Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. International Fa Conference
(Li Hongzhi, February 26, 2005)
(Long applause) Good afternoon ! You’ve been working hard.
Winter is over and spring is here. Just like the cycle of spring, summer, fall, and winter, changes have been happening throughout the long process of humankind’s history, and all kinds of things have been continually taking place, thereby establishing and creating for humankind the culture that would be needed at the final stage. Over the ages there have been many cultivators and many cultivation ways, but there are differences among all of the cultivation ways. During the last two thousand years or so some religions of upright faith emerged. Although the people in those religions believe in gods, the religions’ cultivation methods are different, and they even oppose and disapprove of one another. Of course, there is a reason for their opposing one another: it is so that they can keep the forms of their religions stable and unchanging. In other words, people’s upright faith in gods has taken different forms. Before the Fa-rectification began in the human world, no single cultivation way was specially designated in the cosmos as the set method that had to be uniformly [practiced], where all people in the world who believed in gods would have to follow that path. That is something that never happened before. As you’ve noticed, the cultivation way that Dafa disciples practice today is likewise different from the religions and the cultivation ways of every period throughout history. It’s not just different: in fact, when you look at it the differences are enormous. In the past the gods all saw an issue, which was that they thought human beings couldn’t cultivate successfully unless they chose to leave ordinary society and not cultivate in the secular world. When people are faced with things that involve their self-interest or practical gain, and when all kinds of human thoughts interfere with a cultivator in the “real” world, it is really hard for cultivators to improve themselves, and it makes those who are trying to save them feel hard-pressed to fulfill their aspiration. That’s why no one dared to take this path before. As for saving people on a large scale and having a large number of cultivators involved, they felt that there would be no way to manage the cultivators or to save them when they became mixed in with the ordinary society. That’s why with the cultivation methods and means of salvation of the past, no one even dared to think about, much less actually have, cultivators carry this out in the secular world.
The path Dafa disciples are taking today is unprecedented. A fixed notion has formed in the minds of many people in the world, which is that when someone is devoted to a religious faith or is a cultivator, it won’t work out unless he withdraws from society and leaves the secular world. The Dafa disciples’ way of cultivation, then, has no predecessor and no model. I have always said that in cultivation Dafa disciples have no role models. And it’s not just that in your personal cultivation you have to walk your own path—even the form of cultivation I have imparted to you has no example to follow. So you just have to blaze this path yourselves. And why is that? You might have realized it already through your experiences in cultivation, and I have spoken before in different settings about this Fa: it is because the historic responsibility that has been bestowed upon Dafa disciples is tremendous, an enormous number of sentient beings are involved, and the requirements for Dafa disciples are extremely high. In addition, in today’s world the innate foundation1 of the sentient beings’ souls2 is substantial. As you know, you are Dafa disciples, and you are part of the Dafa disciples of the Fa-rectification period. Fa-Rectification Period Dafa Disciples have enormous responsibilities, and the meaning of that title is extremely vast. Your ability as Dafa disciples to achieve that much mighty virtue is what determined the uniqueness of your cultivation way. If you weren’t to take up this form of cultivation, or if you were to take up any of the cultivation methods of the past, then you, the Fa-Rectification Period Dafa Disciples, couldn’t achieve the goals of your cultivation, you couldn’t fulfill the enormous responsibility of your missions, and even less could you reach the levels Dafa disciples are to reach or achieve the Attainment Statuses you are to achieve.
This, then, brings about an issue: it’s extremely difficult for a person to break out of the secular world, to successfully cultivate out from among human beings. Besides, no examples from history have been left behind to refer to, and cultivating by following the religions of the past or of modern times doesn’t work. People have known how Buddhist monks cultivate, how Daoists cultivate, how Christian and Catholic cenobites cultivate, and how the world’s people should believe in god(s). But believing in god(s) is of course different from being someone who cultivates himself, because when you [just] believe in god(s), the best-case scenario is that the god(s) will watch over you to some extent and give you blessings, or, in the case of exceptionally good individuals, they can ascend to a god’s paradise and become a common being there. But in all of those scenarios no one gains an Attainment Status. Believing, in an average sense, does not equate to cultivating, and through cultivation one can achieve an Attainment Status. In other words, with an Attainment Status the person won’t be just a common being in the heavens—he will have a divine position. And as for Dafa disciples, they are required to achieve extraordinary Attainment Statuses. Since the responsibility is huge, the cultivator is pushed to that level. He has to take on that much responsibility, so the extent of the hardship that comes about is huge. Here I’m not talking about the degree of the challenges that are forced upon you by the old forces, but rather the degree of hardship caused by the cultivation way itself. You have experienced and felt the hardship involved and the tribulations to be endured in this cultivation way, and how hard it is to break out of humanness. During the course of your cultivation, you experience all sorts of human thoughts, all sorts of things involving your self-interest, and all sorts of notions that come at you [to temper you] in every regard, and intertwined with that are irrationality caused by emotion and delusion, and the feeling when you’re foggyheaded that it is hard to sever your human attachments. And, in your day-to-day life you have family, society, work, and cultivation to handle, plus the pressure on you as Dafa disciples that was brought about by the persecution and the challenges in every regard due to the persecution. In fact, all of that is only the part you are able to sense—there is also a part that you can’t sense. What you do seems ordinary, and the things you do appear very similar to what ordinary people can do by enduring hardships. But it’s different. The same thing, when done by Dafa disciples rather than ordinary people, is different, as what you bear and endure is different.
On the surface it appears as though the conditions are the same, but in fact they are different. And why is that? I’ll give you an example. There are Christians in various parts of the world who, whenever the anniversary of Jesus’ suffering and death comes around, they hold an event where some people actually nail themselves to a cross. Maybe they do that to show their god that they, too, experience that suffering. But that’s absolutely different from what Jesus suffered. So why is it different? When Jesus was crucified, human beings could not see that he was atoning for human beings’ sins, and that an enormous amount of sin and karma from a great number of people was pressing down on him—both the number and the amount were huge, and it was extremely dense. That was what caused him such enormous suffering. At that time, were he not tortured he still wouldn’t have been able to stand steadily. His burden was so great that even to breathe was a challenge. The kind of suffering that came from the pressure from sentient beings’ enormous amount of sin and karma, the horrible mental trauma, and the reactions from the harm inflicted upon each cell in his body—those are not things an ordinary person could withstand. That’s not something ordinary people could withstand. And imagine what it was like for him to be crucified on top of such agony. [Some things that seem] the same are actually beyond what ordinary people can imagine. [Some things may] appear to be very similar to ordinary people’s things, when in fact the situation behind them is completely different—they are like night and day.
Even though Master has reduced a substantial amount of the karma Dafa disciples had originally, since the responsibilities shouldered by Dafa disciples are great, during the Dafa disciples’ cultivation, except for the difficulties brought about by a certain amount of karma that they endure, basically all of their suffering results from the process of improving their xinxing. This persecution is something forced upon us by the old forces, and it’s not something that the Fa-rectification needed. Despite that, you have made it through. No matter how hard and arduous the journey has been, you have not stood by when faced with these difficulties, and you have continued on the path of divinity. Of course, some of you just keep tripping over yourselves as you go forward, stumbling and falling one time after another. Some have proceeded pretty well and steadily. No matter what, though, the situation of Dafa disciples’ cultivation overall and the situation of Dafa disciples validating the Fa have been very steady and solid. As gods look at it, they see that the situation and trend of the Dafa disciples’ cultivation cannot be thwarted. In other words, no matter how hard the journey has been, even though no cultivation way like this ever existed before, the Dafa disciples have successfully battled through the challenges. As you validate the Fa, a lot of things look similar, or identical, to the form of ordinary people’s things. However, the factors behind those things, and the Dafa disciples’ starting point for doing things, the responsibilities the disciples shoulder, and their goals, are fundamentally different from those of ordinary people.
Right now, due to the partition and interference brought about in human society by the old forces’ factors and the factors of the old cosmos, gods cannot openly appear here, and the interfering demons and how they are struck down and destroyed can’t be shown to sentient beings. The ways in which cultivators are completely different from ordinary people have always been blocked from view by the partition. The evil has been doing harmful things during this time before the Fa’s rectification of the human world arrives. The purpose of doing the Fa-rectification in this human world here is absolutely not to put Dafa disciples or Fa-rectification in delusion. The setting of the Three Realms was created for the Fa-rectification, the purpose being to make this the place for Fa-rectification and to not disturb the divine realms. That’s why we use this setting and use these human approaches to validate the Fa. But that doesn’t mean we approve of the old forces interfering with the Fa-rectification, it doesn’t mean we approve of the things they arranged. Human society is in delusion, and people cannot see how the cosmos truly is or the real situation of beings. That’s how beings are at this level, but the situation during the Fa-rectification is presided over by Dafa and it changes according to what is required so that Dafa can save sentient beings. The fact is, at this time Dafa disciples have to do divine things, because for Dafa disciples their personal cultivation is no longer first and foremost. Saving sentient beings and reconstructing the colossal firmament during the Fa-rectification are the purpose. You have to do Fa-rectification things and things to save sentient beings, so you need to clear away the obstacles presented by this environment and validate Dafa. In this situation where you can’t see completely, as gods do, the real changes in yourself during your cultivation, you have instead been relying—amidst interference and the trials in which you painfully sever your attachments—on righteous thoughts that come from your constant study of Dafa, and you have been forging ahead. It’s really hard to make it through, but Dafa disciples overall have made it through. That is especially remarkable given the past several years of persecution against Dafa disciples that was set up by the old forces. Dafa disciples as a whole have truly made it through. No matter what kinds of things happened with you during this period of time, and even though certain things that really shouldn’t have happened did take place and some unsatisfactory things occurred, overall it has been really good, and as a whole you have kept moving forward.
The journey has not yet been completed, and the persecution has not ended, so you have to continue on your path. In terms of the remainder of the journey, I think you have some assurance now. Although it’s too late, many of the evil beings that persecuted Dafa disciples and interfered with the Fa-rectification are deeply remorseful now: “Why did we persecute Falun Gong back then? If we hadn’t persecuted Falun Gong, we would never have been in this awful predicament.” What I am saying is, the future that lies ahead for Dafa disciples is getting brighter and brighter, and you can all see that now. The overall situation of the Fa-rectification in the cosmos has been changing rapidly, because Fa-rectification has been charging ahead at a speed that transcends all times. It is getting closer and closer to this “real” dimension, and is getting closer and closer to the range that is visible to the human eye. It has been coming closer to the surface from the microcosm, and the range [of space] that is left is very small now. Of course, although the remaining range in the surface human dimension is smaller now, as you know, the final factors are of higher levels, and the volumes of the partitioned factors are larger now. That is why the deficiency of the evil after the reduction of the low-level spirits and foul demons is being made up for now by the partitioned factors. Even though the progression is accelerating, there are still impediments. But regardless, right now it’s as though good and evil are standing on two sides of a scale, wherein the evil has completely lost the balance [that it once had] while the Dafa disciples’ side is weighing down almost to the bottom. In other words, the success of Fa-rectification and of Dafa disciples’ cultivation are inevitable realities now. Our work is not yet completely done, though, and in terms of personal cultivation, each step might be critical in determining whether each Dafa disciple can reach Consummation. I think that no matter how far things go at the end, however bad the interference gets, or if Fa-rectification makes you become completely aware of everything, you still need to cultivate in a noble and upright manner, and not be affected by any positive or negative things—make sure you’re not interfered with by any favorable turn of events brought about by the situation or by whatever situation that might arise.
Actually, having been through so much, you are quite levelheaded now, and you can look at a lot of things with righteous thoughts and calmly think things over. With the impact of your righteous thoughts you have effectively stabilized the overall situation of Dafa disciples’ validating the Fa. Since you have now matured you understand a lot of things. That prevents any waves of interference from being stirred up, and leaves no gaps for the evil factors to exploit. Whenever human thoughts emerge among Dafa disciples, it is something the evil will take advantage of, and the evil beings will use it to do the bad things they want to do. When Dafa disciples’ human thoughts become minimal, when their righteous thoughts become strong, and when they are levelheaded and steady, the evil has nothing to capitalize on then, which makes the situation of Dafa disciples’ Fa-validation more stable. Recently, unsteadiness that arises internally among Dafa disciples has been rare. And I’m not just talking about [the Dafa disciples] outside of Mainland China. The same goes for the Dafa disciples inside Mainland China: they have become steadier and steadier as well.
