(Clearwisdom.net) I came back home from Flushing, New York a few days ago. This was second time I had gone to Flushing to clarify the truth about Falun Dafa since last June. This time, I worked distributing Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party at one of the Party Quitting Stations. I had quite a few experiences and new understandings during this short stay of only eleven days.
I corrected some of my misunderstandings by repeatedly studying Teacher's "Fa Teaching at the 2008 New York Conference." Teacher said,
"This period of history was arranged for Dafa disciples to save sentient beings, so why haven't you taken the lead role? Why give top priority to the words of ordinary people who have been indoctrinated with the wicked party's culture? Why have you paid so much attention to the evil's persecution? This is worth giving serious thought to."
I realized that my going to Flushing was to rescue people, to save a group of sentient beings who had been deceived by lies, and that I should not let the evils' performance change my heart.
Then how can we save people? My understanding is that in order to save people, we have to compassionately send forth righteous thoughts to save sentient beings and treat fellow practitioners with compassion. All practitioners need to come together to truly form one body.
I look at sentient beings as if they were my children. I am always kind and agreeable with everyone who passes by me, no matter what their attitude and whether they take a newspaper or not. Even if they don't accept the newspaper, I still hope that they can feel Falun Gong practitioners' compassion and change any negative feelings they might have toward Dafa. For those who do take a newspaper, I also offer them information about Falun Dafa and hope that they can really know the truth so they can be saved.
Because of my compassionate thoughts, everyday people appeared to be goodhearted. Many people apologized to me and some spoke with respect and praise toward Dafa. There were some people who stubbornly refused to take the newspaper at first, but later they did accept it. Of course, there were still a few still who had bad attitudes, but compared to the way they cursed at me in previous months, this time they only dared to say a few words and then leave in a hurry.
This time in Flushing, with guidance from Teacher and communication with fellow practitioners, I realized that no matter how high my understanding of the Fa is, that is not the key to saving people. The key is in being able to put down my own understanding and consider things from the high level of one body and from fellow practitioners' points of view. Before this realization, I often said, I understand this... or I realize that... I always thought that my understanding was in line with Dafa and that my understanding was better than that of fellow practitioners. I did not have a good understanding of Teacher's words,
"I often say that if all a person wants is the well-being of others and if this is without the slightest personal motivation or personal understanding, what he says will move the listener to tears." ("Clearheadedness," Essentials for Further Advancement)
I could understand the part about "without personal motivation", but I could not understand the part about "without personal understanding". I thought, "How can a person be without personal understanding?" Therefore, in the past I just tried my best not to push my understanding on fellow practitioners. Now, I finally realized why sometimes I could not agree with fellow practitioners and did not cooperate well. If there is truly a problem with others' plans, I only need to complement it silently. On personal cultivation, I still can agree with fellow practitioners and follow their understanding. I only need to cultivate myself well then he or she will be naturally touched.
Regarding the current situation in Flushing, I think that we need to send forth righteous thoughts more, but our thoughts must be pure, righteous and compassionate. What we want is for the universe to become good, sentient beings to be saved, and to clean out the evil. Cleaning out the evil is not done for the sake of avoiding personal interference.
The situation in Flushing was originally expected to end within a month, but it is still dragging on. I found myself to be partly responsible. A few months ago, I thought that the persecution there was too big and agreed with fellow practitioners who wanted to use lawsuits to frighten the evil, and I had high expectations for it. Using the method of a lawsuit is not wrong, but my starting point was not right. I took it as a way to end the persecution in Flushing by frightening the evil instead of saving sentient beings. My heart was not compassionate enough, and I had not let go of the fighting mentality. Even now, there are still some practitioners who think like this. Now, it has gotten worse and the evil has set up tables asking for people's signatures, taking pictures and even suing the Epoch Times. I think part of the reason is our own attachments to fighting. Moreover, I found that I had developed the attachment of relying on everyday people's lawyers and forgot that only Dafa practitioners are qualified and allowed to validate the Fa. Everyday people are the people we are saving.
September 27, 2008
