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Reflections on Leaving Home to Avoid Further Persecution

Sept. 3, 2003 |   By a practitioner from China

(Clearwisdom.net)

In the past a few months, Clearwisdom net published several articles on the issue of leaving home to avoid persecution. In July and August, two more articles were published. One is called A Reflection Upon the Issue of Leaving Home to Avoid the Persecution. The other is called Denying The Old Forces' Arrangements and Returning Righteously to My Hometown. Looking inside, I feel we should not simply copy the actions of the authors of these two articles since the articles were written based on their own situations.

Actually, nobody wants to quit their job and leave home, especially those who have good living and working environments. However, the authorities' distorted thinking causes them to irrationally persecute those with righteous beliefs. Falun Dafa practitioners are thus forced to leave home to avoid being persecuted. Their actions are not acknowledging the old forces' arrangements. Instead, it is a denial of the arrangements by old forces since the old forces would love to keep Falun Dafa practitioners at home so they can conveniently monitor and arrest the practitioners.

Based on my personal observations and experiences over the past few years, it seems that practitioners can more wholeheartedly validate the Fa and expose the evil nature of the persecution after leaving home. We can do so day and night and even on holidays. Of course, I'm not promoting the idea of leaving home to avoid the persecution. There are usually two basic reasons why practitioners leave home. One is that practitioners are forced to do so. The other is that practitioners choose to do so. No matter which one of the reasons applies, as long as our heart is on the Fa and our purpose is to wholeheartedly participate in the Fa-rectification process, it is an admirable action. Many practitioners who leave home to avoid the persecution have been making great efforts and contributions in clarifying the truth, exposing the evil, and validating the Fa.

It is not wrong to adopt different approaches according to our own situations in order to validate the Fa. The important thing is that we should not render judgments on other practitioners based on our own situations. Neither should we judge our own actions based on other practitioners' experiences. For example, some practitioners are quite satisfied with explaining the facts to a couple of ordinary people or distributing a few truth-clarification materials every day, while other practitioners wish to do much more. I'm not talking about how much work we should or should not do.

I've seen many practitioners staying at home be persecuted because they have a strong attachment to the notion of "home." Early this year, quite a few practitioners in Changchun in Jilin Province were arrested at home and then had their homes, possessions, or a large amount of money extorted from them. It started when some practitioners were arrested for passing truth-clarification materials to each other. They couldn't bear the brutal torture and reported on other practitioners. Many practitioners were arrested because of the cascading effect. Some practitioners were taken away from their homes to some brainwashing centers several times. Some other practitioners were constantly harassed at home. Each time, they managed to "safely" stay at home either by saying something against their conscience themselves or having their families do something unrighteous. Some practitioners bravely broke through the harassment or imprisonment and came back home without giving in to the evil. However, they then became scared and wouldn't be willing to distribute truth-clarification materials to other practitioners. Meanwhile, their families started to monitor them more closely so they couldn't even go out easily. Therefore, at least for the short term, they couldn't return to their previous excellent state of efficiently clarifying the truth. This in some degree definitely caused losses in validating the Fa and to them. And the evil could freely stop by to check upon them.

Actually, there is no fixed format in Fa-rectification work. When we tend to resort to a specific format it generally means we have some attachments that need to be eliminated or some areas that need to be improved upon. We don't necessarily have to stay at home or in our hometown to clarify the truth to our friends or relatives. Dafa empowers us with boundless wisdom. Sometimes, it is even more rewarding to explain the facts to people outside of our home or hometown.

As to what we should do regarding this issue, I think we can make a decision based on our local environment and our own situations. Some of us might need to leave home to avoid further persecution. Others might need to return home. "... great way without form... " (Falun Buddha Fa - Lecture at the First Conference in North America) Let's use our own best ways to validate the Fa, to clarify the truth to sentient beings, to save sentient beings and to better work with other Falun Dafa practitioners. We need to view problems from the Fa principles and the realms that each one of us become enlightened to so we can help each other to improve.