Of course, this being cultivation, some attachments that arise from human thinking are bound to manifest, because it is human beings cultivating, not gods. So since it is human beings cultivating, human thinking will show itself during cultivation, and that’s why we will see cases of people who are not diligent. Some students are prone to becoming impulsive, and there are some students whose righteous thoughts are quite poor. They have been used by the old forces to do some bad things. Through these lessons, you will all be attentive to this as you validate the Fa, and you won’t be used by the evil factors in the time ahead. As for those students who don’t study the Fa, whose righteous thoughts are weak, who have too many human thoughts, and who keep doing bad things, let me tell you: the number of chances you have left is diminishing. I know that even though you have done much that is a disservice to Dafa, you don’t truly want to leave Dafa. When all of this comes to an end and when all the Dafa disciples are reaching Consummation, though, what are you going to do? And before that happens, a weeding out of human beings will unfold on a large scale. What are you going to do when that weeding out comes? Master knows everything, but I won’t say anything. Go ahead and show how you are, whether it be something positive or negative. You can either be a noble and upright Dafa disciple or be attached to your human side. In the ordinary world you can live your life for whatever it is ordinary people pursue, or out of fear you can drag out an ignoble existence in the shadows. But since you have come close to Dafa, I hope there is a chance to save you, and that is why I keep giving you chances. I will always give you chances, but as for whether you can become a Dafa disciple, whether you want those chances, and whether you can sober up and live in a way that’s accountable to yourself… at this point in time things can’t continue to be dragged out. Even if you begin to make up for all of that and try to catch up now, very few chances are left. I think that after a short while even these few chances will be gone.
The things that Dafa disciples are doing now to counter the persecution have astounded the world’s people. People have seen the tenacity, extraordinary kindness and forbearance, and rationality that Dafa disciples have displayed while being subjected to frenzied attacks and suppression. Many people are saying: “Falun Gong students are so extraordinary. They’re such strong people, and they have withstood such enormous evil.” The entire government, which is controlled by the most wicked, malevolent party, has carried out attacks and suppression full throttle, and the country’s entire propaganda machine has fabricated lies on an overwhelming scale to deceive the public, causing nearly the entire population to take part in the persecution. Dafa disciples have managed to withstand and make it through this most malevolent suppression and such ruthless Red Terror. That has truly amazed the world’s people. And that’s despite the fact that the world’s people can only see the side that is tangible and real to them. They can’t comprehend what lies within Dafa disciples or the deeper meaning of Dafa, and they can’t understand the state of Dafa disciples as cultivators, yet the tangible manifestation is sufficient to awaken those people who are going along with the evil and not thinking clearly. How have Dafa disciples managed to act so remarkably? How have they been able to keep their righteous thoughts so steadfast amid this persecution? How have they been able to make the evil collapse on its own as it persecutes Dafa disciples? It’s because they are beings of Righteous Fa and Righteous Enlightenment who are forged by Dafa, and they are Disciples of Dafa who have great innate foundations and who are on the journey to godhood, endowed with missions. In fact, during this time before Dafa’s mighty Fa-rectification force arrives, they have effected changes in the state of this world. Also, everything that Dafa disciples have shown through their righteous thoughts and righteous actions has now created a field of Dafa in this material dimension of human beings, and this field has had an enormous, positive impact. You are all still in the process of cultivating, [and if it weren’t for that,] if another approach were taken, the manifestation of this field would have already become dominant. If it weren’t for the fact that your path of cultivation is still unfinished, this righteous field of Dafa would have made every wicked factor in this world and all of the crooked factors of the past dissolve, be cleared away, and vacate their places. You saw how rampant and vicious the evil was in persecuting Falun Gong before. Why is it acting so differently now? It’s because the evil things, the various factors that were sustaining the bad people, and the fields they formed in the past have been destroyed, and the enormous righteous factors of Dafa are restraining and destroying those evil things. The bad people have lost the driving force behind them and they are now at a loss.
In other words, there are still some people who are foggyheaded while these gigantic changes are taking place. It’s time that they wake up and become aware of what they are doing. The truths and principles that I, Li Hongzhi, have made known have never been disclosed for thousands, well, billions of years, or by any saviors before, no matter who they were, by any of the enlightened beings who came down to this world, no matter how many there have been, or by any of the immortals who enlightened to certain truths, no matter how many there have been. (Applause) This isn’t something an ordinary person could do. And what Dafa disciples have demonstrated, have shown in their cultivation, during the process of their cultivation, and what they have been able to enlighten to and validate is all beyond what ordinary people can comprehend, and it cannot be compared to the cultivation states of the past. What’s more, as for saving people on such a large scale, and this loosely organized form of cultivation—especially how people are when they cultivate under this loose management—these things, too, are unprecedented. In other words, no matter what angle you look at it from, it should lead you to calmly, really think things over for yourself and to try to clearheadedly comprehend this phenomenon in which Dafa is being spread on a grand scale.
The situation since July 20, 1999, has been changing constantly. You have all seen that the situation of Dafa’s Fa-rectification in the cosmos has been changing faster and faster, and it is manifesting more and more in what is tangible to human beings here. But there have always been some students—and of course what I’m talking about here includes students in Mainland China—who say, “We want to keep up with the progress of Fa-rectification. Whatever Master says, we’ll do.” But in fact when something really needs to get done, I may not explicitly tell you that that is the new situation. You all know that in validating the Fa the situation does change, and that is inevitable. There is definitely a difference between this time when Master is doing Fa-rectification and the time before Master did Fa-rectification. With anything, before and after it’s done, and even during the process of it being done, things gradually change. And when something covers a large scope, it involves changes in the situation.
So everyone talks about keeping up with the progress of Fa-rectification, but when the Nine Commentaries came out, a lot of students didn’t understand. Then I wrote two short articles, including Turning the Wheel Towards the Human World. At that point everyone seemed to suddenly realize: “Oh, Master has done that, so we should do it too.” But actually, if Dafa disciples had thought about it calmly, sensibly, and without using human thinking, they would have understood it immediately: could you possibly reach Consummation with any faith in the CCP or the idea that the CCP, which suppresses Dafa disciples, is good? That’s absolutely impossible, right? Our Dafa disciples have read the Nine Commentaries, and since that party is something of that nature, think about how many people in the world have been misled by it and thus don’t believe in gods, and how many people are following it and persecuting Dafa disciples and sinning against Dafa. Could we not save those people? Could we possibly approve of it? So I could see that some students were still holding themselves back by way of human thinking, and some lacked righteous thoughts and thought that it was getting involved in politics. That’s why I wrote those two short articles. Even so, I know that in Mainland China there is still a group of students whose human thinking is acting up and they don’t want to understand. In reality, isn’t it fear and the attachment to self-interest that are causing them not to let go of it? In offering salvation, we couldn’t have made things any easier—hasn’t it been said that people could even make their declarations using aliases? It doesn’t matter what name is used, as what gods look at are people’s hearts. Gods can see what people are thinking and what they are doing. As for those with reasons that are beyond their control, they can use any name. People’s names on earth are not used in the heavens anyway. When people on earth give someone a name, do you think gods follow along and call him that? They don’t. Besides, there are a lot of people with the same name. The people on the earth are numbered, and they refer to them by number. (Audience laughs)
Bringing up these things is not to say that some students can’t keep up with things or that they are dim-witted. What it is, is that some people’s thinking is being interfered with by the evil party’s factors—the evil party’s factors are having an effect. In the midst of the party culture that was created by the evil, those people’s thoughts that would enable them to see it clearly for what it is have been muddled. That warped culture was formed through its being purposefully instilled in you since elementary school, then high school, and all the way up to adulthood, and it started even as far back as when you started to learn and remember things. In other words, nowadays everyone in Mainland China is thinking in the evil-party-culture’s way. Of course, if in Fa-rectification the malevolent party hadn’t persecuted Falun Gong, then it wouldn’t have been an issue, because a lot of confused cultures and ideas will be naturally set right in Fa-rectification. Cultivators wouldn’t have needed to do anything in that regard, and the evil specter of that party would have been rectified as well and thus saved. But once it started persecuting Falun Gong, it became the most evil specter, for this is a time when Dafa disciples are validating the Fa and Dafa is carrying out the Fa-rectification. So Dafa disciples need to see it clearly for what it is, and people that are represented by it need to clearly state their stance in terms of whether they will follow that malevolent demon or choose what is bright and an eternal life. They must understand this issue soberly now. The gods are set on purging it from humankind. And also, it has indeed been persecuting Dafa disciples and interfering with Fa-rectification over these years in a terribly evil way. So why, then, do the world’s people need to state their stance? Because everybody [from Mainland China] has said things about following it. When people took an oath as they were inducted into the [Communist] Party, the [Communist Youth] League, or the [Communist Young] Pioneers, they all raised a fist and swore that for their entire lives they would struggle for the sake of evil Communism and that they would devote their lives to the malevolent party. The evil specter of the malevolent party is seizing on this and persecuting those people to the point of death. The evil specter asserts that those people made a pledge back then that they would give their lives to it, so it uses that to persecute people. Also, the malevolent party’s factors still exist in the minds and bodies of those who don’t see it clearly for what it is. So how could you not see it clearly for what it is? And after you do that, you have to eliminate it.
Of course, I wasn’t very explicit about the matter of the evil party before, and that’s because at the time I wanted to keep giving chances to sentient beings, including the evil-specter-possessed malevolent party. Another reason is that at the time, many, many external evil factors were taking part in interfering with Dafa and persecuting Dafa disciples, so with that great multitude of gigantic, diverse evil beings that were pressed into the Three Realms in front of us, the best approach was to concentrate on eliminating those. After they were eliminated, we needed to ferret out the one who had caused those awful demons to come here in the first place. Who initiated the persecution of Falun Gong in the world and has been playing a leading role all along? It was that evil party and that ludicrous wretch of the human race. That ludicrous evil ringleader was the head of that party, wasn’t it? Driven by jealousy, it took the lead in doing evil against Dafa disciples in this world. That thing, which resulted from a low-level spirit reincarnating as a human being, is nothing on its own. Its jealousy was just right for the evil specter of the malevolent party to make use of. So that bad person and the evil specter became partners in crime. The bad person took the lead, while the evil specter of the malevolent party has been the real culprit which has attached itself to human bodies so as to persecute Dafa disciples. And all of the evil factors that have come down from beyond the Three Realms have been using the evil specter of the malevolent party to together persecute Dafa disciples, and in the persecution all evil has been involved in it. You know these things that I’m talking about. The Nine Commentaries has been published for quite a while now, and many students are very clear about this already.
The situation during Fa-rectification is bound to change constantly. Someone once asked me, “Master, what point should we have gotten to now?” And I said, “Just do what you should be doing at present.” Fa-rectification in the cosmos won’t change momentarily as we speak. (Audience laughs) When in Fa-rectification some sort of change needs to happen, a situation will definitely arise, but the emergence of the new situation will stir up certain attachments that arise from human thinking. Because it is humans cultivating, the attachments that are still there will have an effect. That is why an emotion that isn’t right will arise inside some people, and they will even get foggyheaded and understand things as an ordinary person would. After the Nine Commentaries were published, at one point some students who didn’t understand were talking about things like whether we were getting political. In fact, the bad people who persecute you could label anything you do as “getting political,” and anything you do can get twisted around, because they are dead set on persecuting you, they’re set on doing foul things to you. So they will use anything you say and turn it around to slander you, and no matter how good something you do is, they will say that you have done something bad. When you expose their persecution they will say that you are “getting involved in politics” and use that to rile people up and to try to justify their persecution. Don’t let what those bad people say affect you. Ordinary people can’t affect cultivators. Cultivators can’t be affected by ordinary people. Having gone through all of this, you have indeed become more rational. I think that from now on none of the factors that want to interfere with Dafa and disrupt the situation wherein Dafa disciples validate the Fa and save sentient beings will be able to make Dafa disciples waver. Recently, I basically haven’t gotten involved in, and have said very little about, many of the things Dafa disciples are doing. That’s because you all know now what you should do. Just do things according to how Fa-rectification progresses.
