyes welled up with tears. I felt that Teacher must have removed a lot of thought karma for me and my knowing side was shedding tears of gratitude. I cannot imagine how much karma Teacher must have endured for me when He removed it!
When I paid insufficient attention to sending forth righteous thoughts, I had not studied the Fa diligently. When my understanding of sending forth righteous thoughts was unclear, sending forth righteous thoughts was ineffective. When I dozed off while sending forth righteous thoughts, I lacked righteous thoughts. I discovered that it is all about xinxing and interference from the evil factors. Teacher bestowed upon us the precious Fa tool of sending forth righteous thoughts. It is an opportunity and path for our own cultivation. We must pay more attention to sending forth righteous thoughts. We must meet Teacher's expectations by sending forth righteous thoughts for the sake of fulfilling the sacred mission of saving sentient beings, establishing our mighty virtue as Falun Gong practitioners in the Fa-rectification period and treasuring Teacher's tireless efforts to arrange opportunities for us to elevate to higher realms in the universe.