Each person has his or her own journey of validating the Fa. A lot of students have gotten together and established different media outlets, and a lot of students have found different ways to validate the Fa as well as different ways to clarify the truth and stop the persecution. It’s fine to just go ahead and do those things. I know that you have done really well recently, and you are getting better and better. Master is truly pleased. Sometimes when I take a look on the Web, browse the newspapers, or watch the television programs, as I listen to and look at the things you are doing, I feel quite overcome. I rarely felt this way before. Now the situation is changing very fast, and Dafa disciples have matured. The righteousness that they have displayed is really extraordinary. The students who are clarifying the truth in Manhattan, in particular… in the frigid weather, under challenging circumstances, and when resources and money are very much lacking… those Dafa disciples have overcome all sorts of challenges and have been working to clarify the truth, save sentient beings, and validate the Fa. The firm resolve they have shown has shaken heaven and earth. All the gods have seen it. It’s extraordinary, truly extraordinary. Of course, the same holds true in other settings. [For example,] there are those who have continued to clarify the truth and validate Dafa at the consulates and embassies or under different circumstances. No matter where they are, Dafa disciples glow with a shining light and are playing a role in validating the Fa.
I’ll stop here. In the time that remains, if you want to ask about anything, let’s do it the usual way (applause)—you can write down your question on a piece of paper and pass it up, and I will answer it for you. I will answer some questions [you have now] based on the current situation. If you have questions, you can pass up your slips of paper.
Disciple: Venerable Master, please spell out what “Holy King Who Turns the Wheel” is about. (Audience laughs, applauds)
Teacher: Our students who have read Shakyamuni’s scriptures probably know that back when Shakyamuni taught the Fa, he talked about a “Holy Law-Wheel King,” otherwise known as the “Holy King Who Turns the Wheel.” The name Holy King Who Turns the Wheel has been used more often in the human world, whereas Holy Law-Wheel King is the title used in the heavens.
Buddha Shakyamuni once said that the Holy Law-Wheel King is the most omnipotent and powerful Tathagata in the universe. A Tathagata Buddha is a King of Law.3 The king of a Buddha’s paradise is a Tathagata. We call it “Tathagata” based on ideas in cultivation and enlightenment. “Tathagata”4 means that the Buddha has come with the truth and the power to do what he wants. So the world’s people call Kings of Law “Tathagatas,” which is another correct way to understand it, since they [the Tathagatas] grasp the truths at that level, and among all of the beings in their respective domains they are the highest and grasp the highest truths of those levels. That’s why they are Kings of Law, that is, kings of the beings at a given level or of that group of beings. There are many Kings of Law. Of course, to humans there are countless beings who are Tathagatas, one of whom is the Holy Law-Wheel King. Why did Buddha Shakyamuni name specifically the Holy Law-Wheel King? It was because the Holy Law-Wheel King was going to descend to the human world to teach the Fa and save people. Of course, you might have heard that Buddha Shakyamuni also said that Maitreya would descend to the human world and save people. Actually, “Maitreya” is a name, and “Holy King Who Turns the Wheel” is a title—the title of a king—which, if it’s put in human terms, is, well, a job title. (Teacher laughs) (Applause)
As I have explained before, the gods at the levels close to the Three Realms need to be replaced after a certain period of time. The act of replacement brings about a problem, namely, that the sentient beings in lower realms are supposed to have a perpetual concept of gods, and yet if, say, one god leaves and people were not to know where he had gone, if nobody knew, then this kind of constant replacement could leave the sentient beings of the Three Realms in a state of disarray. The sentient beings of the low realms have emotion (qing), so they would be puzzled. The beings would think, “What happened to the god I believe in? Oh no, he’s gone. Then who is to look after me in his absence?” That’s the problem that would arise. So the god who takes over continues to look after the people who were going to be saved by the previous god. And because he replaces the previous god, he thus assumes the previous god’s title and even his image, all at the same time. Their images are not identical, but they are basically the same, they’re quite alike and similar. Fundamentally speaking, though, what is taken over is the god or Buddha’s title. Everyone is familiar with Bodhisattva Guanyin. Well, you know how many Bodhisattva Guanyins there have been? If they were all to sit together it would make for quite a crowd. Phew… it would probably take some time to count them all! And what about Buddha Shakyamuni—how many of him have there been? It is again a sizable number. Over the past twenty-five hundred years there have been as many as thousands of him. How many Buddha Amitabhas have there been? How many Jesuses have there been? How many Saint Marys have there been? How many Honorable Divine of the Origin have there been? They too would amount to large throngs with their numbers. And I’m not talking about things like their Law Bodies or when they replicate themselves. Because they are so close to the Three Realms—and when one is close to the Three Realms the emotion in the Three Realms, what the sentient beings in the Three Realms act out, and the factors that come from the many notions the worldly people have, are seen directly and are directly projected to where one is—these things will interfere with those gods. They are gods outside of the Three Realms and are different from the sentient beings inside the Three Realms, but still, when things carry on for long, it amounts to interference for them.
You know, I’ve told you a principle before: everything a person sees is infused into his brain. When he is infused with a lot of good things, he will be a good person. And if he is infused with a lot of bad things, he will be a bad person. When a Dafa disciple continually reads the books of Dafa, he is a being of upright Fa, and when he cultivates into a god he will be a King of Law. Gods observe from high places the behavior of sentient beings in the Three Realms. And though they are gods, they can be, over time, affected just the same. The beings in the Three Realms, though very different from gods, can still affect them. That’s why at a certain point in time the gods beyond the Three Realms need to be replaced. They have to leave, to go away. When they leave, the people down below who they were trying to save still call out to Jesus, Shakyamuni, Bodhisattva Guanyin, [or whoever it is]. Then what happens after that god leaves? Who will look after them? When a god leaves, he really stops handling all of the things he handled before. So before he leaves, he will save someone and bring the person up to replace him, give him the same Fa power, and have him cultivate an identical image, which is a divine body; they end up having the same image. Because the previous god had him cultivate the previous god’s image, he looks very similar to the previous god. But his own factors are incorporated as well, so there is a difference in how they look, though the similarities are strong. And their mighty virtue, grace, and divine powers are about the same. That is because the one who takes over has to reach that level before he can do so. It can’t be that your name is, say, John Doe, while his is Jack Smith, and when you get up there and someone asks you who you are, you say that you are John Doe and not Jack Smith. That wouldn’t work. You will have to be Bodhisattva Guanyin, you will have to be Jesus, you will have to be Buddha Shakyamuni, you will have to be Honorable Divine of the Origin, and so on. Your earthly name can no longer be used. So all of this is to say that after a certain length of time gods are replaced, though the divine position, the divine title, and the god’s mighty virtue aren’t changed.
As for Buddha Maitreya, you know, in the human world there have been many who have managed to become Buddha Maitreya by cultivating. There was a “Cloth-Bag Monk,” for instance, who cultivated into Buddha Maitreya. When he was in the human world, he always had a cloth bag on him. When he was begging for alms he would put the food he received inside the bag and carry it on his back. Cloth-Bag Monk was often in the Hangzhou area. During the summer it gets pretty hot in the region south of the Yangtze River, so he often left his shirt unbuttoned, exposing his belly; and he was kind of chubby. So, ever since, Buddha Maitreya has been depicted that way in China’s Han region. [They made that association] because when he reached Parinirvana [and was about to depart the earth], he left a poem indicating that he was Maitreya, saying “Maitreya, Maitreya, the true Maitreya.” Monks and others back then didn’t understand what that was about. They thought that he was a reincarnation of Maitreya. They thought, “Oh, so Cloth-Bag Monk was actually a reincarnation of Maitreya.” But in fact, he wasn’t a reincarnation of Maitreya. He had cultivated into Maitreya. And it’s for the same reason that in Tibetan Buddhism monks are taught to cultivate toward a designated god. They aren’t clear on what the fundamental reason is. But that is in fact the purpose. Once the person completes his cultivation, he becomes the replacement of that previous god. But it has always been the assistant soul who was cultivating and doing the replacing.
Many persons throughout history have cultivated into Buddha Maitreya. Each was in fact chosen from a heavenly paradise and sent down to cultivate. Maitreya is the position of a Buddha, and the Fa-name of a Buddha. During Buddha Shakyamuni’s time, one of his disciples was going to cultivate into Maitreya, so Buddha Shakyamuni talked about how Buddha Maitreya would descend to the human world at the Time of Law’s End. But he wasn’t in fact talking about the Maitreya of that time. He was speaking of a Buddha title and how in the future a Buddha Maitreya would descend to the human world. In other words, since it was the title of a Buddha, who that succeeding god is was not something to reveal to the world’s people, and his original name no longer was important. But having arrived at this point today in history, sentient beings have learned that the Holy Law-Wheel King and Buddha Maitreya were to descend to the human world and so the exact relationship between the two becomes important. Just who really would be the Buddha Maitreya that comes this time becomes something sentient beings are concerned about. Before, human beings weren’t allowed to know about the succession of the Buddha titles, and even less could they know who really is the god who holds that position. But talking about it in the sphere of celestial beings, among Dafa disciples, is okay.
So in other words, the Maitreya that Buddha Shakyamuni spoke of is as a matter of fact the Buddha Maitreya who descends to the world to save people during the final time of the world, in man’s final days. In fact, some people in the human world did know—and it’s not limited to people of the East, as some in Western society knew as well—that the one who would really come is Maitreya. The god who holds that Buddha title is the only savior of the cosmos’s sentient beings, is the supreme King of Kings in the heavens, and saves the cosmos’s sentient beings under the title of Buddha Maitreya. So, given that he uses the title of Buddha Maitreya, who was he before he descended to the human world? He came from an even higher place, reincarnated at many different levels, and as he came down, level by level, he was different gods at various levels and he assumed the Fa titles of those levels as he passed through. And when he descended to the Fa Realm, he was the Holy Law-Wheel King, otherwise known as the Holy King Who Turns the Wheel. (Applause)
Under normal circumstances it is rare to have someone from a high level come down and directly replace a certain god. And it’s rare to have a god directly replace [another god] of the same level in the heavens. But it is normal to have gods created at the same level as one another. It’s not as if all the gods have to cultivate up there from down below. In other words, many [gods] are created in higher realms in the normal course of things, and since the time of the Three Realms’ creation the number of those who have been sent down and who then cultivated back up hasn’t been small. That’s why later on the practice of inheriting the title of a Buddha or a god became quite common. The Holy Law-Wheel King is the Maitreya who would descend during this period of time to save people. And “Maitreya” has become a Buddha’s title. Shakyamuni said that the Maitreya who was among his disciples held the attainment status of Bodhisattva. So in people’s minds, especially among [believers of] the religion, the idea formed that before Maitreya would descend to the human world he would hold the attainment status of “Bodhisattva,” and that when he would descend to the human world and complete his task of saving people, he would validate the attainment status of Tathagata, that is, the attainment status of “Buddha.” Buddha Shakyamuni was talking about a general principle that holds under normal circumstances, instead of the full story of Maitreya or the specifics of a particular Maitreya. In fact, though, the Holy Law-Wheel King was spoken of by Buddha Shakyamuni in great detail, he said much about him. As you know, the Buddhist scriptures were compiled some five hundred years after Buddha Shakyamuni had left the human world. So as later generations handed them down, they came to lose, little by little, much of what the Buddha had once said. When the Buddhist scriptures were composed, much of what was recorded was not Buddha Shakyamuni’s original words. And on top of that, the scriptures couldn’t fully capture the circumstances, the times, or the places of Buddha Shakyamuni’s Fa-teachings or just what exactly he was referring to. So what was said about the Holy Law-Wheel King’s descent to the human world wasn’t recorded in full.
I’m not saying that the scriptures of Shakyamuni’s Buddhism aren’t good. In the past people could cultivate by his scriptures, and there were Buddhas looking after things. But because the human world is a vile world that’s full of vice, the upper realms stipulated that any Fa to be bequeathed to the world’s people couldn’t be entirely true. That is why much of Buddha Shakyamuni’s original words couldn’t be recorded in his times. As humans would put it, it was “Heaven’s will.” As gods see it, it was what Fa-rectification dictated. Why was it that Jesus’ original words were likewise compiled from memory by those who came later? Why did Lao Zi leave behind merely five thousand words after a lifetime of teaching the Dao? Exactly because true and complete scriptures couldn’t be left to the vile world; higher gods had forbid true and complete scriptures from being left to man. Actually, true scriptures aren’t left to man because, for one, human society is not a society of gods, and, the Three Realms is supposed to be a world where principles are reversed. Leaving true scriptures here would be an insult to the gods. Only the Fa Realm and the realms above it are worlds of gods and Buddhas that have true Fa and true scriptures. Another reason is, gods would never do something just for one purpose alone, and thus many, many factors are involved. They knew that the ultimate reason for the creation and existence of the Three Realms and the human race was for them to be used, at last, in the Fa-rectification. They didn’t want the Fa they had taught to be left behind to man and interfere later on with the fundamental Great Fa of the cosmos that would be taught during the Fa-rectification at the end. That’s the fundamental reason. When people later on recollected certain things and compiled scriptures it was a matter of people trying to do good and searching for god, and that’s altogether different. (Applause)
Student asks: Does the requirement that you set forth in Zhuan Falun about not drinking alcohol hold for all beverages and food that contain alcohol? For example, having a beer as a beverage with your meal (audience laughs), having a bowl of fermented rice porridge for breakfast, or occasionally having a piece of chocolate with an alcoholic filling in our daily life (audience laughs). Do these things violate the rule against alcohol?
Teacher: If you really understand what cultivation is for, you will understand all of these things. But today’s society has made a mess of everything. Even when you don’t drink alcohol there are alcoholic things mixed in to the food we eat. So even when you haven’t drunk any alcohol you still have alcohol in your stomach. Now that society has become this way, to avoid it altogether you’d have to stop eating, wouldn’t you? Also, in Western society there is the matter of custom: they (especially the French) have an alcoholic beverage with their meal, it’s part of their diet. So when everyone is doing that and you don’t, your family might think you are a bit weird. That is why back when I first imparted the Fa I said that if this is the situation, then for new students drinking a small glass of it isn’t a big deal. In cultivation what matters is your heart and mind. But being a cultivator, if you want to be diligent, you will take cultivation very seriously. If a person can truly hold himself to a high standard, he will manage to do better with such things. But if instead he thinks these things don’t matter, then he will be more lax with himself, and that’s how you get differences.
While we’re on this subject, I will talk a little about myself. You know, a few years back Master seldom stayed in one place for long. That was because amidst the persecution swarms of evil beings in other dimensions were searching everywhere for me. There were so many evil factors at the time that they saturated all of the Three Realms’ dimensions. And they would have bad people look for me so as to disrupt my focus on doing Fa-rectification and eliminating the evil things. That’s why I kept moving about. At the time I was basically in a car around the clock, traveling daily. A line from a poem I wrote, which said, “Journeying thousands of miles by car,” is in fact describing what it was like. With my constant movement, and with the protection of gods and powerful gong, things were kept invisible to the evil, and the evil couldn’t locate me. Hardly anybody knew where I was. I wanted to swiftly eliminate the evil factors and speed up the progress of Fa-rectification, and I needed to prevent many matters of Fa-rectification from being disrupted. Along with this I was watching how our students were doing. This led to a problem with eating. Not everywhere I went had Chinese restaurants (everyone laughs), so a lot of times I had American, Japanese, Korean, or European food. All kinds of food are fine for me. But with many restaurants, when you go in there and just eat without ordering anything to drink, the owners get a bit upset (Teacher laughs), especially when there’s a long line to be seated; a lot of restaurants make most of their profits from drinks. So I came up with a solution. There is non-alcoholic beer nowadays, and so I would order a non-alcoholic beer to get around that. Now with that said, I’m not telling you to follow my example.
Talking about this reminds me of something. In all these years there is one facet of Fa I haven’t brought up with you. When the persecution was really intense, back in 2000, students in Mainland China were exposing the slanderous propaganda about Master that the evil had made up, and something said by one student has really stuck with me. And it is a view that needs to be corrected. The evil ringleader and the CCP made up lies and told our students how their teacher was so rich, how he had such-and-such luxury apartments in Beijing and Changchun, and how he led such an extravagant lifestyle. When I taught the Fa in China my lifestyle was in fact quite basic. Well, a student in Mainland China said, “Our Master is the best and he wouldn’t be like that. If our Master were that way I wouldn’t follow Him.” I was saddened by that, and more than ever I understood the hardship and pains felt by the previous divine beings who had descended to the world to save people. Cultivation is about cultivating oneself—why look at others?
I have taught you cultivation, but that doesn’t mean I am cultivating just as you are. If that were the case, and if we had become bad, then you’d just stop cultivating? Is that how it would work? Nothing in the Fa I’ve taught says that the Master must go through grueling cultivation just as cultivators do. The evil has assaulted me because I have been suffering on behalf of sentient beings. And when it’s Dafa cultivation—where people don’t leave the secular world to cultivate, and the disciples are from all walks of life—how could the Master be the same as all his disciples? And why would he have to live like those of his students who have the most karma or the most hardship? If it happens that your Master does things differently from you and you find it objectionable, then are you going to stop cultivating? Isn’t [your notion that] the master who saves you must be like his disciples, the result of being poisoned by the Party-culture of the CCP? Do human beings really want their master, who brings people salvation, to undergo human suffering along with them? And only then will they approve of him? In fact, what I want to establish and the problems that I intend to resolve during the Fa-rectification include no longer having divine beings who come down to save people be persecuted by the sentient beings in the Three Realms. Divine beings who save people come down to rescue them, so they can’t be the same as human beings. In the past they went through the same ordeals that human beings experience, or suffered even worse than humans, for it was hard to save people, and those divine beings bore the karma of human beings. That was also to leave their own examples and to help people learn from them. They willfully went through that for the sake of human beings and to teach people how to live properly. So should divine beings, who don’t have karma, have to suffer even a bit? It was human beings’ karma weighing them down.
Divine beings who save people really can’t be the same as those being saved. Say someone has fallen into a mud pit: would it make sense for him to refuse help if I offered to pull him out, and he insisted, “You have to jump in here and be like me before I’ll let you save me”? There’s no such thing. During this evil persecution, [think about] how many students who had such thinking fell after seeing, reading, or hearing the slanderous propaganda against Master. While teaching the Fa before, I discussed a principle. To illustrate the issue, one thing that they say in the CCP’s Party-culture is, “Before you advise others to do well, you have to first do well yourself.” So after some people have done something bad and others point it out to them, they say, “You haven’t done well yourself. Don’t tell me what to do. If you want to tell me what to do, you first have to do well yourself.” Just like with the notion I mentioned above, their reasoning is deviant here. There is no such issue as a master who saves people not handling himself well. That is a crooked idea born of the malevolent Party’s warped culture. In other words, the idea that a divine being, regardless of what approach he uses to save people, must be the same as human beings is absolutely not the case. Divine beings might choose, though, to teach people with words or by example, but that is an act of those divine beings being merciful, and absolutely not because they are supposed to do that. You must be clear on this. (Applause) While they walked the earth Shakyamuni and Jesus did suffer a lot for human beings. But the fact is, they didn’t have to do that at all. That was caused by the enormous karma they bore for human beings and the fact that there were related things that couldn’t be harmonized by the cosmos’s past Fa. It entailed that they beg for alms among human beings and be mistreated and harmed by them, even to the extent that their entire lives were difficult. You all must be clear about this.
Going back to what I was saying before, if there is something alcoholic in your meal or in a piece of chocolate, that’s not a big deal. But if you set a high standard for yourself you will do better in these situations. New students and students who haven’t studied the Fa much won’t be thought of as not doing well just because of these things. Gauge it for yourself. The Fa on this has been taught, and Master has taught you to conform to ordinary people as much as possible as you cultivate. As always, though, there are people who are set on being more diligent [than others] and have higher standards for themselves. That’s what accounts for the differences [between people]. If you, as a Dafa cultivator, say that you just have to drink alcohol, then you have an attachment.
Student: The Fa’s rectification of everything in the cosmos has reached its final stage and history is about to enter a new stage, but our gesture of salute to Master is still not uniform. (Audience laughs)
Teacher: You mean how you should greet Master? I’ve actually made clear since I first taught the Fa that people can address me in whatever way: you can call me by my name, call me Teacher, call me Master—whatever is fine. Master isn’t a stickler for these things. But if you are a true Dafa disciple, you can’t address me directly by my name. It doesn’t matter if ordinary people call me by my name—they can call me whatever they want. But Dafa disciples should call me “Master,” or “Teacher,” etc. It’s up to you, and you can address me however you like. But be sure not to address me as “Buddha.” That’s because whatever the case, Master is teaching the Fa with a human body and saving you using a human form, he is manifesting in this world with a human body. A human body cannot be called a Buddha. Calling a human body Buddha blasphemes Buddhas. Some students might think, then: “I know in my heart who you are.” Well, that’s you knowing in your heart then (audience laughs, applauds), and it’s fine for you to call me whatever you want to in your heart. (Teacher laughs)
Disciple: Dafa disciples from Chengdu and Nanchong of Sichuan province send Master their highest regards and wish to pass on greetings to Master. Master, what should we do about those people in remote mountainous areas who have no access to information?
Teacher: Thank you, Dafa disciples from Nanchong. It’s not a problem. Let’s not forget that as for many things, aren’t there Master’s Law Bodies? And there are many gods who are playing a positive role helping out, too. What’s more, there are so many Dafa disciples in Mainland China, and they will do many things. Even if those people really can’t access the information, there are still ways to handle things. And if they are really getting left out, then there are ways to take care of that. But they actually won’t be left out. Did you know that after the Nine Commentaries came out, within just one month’s time all of China knew about them? Since they are for all people—and especially Chinese people—everybody will for sure be given an opportunity. (Applause) Some remote villages are pretty isolated, but gods are helping to spread them. And as they are spread, people will learn of them quickly, since at this most crucial time everyone must give their stance.
Disciple: For many people in Mainland China, especially the 60 million CCP members, coming to see clearly the evil Party’s wicked nature and completely break from it takes some time. Once the denunciation and removal of the malevolent Party begins, what will happen to those people who have been branded with the mark of the beast?
Teacher: When gods go about doing something they definitely take everything into consideration, and all will be given an equal chance. As you will see in the future, it will have been impossible for somebody to go without hearing about this [Dafa] during this Fa-rectification and at this time when Dafa is publicly spread. When the world’s people try to avoid being persecuted and say that they have never heard of Dafa, that’s just not true. Of course, this time around, where Dafa disciples cultivate as they validate the Fa, is different, and not everybody can become a Dafa disciple. But this is a major thing that involves sentient beings’ very existence; even the Three Realms’ existence is for the sake of Fa-rectification. If the salvation of all beings—something so significant—were not relayed to every single person on earth, if it weren’t relayed to the sentient beings when all was said and done, then I, he who administers the Fa-rectification, would definitely not let those responsible off the hook. (Applause) All people will know about it, not a single person will be left out. And then the choice is in their own hands, and that is the crucial thing. The entire Three Realms, the long, drawn-out years of history, and the sentient beings in the Three Realms were all created for this, so how could today’s people be left out? That’s impossible. I don’t think [what you described] should be a problem.
Disciple: Venerable Master, recently certain students have felt substances from other dimensions badly repressing them. Does that have to do with the state of Fa-rectification?
Teacher: Some students were coughing a while ago, and some students have had certain abnormal reactions, especially in the period after the Nine Commentaries came out. It was the work of the factors, lodged in people’s bodies, that belong to the malevolent Party’s evil specter. You need to eliminate them when you send righteous thoughts. They can’t have that much of an effect on Dafa disciples, but they do interfere. Basically all of the recent interference, including interference of other sorts, has been the work of those evil factors.
The evil factors that were pressing down into the Three Realms from beyond at the time of July 20, 1999, have been cleaned out to the point that basically few remain. Before the mighty force of Fa-rectification reaches this surface dimension, there will still be factors here which were created by the old forces before that, along with the factors of the malevolent Party’s evil specter, doing evil. But since in this dimension there is gong that I left here earlier on, and there are some righteous gods, along with Dafa disciples and their righteous factors, they have now cleaned out the evil factors that persecute Dafa disciples to the point that not even one out of 100 million parts is left—a lot of the evil has been cleaned out. What remains in the surface dimension now is only eight or nine percent of what used to be here. (Applause) And the factors of the malevolent Party’s evil specter are being destroyed on a large scale; and of late, especially, they have been cleaned out rapidly. They have been eliminated in the other dimensions where Fa-rectification has been completed. [What remains in] the surface dimension now doesn’t even amount to one ten-thousandth of the total amount from before, and it only accounts for about seven percent of the surface dimension. The field that Dafa has established in this world occupies forty-five percent of what should be filled up in this dimension. If you look at the proportion, [you will see that] the factors left by the old forces in the surface dimension, the rotten demons, and the factors of the malevolent Party’s evil specter altogether account for fifteen percent, while the field established by Dafa in this dimension occupies forty-five percent—and that doesn’t even take into account the effect of Dafa disciples themselves. When I added up all of the evil factors that persecute Dafa disciples, they only amounted to fifteen percent. This says that during this time before the mighty force of Fa-rectification arrives at the surface, Dafa’s factors occupy forty-five percent of the dimensional field at the surface, where human beings are, and that doesn’t even include the Dafa disciples themselves.
Disciple: Please talk about how we should distinguish our cultivation from our work. A lot of our projects now face challenges in their management.
Teacher: If it’s something that involves Dafa disciples working on validating the Fa, then that [process] in itself is cultivation. But you can’t replace Fa-study with doing Dafa work—that wouldn’t do. Haven’t I said that you need to do all of the three things, and do them all well?
Outside of Mainland China some students have set up media outlets and other company-like entities that aim to validate the Fa, and they are managing them in the way ordinary companies are run. And there is nothing wrong with that, don’t think that this is wrong. If something can’t be run in a normal manner, then that might not be good for validating Dafa. Running a media outlet, starting a company, etc.—these are forms in human society. Human beings take a methodical approach to managing things, and Dafa disciples can learn from it, which you can’t say is wrong. But for a certain period of time before the company is fully able to operate normally, there will be some challenges. Gradually you should arrive at the point where it really is run like a company, though, and that way it can more effectively play its role of directly or indirectly validating the Fa. So I think you should do your best to cooperate with others and coordinate things well. When something is beneficial to Dafa disciples’ validation of the Fa, you should try your best to do it well.
Disciple: Some of my family members who don’t cultivate cannot understand why the Nine Commentaries were published. This reflects shortcomings in my, your disciple’s, cultivation in the past. How can I clear away this kind of interference?
Teacher: Even though your family members understood things before, it was at a shallow level. You didn’t help them to really understand the truth.
Since the time when the Nine Commentaries came out, one thing that has happened is that [some students have] made declarations of withdrawal from the Party on behalf of their family members. When a few of the family members refused, [the students would say,] “You can’t refuse! I’m going to represent you and withdraw you from the Party.” (Audience laughs) In fact, it really doesn’t count if they refuse. You may do it on others’ behalf, but they have to agree to it, and it doesn’t count if they do not consent to it. Even gods have to look at what a person chooses. This shows that many students haven’t done well, done enough, or had success in clarifying the truth to their families. Do you know what the biggest reason for that is? It’s that you see them as your family, rather than as part of the sentient beings or as just like all of the other independent lives. You should earnestly and carefully clarify the truth to your family members, just as you would with other people in the world. When you regard them as family members and don’t take it seriously, the results won’t be that good. Or, if you think, “He’s family, so I can represent him,” that won’t work. Even the formation of the Three Realms was done for the sake of today’s Fa-rectification, so people can’t be flippant about something as monumental as this. Is any life that simple? At the critical moment, is there any being who can be fully represented by someone else? Is there any being who can be denied the opportunity of choosing his own future? At the critical moment, all beings have to verify how they are. So if in your family you have this scenario [you described], then you need to carefully clarify the truth. You can do any ordinary things on your family members’ behalf, but when it comes to something that involves a being’s future—something that major—nobody can represent someone else. If you really want to save your family members, then clarify the truth to them as you would to other people. That’s because their knowing sides all realize, “In this life you are my family member, but in the next life who knows who we will be related to. Just in this lifetime is our relationship predestined.” It’s just like staying at an inn: you lodge there briefly for a night and then part ways the next day. Who could possibly take someone else’s place? That’s really how it is.
Disciple: How can we help the lawsuits in Africa against the evil people to move forward better? Right now there is constant interference. What’s the role, in Fa-rectification, of the lawsuit against Jiang in Africa?
Teacher: I affirm all of these things that you have done, and you have done a great job. I’d say you have done several brilliant things in Africa, which have shocked and frightened the evil and the bad people, helped the world’s people to see the nature of the evil, and had a good impact in saving sentient beings and with many other things. They are things that should be done, and you haven’t done them in vain. As for how to do things even better and how to move things forward, that is still up to you. And the extent to which you accomplish things depends on you as well. Actually, as far as each cultivator goes, you are all walking down the path that you need to take on your own. And you have done those things very well. Sometimes when I look at the things you have done, I really want to say “Bravo!”
Disciple: A relative of mine is a [Communist] Party member and lives in Mainland China. He doesn’t want to quit the Party. I have tried to persuade him many times but he refuses to listen. When the weeding-out takes place, will he lose his life? (Audience laughs)
Teacher: (Teacher laughs) Whether someone will be weeded out or not, or kept or not, these are things that belong to the next stage. Right now we should just think about saving people. Getting attached to [what will happen in] the future does no good, for when the Fa-rectification arrives here it has its standards [to judge by]. But one thing is for sure: no matter what we do, a large portion of people are no longer savable. Among them may be those who don’t want to listen to the truth, who refuse to listen when the truth is told, and who don’t want to read the Nine Commentaries. That is their choice. You have done what you should do. While being subjected to the most evil persecution, Dafa disciples are still saving sentient beings and overcoming all sorts of challenges in order to tell people about the truth. Yet some people don’t want to listen. And what’s more, Dafa disciples are saving people while being persecuted. Well, people’s unwillingness to listen to or read about [the truth] is also a way by which people make their choice. If they don’t want to be saved, then we have no option but to let them go with the malevolent Party.
Disciple: I didn’t work before I started to cultivate and I haven’t worked since. Since taking up cultivation I have had a good amount of leisure time to do things to spread the Fa. Is this in accordance with our cultivation way that conforms to ordinary society? Do I need to go out and look for a job now?
Teacher: If your family has no financial hardship or other burdens, then it’s up to you whether or not you work, and it has nothing to do with being out of line with our cultivation way. I know that some students have borrowed a lot of money and yet they don’t go out to work, saying that they’re “too busy validating the Fa” to work. They can’t pay off the money they have borrowed, and yet still they keep borrowing more. That is a problem. Have you thought about the principle of Fa that Master has taught about the obligation to pay off debts? If you, having taken up cultivation or reached Consummation, were to leave or consummate and become a god and yet have not paid off any of your debt, who would pay it off? Even if the debt is owed to a Dafa disciple, that’s still unacceptable. Of course, when some students say, “I don’t want it back. It’s a gift to you,” that is a different matter. That’s a gift then, and it is a different concept than incurring a debt. You cannot go to extremes. You might be thinking, “Since validating the Fa will end soon anyhow, I won’t need to pay back the money I owe you. When the time comes everything will be over and it’ll all be wrapped up.” (Audience laughs) How could it work that way? Is that thinking right? It is being irresponsible. Haven’t I said that a Dafa disciple should be a good person in every circumstance? Most Dafa disciples are both working jobs and validating the Fa. Of course, if you don’t need to work, have no financial challenges, and don’t have to worry about affecting your family when you do things, then that’s different. Everybody has family and societal obligations, and everybody is cultivating himself in the setting of human society and validating the Fa in the secular world. Why must you [who don’t pay your debts] do something that diverges from the Fa’s requirements? Of course, if those you owe say that they don’t need the money, or if your family doesn’t need you to work, then that’s a different matter, and of course not a problem.
Disciple: Master, please spell out for us the deeper meaning of “Turning the Wheel Towards the Human World.”
Teacher: “Turning the Wheel Towards the Human World”—so which wheel is it that’s being turned? Of course it is the Law Wheel (Falun). (Applause) Isn’t turning the Law Wheel towards the human world doing Fa-rectification towards the human world? That is what it means. (Applause)
Disciple: Since Master’s scripture “Turning the Wheel Towards the Human World” was published, some disciples have thought that the scripture is for disciples to read, while others have thought it should be run in newspapers so that ordinary people could read it. I’m not sure how to handle this.
Teacher: It’s okay to let ordinary people read it, too. Among ordinary people, there are some who are clued-in and who can understand it. But there are definitely many foggyheaded people who won’t be able to understand it, so it might have a negative effect. That’s how human society is now. So when it comes to specific things, discuss them among yourselves. It’s just like with printing Master’s photos in the newspaper: since Master said that you could do that, you did that, and it was no problem. But you can’t print in flyers what I have written or what I have said and then distribute them. You need to do these things as rationally as possible. Being responsible to the Fa and to saving sentient beings is being responsible to yourself.
Disciple: In Western society there are some ordinary people, especially professors and scholars, who are heavily into studying evil Communism and evil Marxism-Leninism. But these ordinary people are not members of the malevolent Party in China. Master, please tell us how we can help these ordinary people.
Teacher: Show them the Nine Commentaries and ask them, “How does our study fare against yours?” (Applause) Right? We have come from that society and this is our study, which is born of first-hand experience. Let’s see who has researched it more thoroughly and astutely, and let’s hash it out. (Teacher laughs) (Applause)
Disciple: I obtained the Fa last May. Thank you, Master, for mercifully saving me. After I obtained the Fa I soon got involved in Dafa work, and sometimes I am so busy that I have simply no time to do the exercises. I’m very worried about this. Master, please tell us again how a new student can walk well the path of cultivating himself and validating the Fa.
Teacher: There’s no shortcut in cultivation for any student, and that holds for new students too. Just cultivate steadily and solidly, and do well the three things that Dafa disciples should do. Those things may appear ordinary, but all of your mighty virtue, and everything that Dafa disciples will consummate in the future, come from them. Don’t get anxious, and don’t do anything extreme. Just do things normally and rationally. That’s how you are supposed to cultivate. “Where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Disciple: How should Western students look at withdrawal from the Party? Have Western students who lived in Mainland China before been affected by the CCP’s evil specter?
Teacher: Some have, and some have not. When Westerners go to China many of them don’t necessarily become part of Chinese people’s circles, so most of them are not affected. But there are a very small number who have tried to make their way into the malevolent Party. As far as Dafa disciples are concerned, [the specter] won’t affect them, wherever they are.
Disciple: Greetings, Master! I have already quit the Party. But party dues are being automatically taken out of my salary. What should I do about that? (Audience laughs)
Teacher: Consider it robbery by the evil cult. (Audience laughs, applauds). It’s not a problem.
Disciple: Some students want to help withdraw their deceased relatives or family members from the Party. Is that necessary?
Teacher: That’s fine. There is no problem with that, for they have passed away and it’s not as if they can come over and ask the Epoch Times to publish their statements in print or online, right? (Audience laughs) (Applause) So yes, you can do that. And does it make any difference? Yes, it does! (Applause)
Disciple: Some overseas disciples use aliases when they quit the Party. Is that the same as quitting the Party using their real names, that is, in terms of their righteous beliefs, righteous thoughts, and righteous actions?
Teacher: It is the same. As I said earlier, using an alias is fine, for gods look at people’s hearts. But the formal act [of public renunciation] can inspire people in human society and is necessary for saving people.
Question: How should I apply my wisdom and use cinema or television media so that we can do better in making our way into mainstream society?
Teacher: If you have skills of that sort then go for it. Using those approaches to validate the Fa, expose the persecution, and save sentient beings is of course better. You can make your way into mainstream society as long as you solve one issue, which is, to truly be able to produce good work. But financial constraints should be taken into consideration as well. The same goes for the media entities. If they are truly run well, they will definitely manage to make their way into mainstream society and join the ranks of mainstream media. That would of course be great. I know that you have in fact been working hard on many things and that you will do them well. I believe that with time that day will come, it definitely will. (Applause) I’ll repeat what I said before: they will not only be run well, in the future they will definitely be the number one, primary media. (Applause) When the human race comes to understand all of this I don’t think it will have much interest in anything else anymore, and being able to hear Dafa information and choosing a wonderful future for themselves will be what’s first and foremost to them. (Applause)
Disciple: When products that are made in China are sold in the U.S., the money will flow to China and be used to persecute Falun Gong students. So I will no longer purchase a product that is made in China. Is my thinking right?
Teacher: Of course there’s nothing wrong with that. Aren’t many of our fellow students boycotting them, too? (Teacher laughs) But it appears that when only our students boycott them, the impact isn’t that big. (Teacher laughs) And don’t do that if it’s going to bring you financial hardship. If you buy them owing to life’s necessities, then it doesn’t matter. But if all people in the world could realize what you’ve hit on, it would be terrifying to the evil.
Disciple: If an ordinary person has a positive attitude toward Dafa but doesn’t yet have the right understanding of the evil Party and its evil specter, what will happen to him?
Teacher: Then it depends on his specific circumstances, since a person’s attitude toward Dafa is first and foremost. But if he is dead set on supporting the evil Party and recognizing the evil Party, then he is in grave danger.
Disciple: Students in Mainland China would like to ask Master: Many ordinary people were at one point members of the [Communist] Little Red Guards and the [Communist] Youth League. Please tell us if they too need to still withdraw [from those organizations]?
Teacher: It’s necessary to remove the mark left by the evil. Even though declaring withdrawal is a formality, if the person can come forward and make that statement, that is, if he is able to take that step, then his thinking is changing through that process and his body is cleansed of the poisonous factors. Some people have said, “I don’t need to write it out. In my heart I have withdrawn.” That might not really effect a cleansing of poisonous factors from the body. And gods are watching whether people are firm. Since the deeper motives behind a person’s thoughts are complicated, his actions are the most accurate expression of himself.
Disciple: Many ordinary people are saying, “I stopped paying dues to the Party or the [Youth] League long ago. I stopped being a Party member long ago. I don’t need to go through the formality of withdrawing from the Party.” How should we look at this?
Teacher: It’s still the same issue. The problem is not just with the formality of joining the Party. [The Party] has truly branded people with the mark of its evil cult and made people join its ranks. That mark must be erased. The mark doesn’t manifest in the human world, and what is at work also includes the [Party’s] factors that are inside people’s bodies. People made deadly pledges to its blood-red flag, promising to give even their lives to it, so would you say that only thinking about it in your heart, instead of renouncing it openly, could do the job? Actually, now that we’re on this subject, [I’ll say that] this malevolent Party is truly evil to the utmost degree. It asks people to make deadly pledges to its blood-red flag, to dedicate their lives to the evil Party, and to dedicate their whole lives to doing its bidding. From ancient times to the present, not a single political party or human organization has been so sinister or brutal.
Disciple: Some Western students think that the tone of the Nine Commentaries makes them hard for Western society to accept. What should we be mindful of when we introduce the Nine Commentaries to Western society?
Teacher: It’s not like that. Doing it the way you have been is just fine. Don’t emphasize those things. There are differences between the Eastern and Western ways of thinking, sure. But there are divine factors behind the Nine Commentaries, and they will have a positive impact on people, Asians and Westerners alike. In some people’s cases, factors left by the old forces are preventing the person from getting involved in Dafa for the time being—they might be restraining him. It depends on the specific situation. Many Westerners haven’t been harmed by the poison of the malevolent Party, and in those instances the person might come across as a bit indifferent. That’s not a problem. As for the Nine Commentaries, at this time they are an important step in saving humankind. Perhaps, during the next stage, every single person on this earth will soon have to give his stance on whether he wants that evil Party around or not. Each person must choose his future. In countries that aren’t ruled by the malevolent Party, Communist things are still, in reality, being practiced. Didn’t a prophecy say that **** would rule the world?
Some people have said that the Nine Commentaries are too long and have asked whether they could be made more concise. The answer is no. During the last hundred or so years, the gangster-like Communist clique has been constantly at war with the free world, but nobody has been able to spell out what this malevolent Party really is. The Republic of China [Taiwan] has fought with the CCP for decades, and articles about the CCP have been written one after another. But they too haven’t managed to really spell out what that malevolent Party is. We have managed to completely explain it, which is a first. How could it be made more concise? Should it be turned into a short, toothless article like what’s been done before? Could such a piece take on the enormous responsibility [this one must] and fulfill the duty history has bestowed upon it? The goal of our fully explaining that malevolent Party is to expose its malevolent nature and help people to see it for what it is, thus saving the world’s people. It is also done to help the world’s people understand why it has persecuted Dafa disciples so wildly. We aren’t “playing politics.” And this isn’t something politics could handle. In my heart is a great wish to save sentient beings. We needn’t promise anything to the beings who have crooked thoughts. History will prove everything. I have given that malevolent Party many chances, and when its evilness peaked I warned it time and time again, saying, “I, Li Hongzhi, know and can explain everything.” But the evil has gotten so wild that it has lost all reason. Even today it is still senselessly persecuting Dafa disciples. Let’s see what is in store for it.
Disciple: Some ordinary people think that the Nine Commentaries are great, but they don’t accept Dafa.
Teacher: A lot of the thoughts that ordinary people have result from their notions taking effect, and they say things without really thinking it over first. They often say things they don’t really mean and say things that may mean something else. When that’s the case, you need to help them come to their senses. What do you mean by “they don’t accept Dafa”? That they don’t want to learn it? If they won’t learn it, that is fine. No one is forcing them to learn it. Only an evil cult would force somebody to learn its things, and it won’t let people out even if they wish to leave. In Dafa, however, we don’t go in for those things. If you want to learn it, go ahead. And if you don’t want to, that’s fine. What I tell people today is to make people aware of the truth: I want people to know what Dafa is and why the malevolent Party has persecuted it, and I do so in order to help people rid their minds of poisonous factors. As for whether people want to learn it, that’s up to them. If they really don’t approve of Dafa then they have chosen their future.
Disciple: Ever since the Nine Commentaries came out, I’ve been very into writing articles that expose the evil Party, but I have slacked off in my Fa-study. How should I balance things?
Teacher: That’s not necessarily interference. You just need to find time to study the Fa. Study the Fa steadily and solidly, and don’t just go through the motions. You have to do all of the three things. Writing articles is a part of your validating the Fa, but it can’t take the place of the other two things.
Disciple: Some fellow practitioners in Mainland China think some Minghui editorials go against the spirit of Dafa. How can we win over those fellow cultivators in Mainland China?
Teacher: That’s not a problem. When someone says there is a problem with Minghui, isn’t that helpful for the Minghui Dafa disciples’ cultivation? It can have a positive effect. If that happens they should just cultivate themselves more, and if they were wrong they should just correct themselves. If they weren’t wrong, then they should hold firm and not be affected by those students who have human thoughts. Of course, it’s not always the case that the students [who question Minghui] have human thoughts. It is possible that they know of better approaches to things. Overall, Minghui has grown only better with time, and it is on a proper course. The situation in Mainland China is complex, indeed. There are some students who, owing to their human thoughts, have very strong attachments, and the malevolent Party’s factors are at work interfering. And then there are some bad people who pose as students. But that’s no concern to us, as they can no longer interfere with Minghui.
Disciple: When Master was teaching Fa in the early days he said that the salvation of monks and nuns would take place last. So is clarifying the truth to them a lower priority?
Teacher: Right, the salvation of people in religions was planned for last, to be done in the next stage. Some people have said, “Why are Dafa disciples so special, even more so than those in religions? Why didn’t you save the others first and have them become Dafa disciples, and instead you are saving these people right now and having them become Dafa disciples?” When human beings look at people they see only this one lifetime. But in fact, out of the people here today, many of them were, in history, the first group of disciples in the major, upright religions of the East and West—the people who heard in person Shakyamuni and Jesus teaching the Law. Dafa disciples are true believers with steadfast and upright faith. (Applause) The well-known saints, monks, Daoists, and Christians in history are right here among Dafa disciples. (Applause)
Disciple: Some Buddhists don’t understand the story about Buddha Shakyamuni that Master tells in the seventh chapter of Zhuan Falun. They said that they looked through the entire Tripitaka but couldn’t find it. That has affected their understanding of Dafa.
Teacher: Right. I can tell people about everything in the Fa. I can tell people about everything of all Buddhas and Gods in the heavens. And I can tell people about the past, present, and future of Buddha Shakyamuni. None of those things are in any scripture. And I can tell people about the cosmos’s past, present, and future, and about all things and all beings. I can tell people about even the gods that Buddha Shakyamuni never mentioned, and about even how they came about and their entire histories. I can tell people about the greater Cosmos up to its greatest expanse, about what the different levels of the heavens are like—and of course the different levels of the heavens are gods, too—about how the cosmic bodies of different levels came about... about the fundamentals of anything and everything. And only I can tell people about these things. (Applause) What I can tell people includes everything of man’s history in the Three Realms, from the minutiae to the biggest events in history. Could the Buddhist scriptures possibly record all of that? The scriptures didn’t even record much of what Buddha Shakyamuni said while he walked the earth. Buddha Shakyamuni taught Fa for forty-nine years—did he teach merely what’s in those few books? That’s impossible, right? Human beings… they always hinder themselves with human notions. Don’t worry about those things that ordinary people say. Who are the ones that are cultivating? Who are the people who are truly walking on a path toward godhood? Who are the people who can truly succeed at cultivation? In all of history, from the past on to the present, only you have done this! (Applause)
As I have said before, the cultivation done in the past, the religions of the past, and the gods of the past who descended to this world to save people—did they truly save people? What they really did, in fact, was establish a culture for the Three Realms and mankind, which was to pave the way for the final Fa-rectification of the cosmos. And what’s more, those being saved were people’s assistant souls (fu yuanshen) instead of people’s true selves. Still, the assistant souls who were being saved were designated beings that were sent down here. The reason was that after the Three Realms was created, some cosmic bodies were too close to the Three Realms, and gods close to the Three Realms saw and were even exposed to the Three Realms, so those gods were prone to being contaminated and thus fell. In the Three Realms there is emotion, the sentient beings’ principles are reversed, the environment is harsh, and people have strong attachments. Upright gods, on the other hand, are compassionate, and they are prone to being interfered with by the sentient beings who are in the trying environment of the Three Realms. That is why the gods close to the Three Realms needed to be frequently replaced. In terms of human beings’ time, they had to be replaced sometime within every ten-year span. That was the issue that arose. Meanwhile, the scenario came about wherein people made use of the form of this ordinary society in the Three Realms to go about laboriously cultivating themselves, and after they reached Consummation their assistant souls would replace the gods that needed to be replaced. Some beings from the paradises of gods above were sent down, and they were to cultivate in this world as people’s assistant souls. And some actually reincarnated as other life forms, and after they achieved Consummation they would return and become the gods whom they were to replace. This scenario emerged only after the Three Realms came into existence. Before that there was no such thing as switching gods. This wasn’t the goal of creating the Three Realms, though. It was a phenomenon that appeared after the Three Realms was created, and it was a way to resolve the fact that gods were interfered with. It was really for Fa-rectification that the Three Realms was created. During that earlier period, everything related to the Three Realms that the gods did, and everything that manifested in the world, was part of the process of establishing a culture for mankind and was to lay a foundation for people to understand the Fa later on.
It’s easy for me to say these things today, and it’s easy for you to hear, understand, and grasp them. Time, space, history, all things, heaven and earth, all beings, all happenings, cultivation, yin and yang, hardship and joy, man and gods—talking about these things is effortless for me. But did you know that every word’s concept and meaning have played out over thousands of years of real, lived history and have evolved to be what they are today, and that over the course of history the words’ meanings were built up and developed? I’m mainly talking about the Chinese language. All things and every happening that mankind understands can be covered, described, and expressed in human language and words. That’s not something you can bring about just by inventing a language. There has to be something deeply ingrained, something that people have truly felt, experienced firsthand, and lived through—a process created for people that is grounded in real experience and that leaves a deep impression. Only then can people really understand the meaning conveyed by a character, word, or term. You can grasp the Fa taught today without even the slightest delay, but without that historical process it’s possible you would have no idea what I’m talking about today.
What is “cultivation”? What does cultivation mean? How does a person cultivate? What does cultivation look like? What are cultivators like? It would be a problem if people didn’t understand all of this. So the likes of Buddha Shakyamuni, Laozi, and Jesus had to descend to this world and all of these things had to be played out in lived reality so as to leave to mankind this culture, teach people what it means, and enable them to understand what it is. And what I’m talking about includes the process that cultivators underwent whereby their laborious cultivation and upright faith led to Consummation, along with similar things. Buddhas, Daos, and Gods left behind the improvement process of reaching one’s Attainment Status through upright faith and upright cultivation, and people have come to understand what these are. But with that said, all of that is still different from the form of cultivation that today’s Disciples of Dafa practice. And that is why I say there is no model for Dafa disciples’ cultivation—you have to blaze your own paths.
Disciple: In the process of trying to rescue the orphans and in clarifying the truth, the Rescue Team has found it to be a great means and process to further clarify the truth to all sectors of society, such as the governmental and financial sectors, for example. We also find it to be a process of trying to coordinate and work better with other truth-clarification teams. Master, please guide us as to how we can duplicate our efforts less and do better in utilizing the limited resources Dafa disciples currently have so as to do well rescuing the orphans.
Teacher: [A lot of] you are thinking about and planning how to do what you described. It’s in progress. It is the right thing to do, and it should be done. Since these things involve many, many facets of society, including the U.S. government, they will have the effect you wish for only when you do them solidly. It’s better if I don’t get into the specifics of things, because you are the ones who need to handle the details. But this initiative has to be done. We can’t not look after Dafa disciples’ children—children who have lost their families. Those are my little disciples and your little fellow cultivators. As their master, I have been thinking about this all along. I have wanted to bring them to the mountain, gather them together, set up a school for them, and have them be raised together. (Applause)
Disciple: At present some students still think that when they are physically going through karma elimination and can’t get out of bed it is the result of their own karma, and that because we have come to the final stage the karma has to be eliminated. Is that way of thinking correct?
Teacher: Not entirely. It happens because a person creates karma as long as he lives. When you cultivate, it is, among other things, a process of constantly eliminating your karma. As long as a person lives in this world he creates karma. So, during the course of your cultivation, karma is continually reduced and eliminated. But Dafa disciples are doing Fa-rectification cultivation, and so their karma is far less than that of ordinary people, and that kind of karma should no longer be hard for them to eliminate. Haven’t I told you that these things have been arranged for you, the cultivators, each step of the way? So [your karma’s elimination] has been arranged, step by step, right up through today. You do have as well a small amount of karma that is newly generated, but such things can play a positive role once Dafa disciples view and handle them correctly, and there isn’t so much of them that they can interfere with Dafa disciples’ validating of Fa. With the stage we are currently at, things of this sort have basically been reduced to a very minimal amount, for they aren’t supposed to interfere with Dafa disciples’ validating of Fa.
Why have there been some rather serious episodes, then? As I’ve told you, all kinds of evil factors take advantage of the gaps that Dafa disciples have when there are still attachments or are human thoughts that the disciples haven’t detected yet. Currently the largest, most obvious type of interference is the work of the evil specter of the malevolent Party. Especially now, when other evil things have been eliminated to the point that few remain, what stands out is the work of the evil factors of the malevolent Party. The varieties of interference and persecution that take place today stem from this. So you need to recognize and address them seriously and eliminate them. Ordinary people don’t believe that the malevolent Party has an evil specter and rotten demons to it, but Dafa disciples do believe so. It is the evil specter’s field that enables the malevolent Party to have a footing in this world. In the one hundred years or so since the Paris Commune, the evil specter has formed a large field in the human dimension. The density of the field was quite high before. Even though the West is against the Party and its wicked doctrines, the West has, in reality, itself been practicing evil Communism of the malevolent Party’s evil specter. The high taxation and high degree of social welfare now practiced in Western society are exactly what the evil Party initially advocated. It’s just that the evil Party has used violence to forcefully seize things from people, whereas in the West it is done via legislative means. In essence they are all practicing the stuff of evil Communism, rather than operating in the way a true human society should. Why has this phenomenon come about in spite of the fact that Western society opposes Communism’s wicked doctrines? It is exactly because the evil factors in other dimensions are at work. In China, they are practicing evil Communism in form, while in substance they’re a pack of gangsters and a cult rolled into one. In the West, they are against evil Communism in form, while in substance they are practicing it.
Disciple: Of late the Epoch Times has published many prophecies about the collapse of the evil Party. Master, would you please give us some guidance on this matter.
Teacher: Those were left to ordinary people for them to read, and it was done by gods from different levels who had come down to this world. Dafa disciples should just focus on walking their paths of validating the Fa.
Disciple: You talked about how the Milky Way would depart from the cosmos so as to purify the Three Realms. Does this mean that the Three Realms is the Milky Way and not the Solar System?
Teacher: Yes, I have said that before, haven’t I? Well actually, the precise location of the Three Realms is not something that can be understood with human [concepts of] a fixed expanse. Seen with man’s modern, matter-oriented views, the Solar System is the boundary of the Three Realms at this level. But, other components that the human eye can’t see, components formed by different microcosmic particles, correspond to different, even broader dimensions. At the surface plane where human beings are, it corresponds to the Solar system; the expanse of a certain microcosmic plane corresponds to the Milky Way; and more microcosmic planes correspond to even larger expanses. The Three Realms is formed by a compound of numerous particles which range from microcosmic in size to larger ones. Different particles form different realms and different expanses. Actually, this is merely what can be expressed with human thought and human language. And this is only to describe the expanses that human eyes can see, that can be described, and that the different dimensions formed by particles correspond to. In fact, an even larger expanse of the Three Realms corresponds to the entire small universe. The “heaven and earth” that [the god] Pangu created, as myth has it, was actually this expanse. But it’s not accurate to describe this expanse that way either, for [some of the things] within this boundary also correspond to realms whose inner components are outside of the Three Realms. Human language is limited, and teaching the Fa in keeping with human thought makes it impossible to articulate the Fa in terms that encompass ideas and thinking that involve all facets and principles of all levels. When the Milky Way departs from the rest of the cosmic body, it appears that this expanse is separated, and that you don’t see the cosmic body anymore beyond the Milky Way; no matter how capable the human eye or human beings’ telescopes are, they can’t see it anymore. But actually, the situation varies in the different realms that form the Three Realms. The Fa is taught, though, to human beings who are in the process of cultivating. Difficult and complicated language could make it hard for many people to cultivate. Only when a person truly succeeds at cultivation and achieves Consummation can he see how the cosmos truly is. Earth and the Three Realms can only return [to their positions] after the period in which the Fa rectifies the human world and the full purification of the two has come to pass.
Disciple: I have found that when certain things that hadn’t been done well are made up for later on, our overall Fa-rectification then proceeds much faster. So when disciples in certain regions don’t do well, does it affect the overall progress of Fa-rectification?
Teacher: The progress of Fa-rectification isn’t affected, but Dafa disciples’ validation of the Fa can be, it can hamper things. The reason being, in those cases, other places are fully cleaned up while in that place [that lags] the evil still has an effect, the persecution can’t be ended, and the evil can’t be cleared out. You know, nowadays people are sliding downhill faster and faster, and the morality of people today has declined horribly. If that didn’t come to a stop, then human beings really couldn’t be kept anymore, despite whatever one may wish.
Disciple: The Epoch Times is a media company that’s meant for the public. Right now only a small number of students are involved in selling ads. Recently a coordinator in the [Falun Dafa] Association has been actively helping along these lines, but some students don’t understand that. Master, please tell us how we can get more students involved.
Teacher: Yes, it’s good that a coordinator wants to help with the Epoch Times work. A person who has a position of responsibility is actually a coordinator, and getting more capable people involved is what’s key. How big of a role can any one individual play? Only when the group as a whole plays its role has the coordinator done well. When a coordinator does well himself, well, if you’re the only one doing well, then you should just be an average student in that case. The key is that you have got to play the role of and fulfill the duties of a coordinator. And I’ll mention another thing. The coordinators in all regions must abandon the approach of overseeing all things big and small. Each region should give free rein to the students in that locale and support them when they take the initiative to validate the Fa. Don’t hold them back, unless it’s those who often go to extremes. Veteran Dafa disciples have matured now, and they are walking their own paths towards Consummation. You need to be clear on this.
Disciple: Should students from Eastern Europe withdraw from the [Communist] Party and Youth League?
Teacher: Every person on this earth needs to give his stance on it, but right now [what you brought up] isn’t most important. The malevolent Party in Eastern Europe has disintegrated, after all. If there are still people there who are staunch believers in and followers of that malevolent Party, then they too will be eliminated just like others. The CCP is the last major entity of the malevolent Party’s evil specter, and to save the Chinese people [we need] to disintegrate the malevolent Party’s evil specter.
Disciple: I think the Western students consider the Nine Commentaries to be our Chinese students’ business. Could you please give us some guidance on this?
Teacher: It does mainly have to do with Chinese students. That’s not a problem. But everyone in the world has to give his stance, and a lot of people even in the West don’t see the malevolent CCP for what it is.
When people say that Falun Gong is remarkable, there are multiple meanings to it. One is, for over a hundred years there has been a nonstop battle between the world of the communist bloc and the free world, and it has been really intense; during the Cold War it seemed as though people were always under threat of nuclear war. But still, nobody managed to explain what the wicked Party is. Did anyone say it all? They were just hurling insults at each other. So many people and institutions were researching that malevolent Party, and yet nobody had it figured out. The Nationalist Party (KMT) has fought with the CCP for decades, and yet they have never been able to explain what the malevolent CCP is. Falun Gong, meanwhile, has managed to completely and clearly explain the malevolent Party. Isn’t that extraordinary? Hasn’t it led the world to see Falun Gong anew? Why do lots of people in ordinary society admire Dafa disciples? Ordinary people can’t begin to explain many of mankind’s affairs, yet Dafa disciples can spell them out, and that is extraordinary.
It’s not just the West—all of mankind failed to see the wicked Party for what it is. Now what you urgently need to do is save those Chinese people who have been poisoned worst and help the Chinese people to clearly see the malevolent CCP for what it is. But many in the West, too, don’t see the wicked Party clearly, and a very small number even support that wicked Party. So aren’t they in danger? It’s only that right now what is urgent is to resolve the issue of so many people in China having been poisoned by it; that is why we haven’t made those other, not-too-severely-poisoned nations the priority. In other regions [outside of Mainland China], as of now the number of people who have been poisoned is, after all, extremely small. Most people don’t believe, and even disapprove of, what the malevolent Communist Party preaches. But the Chinese people are different. Having been educated for decades in the malevolent Party’s culture, how many of the Chinese people can still see that malevolent Party for what it is? Before the Nine Commentaries came out, no Chinese person could clearly explain or recognize the malevolent Party. Even when they would bash it, they couldn’t do so outside the confines of that culture which it engineered. They have been so deeply poisoned by it that they are no longer clearheaded. Even in their statements of withdrawal from the Party they use terms devised by the malevolent Party, such as, “I was born in the ‘new’ China,” “I’m part of the generation that grew up under the red flag,” “I have worked my whole life for ‘the Party,’” and so on.
Disciple: Greetings to Master from the Bulgarian disciples. We are translating Zhuan Falun into Bulgarian. Could you please say a few words to guide us?
Teacher: (Teacher smiles) Being able to translate Dafa books well involves, in fact, a process of cultivating yourself. Don’t fully use a cultivator’s high-level understanding to do the translation, for each of your cultivation levels is different and everyone’s understanding of the Fa of even the same sentence is different, and that is why you have debates that go unresolved. As long as the meanings of the words and sentences are in keeping with the surface meaning as held in human culture, it’s fine. Since high-level meanings are something revealed by the Fa, the inner meanings can’t be captured in translation. There are differences in how people think East and West, so during the initial stage of understanding the Fa it will be a little awkward. But if a person truly tries to learn it and read it, then that won’t affect him, for gods are at work.
Disciple: Is the origin of evil Communism different from that of the malevolent Party?
Teacher: The evil Communism is simply something made up in order for the malevolent Party to deceive people. There is no difference really, they are the same thing. A member of the malevolent Party is an individual, and a bunch of Party members is a Party collective. The collective came up with an idea to fool people: they said that they would create a “kingdom of heaven on earth,” which is the so-called, wicked Communism. How could the earth be turned into a kingdom of heaven? When gods created the Three Realms they did not by any means intend to turn it into a kingdom of heaven. Rather, it was meant to be used for Fa-rectification. (Teacher laughs) When in the future the Three Realms continues to exist, then the form of human society will forever be that of a human society, for that is what’s needed by the cosmos. Turning it into a “kingdom of heaven”?? Heavenly kingdoms abound throughout the cosmos—they far outnumber human [worlds]. Anything beyond the surface dimension is a world of celestial gods, and heavenly kingdoms are everywhere in the cosmos.
Disciple: What was the massive tsunami in South Asia all about?
Teacher: Problems arise when mankind’s karma reaches an enormous amount. But from a lot of things you can see that much of what unfolds today and implicates mankind is the doing of old-force factors, and those things do nothing positive for people. When something happens to mankind, it has to help it learn a positive lesson, and only then can it lead people to truly see that it was gods punishing people so as to save more persons. But when the punishment is just for the sake of punishing people, it only weakens people’s belief in gods. Those things done by the old-force factors do nothing positive for mankind; when people grow bad they just weed them out. The tsunami’s occurrence at this time was a warning to people—three hundred thousand people were gone within a matter of seconds. Back when the big Tangshan Earthquake struck China, didn’t hundreds of thousands perish in a flash? The CCP claims that it has a military that’s millions strong. If they turn really wicked, perhaps all of them will be gone in an instant, too. (Teacher laughs) (Audience applauds) The old forces’ factors don’t care about human beings one bit. Only Dafa disciples are saving people.
Disciple: A number of veteran students in Mainland China are seizing the final opportunities to step forward and validate the Fa, and some used their real names when they withdrew from the Party. They asked us to pass on their greetings to our venerable Master. The Dafa disciples working in Mainland China’s governmental offices send their greetings to revered Master.
Teacher: Thank you all. (Applause) The students who have been persecuted the most severely by the evil [have suffered like that] due to their attachments. And because of their attachments they have gone back and forth: they would write a “repentance statement” under pressure one day, then after they got out they would regret it and make a declaration [to nullify the repentance]; then on another day they would get arrested by the evil, their lack of righteous thoughts would lead to severe persecution, and then they would write yet another “repentance statement,” and after they got out they would make yet another declaration. Those students are the ones who have been persecuted the worst. Some students, on the other hand, have very strong righteous thoughts and have truly done outstandingly. Since Minghui’s reporting is mainly for the purpose of exposing the persecution, collecting the stories of those Dafa disciples who have done really well hasn’t been made the priority. In reality many, many students have handled themselves well.
Student: How should a new student who took up Dafa just a few months ago divide his time between studying Zhuan Falun, Teacher’s new writings, and the many older writings? We obtained the Fa during the Fa-rectification period, so I would like to be clear on what’s more of a priority.
Teacher: New students should primarily study Zhuan Falun and read the other Dafa books as a supplement. When you have the time you can read writings from any period, including Essentials for Further Advancement. But don’t think that time is tight and yet you still have to read everything. That’s not the case. When new students are able to do what Dafa disciples should do, that is really outstanding. Reading Zhuan Falun is the most important. Read the others as a supplement. Read them when you have time, and when you don’t, just read Zhuan Falun.
Disciple: Could you please talk about the importance of our performances?
Teacher: You put a lot of hard work into devising and preparing for the [Chinese] New Year’s gala that you put on. The program was done well, but it was of course over after just one show and it really felt kind of hard to leave it at that. And besides, it can have a great, positive impact, so why not bring it to more people? You could tour a few major cities and perform from place to place so that more people could see it. Wouldn’t that be great? But you’d have to keep one thing in mind: this can only be done by those who have the means and circumstances to do it; nobody can go to extremes, and nobody should disrupt the form that his own cultivation should take or his circumstances. I said “those who have the means and circumstances to do it,” so those who don’t cannot [do the touring]. You can’t quit school or take an extended leave from school for it. Or if someone doesn’t have the financial means and yet quits his job to be a performer [on the tour], that won’t do, either. Besides, it’s only needed around New Year’s time, so the duration won’t be long. Don’t stop going to school or quit your job. Don’t go to extremes. Doing so would bring about a lot of trouble.
Disciple: When the Fa rectifies the human world, the CCP will completely disintegrate in the human world, a great plague will spread, society will be in chaos, and so on. Which of these factors will be the most important?
Teacher: There won’t be any chaos, will there? Human society is controlled by gods. When gods want chaos in human society, a lack of chaos isn’t an option. And when gods want it to be stable, it has no choice but to be stable, right? And then there’s the fact that something so major has been arranged for Fa-rectification, so how could things not be under control?
Disciple: I would like to organize a new project among the disciples who are teachers in the Taiwan area that involves putting together a series of Chinese textbooks for the first through twelfth grades. Since this project would involve a lot of work, I wonder if it would affect other, more important, Fa-validating work?
Teacher: If it has to do with validating the Fa, then go ahead. If it has nothing to do with validating the Fa, then you can’t take up [Dafa] students’ energy. It’s also okay if it will help to restore mankind’s moral values. Then you can give it a try.
Disciple: Some students are businesspeople but their goods come from Mainland China. Should they do that kind of business?
Teacher: That little bit of business you do is negligible when there are those international financial syndicates out there that keep providing life support [to the CCP]. Our students need to make a living, validate the Fa, and have conditions for validating the Fa, so that doesn’t amount to a big issue for us. And besides, if those big financial syndicates were to stop what they are doing, that little bit of business you provide couldn’t revive the CCP anyway. Also, with anything Dafa disciples do, elements of Dafa disciples’ validating the Fa are involved.
Disciple: In Mainland China, after some people withdrew from the Party using aliases, the CCP decided to reinforce the study of Party ideology and required Party members to study it and take notes. If those who have withdrawn from the Party with aliases are forced to participate in those study sessions, will they again be marked by the beast?
Teacher: Once someone withdraws, that’s it. He understands things deep down inside. And once he declares his withdrawal, there will be certain beings looking after him. (Applause)
Disciple: There are disciples who work as card dealers in casinos. Does that increase their karma? Should they not take that kind of job?
Teacher: A job is a job. Now that human society has come to be what it is, if you say that the job in the casino is bad, well, which of society’s jobs are in fact true human jobs these days? With society how it is today, everything is changing along with the shifts of society. So that job is just a job. If there are other jobs available then you can try to switch to one of those. If there aren’t, then just go ahead and do the one you have, since that’s how society is now.
While we’re on this topic I’ll bring up another thing. Often when Westerners go to casinos they are there in fact for fun and recreation. But with Chinese people, and Asians from some other countries, they go there to really gamble, and they even gamble a lot of money. Their reasons for going are different.
Disciple: You said that Dafa disciples can’t achieve Consummation while in debt, but I bought a house with a mortgage of $50,000, and it will take thirty years to pay off. (Audience laughs) How should I handle this?
Teacher: Nothing among human beings is by chance. If you have a loan from the bank and it is going to take you decades to pay it off, yet Dafa disciples all need to reach Consummation, then you can’t wait for decades, right? So how will these things be handled? Well, these things involve mankind’s next stage. And in that case, during mankind’s next stage the setup of human society and how society is will change. Also, when Dafa disciples are really about to reach Consummation, Master will need to resolve and take care of everything for you. Actually, at that time you will yourself have the ability to handle such things. (Applause) This is a different matter from what I discussed earlier, as this is something that happens in the normal course of a person’s life. [The problem is when] some students are thinking, “I can borrow money without paying it back. I’ll just leave and that will be the end of it.” (Audience laughs) That starting point doesn’t work. You can’t have the wrong motive.
Disciple: (Translated question) I have practiced for a year and a half now, and I have benefited greatly and in many ways. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Teacher: Those things are all things that you have validated and enlightened to. Master is just helping you along. If you can steadfastly make it to the end and not be swayed, and if despite the different forms of interference you encounter, you can truly, steadfastly keep going, then you don’t need to thank me—all of the cosmos’s gods will admire you! (Applause)
Disciple: Dafa disciples from twenty-one countries and six regions—Shandong, Changsha City in Hunan Province, Hengyang, Foshan City in Guangdong Province, Heyuan, Guangzhou, Maoming, the City of Zhongshan, Dongwan, Shenzhen, Hainan, Shanxi, Chengdu, Luzhou, Guiyang, Jiamusi, Fushun, Taiyuan, Anshan, Beijing, Beijing’s Fengtai district and Chongwen district, Beijing University, Qinghua University, Tangshan, Shijiazhuang, Chengde, Tianjin, Zhanjiang, Dalian, Yantai, Benxi, Qinhuangdao, Shanghai, Kunming, Xinjiang, Fuzhou, Hubei, Hunan, Hefei, Harbin, Kaian, Shanxi, Nanjing, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot (audience laughs), Holland, Japan, New Zealand, France, Germany, Indonesia, Singapore, England, Australia, Denmark, Nepal, Taiwan, Macau, Sweden, Toronto, San Francisco in California, Auckland, San Jose, Cupertino, Malaysia, Argentina, Hong Kong, India, Turkey, the Caribbean, Vietnam—send their greetings to venerable Master!
Teacher: Thank you all. (Enthusiastic applause)
I have answered all of the questions. No matter how much I say, you still have to walk the path of cultivation yourselves. To walk this path well and progress to its end—nothing is more extraordinary. I say that because during the journey you will have hardships, tests of every sort, unforeseen ordeals, and you will have unexpected interference from all kinds of attachments and emotion. The interference will come from family, society, good friends, and even fellow cultivators. And along with this there is interference from changes in the state of human society and from human notions that were formed in society. All of those things can drag you back to being like an ordinary person. But if you can break through all of it, you can advance towards godhood. So as a cultivator, what is truly remarkable is when you can be steadfast and have righteous thoughts so firm that nothing can sway you. Be solid and firm like diamond, or granite, and then nothing can affect you—evil will be afraid at the mere sight of you. If upon encountering trying circumstances your thinking can be truly righteous, then, when faced with the evil’s persecution and when faced with interference, just one sentence of yours fortified with steadfast righteous thoughts can instantly make the evil disintegrate (applause), and it will make those who are being used by the evil turn and flee, it will make the evil’s persecution of you dissolve, and it will make the evil’s interfering with you disappear without a trace. One thought born of righteous faith is all it takes. And whoever can hold firm that righteous thought and go the distance will become a magnificent god forged by Dafa. (Long applause)
I look forward to hearing more good things from you. (Enthusiastic applause)
1 The Chinese term here, genji, has been translated elsewhere as inborn quality, base, innate base, etc.
2 The Chinese term here, yuanshen, has been translated elsewhere as chief spirit, master soul, primordial spirit, etc.
3 Or “Fa King.”
4 Translator’s note: The Chinese term here, ru lai, could be rendered as “thus come,” as in “the Thus-Come One.” The explanation given in the text here thus relates to the sense and meaning of the two Chinese characters ru and lai. We have followed convention in using the Sanskrit gloss “Tathagata.”
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