(Minghui.org) Many practitioners have been arrested and detained during the persecution, and we have accumulated valuable experience while rescuing them out of detention.
This process involves a lot of separate steps, from contacting family members, visiting government agencies, to hiring lawyers and appealing for the primary sentence when needed.
As we all know, it is not an easy process. Other than the steps mentioned above, we also submit truth-clarification letters and bring lawsuits against those who mistreat practitioners.
As the number of rescuing cases increase, however, we did notice some areas that could use improvement. Because our rescue efforts are time-consuming and often costly, I would like to bring these problems up so that we can achieve better outcomes.
The Basis of Rescuing Efforts
During the Fa-rectification period, we practitioners have the mission of saving sentient beings—that is, everyone except for those key perpetrators who led the persecution.
Once, a practitioner whose Celestial Eye was open saw this phenomenon: while a policeman was beating a detained practitioner, the enlightened side of the policeman—in another dimension—was actually begging the practitioner to save him.
But we sometimes forget this. By considering bringing practitioners out of detention as the primary goal, we may neglect our responsibility of saving sentient beings. In addition, some of us may have even developed hatred and complaints towards those government officials who are being used by the evil to carry out their commands.
Although helping detained practitioners is something we need to do, saving sentient beings is also a part of our mission. There are two kinds of mentalities on this: one is to focus on rescuing practitioners while saving sentient beings during the process; the other is to focus on saving sentient beings and consider rescuing practitioners as a path to saving more people.
The viewpoints from these two angles may appear similar, but they are vastly different. The former can be attributed to certain degrees of selfishness, while the latter is truly selfless. That is, we may regard rescuing practitioners as a project, but we need to keep in mind that the ultimate goal is still to save sentient beings.
Here is one example. Several practitioners from City A went to City B to tell people about Falun Gong and persecution. But they were arrested there. Other practitioners in City A heard about this and discussed the following: why were these practitioners arrested in City B? Was there any underlying cause for this to occur?
Through discussions, we realized that there are relatively a small number of practitioners in City B, meaning that the majority of residents there are still unaware of the facts about Falun Gong.
Our initial plan was mainly to rescue the arrested practitioners. But later we realized this incident gave us an opportunity to save people at large in City B. Because those people were thoroughly brainwashed by the hate propaganda from the Chinese communists, they are the real victims of the persecution.
With that in mind, some of us accompanied the family members of those detained practitioners to visit the government agencies, while others distributed truth-clarification materials in a large scale in City B.
Those arrested practitioners were soon released.
Opposing Old Forces' Arrangement
When we look inward, we know that all the practitioners were arrested and detained for various reasons. Some may involve practitioners themselves, while others may reflect the loophole of a group of practitioners.
The old forces, on the other hand, may also render the situation more complicated. When they think practitioners can do better, they forcibly try to eliminate their attachments through persecution. Since we fundamentally oppose the old forces' arrangements, we need to be careful not to fall into their tricks. After all, they are not qualified to test Dafa disciples.
Whenever we encounter a situation, we need to ask ourselves: What would Master want of this? How should we handle it as Dafa disciples? Master did not acknowledge the persecution and we should not, either. Instead we should make the best of all opportunities to save people, including the detained practitioners.
At the same time, we could send forth righteous thoughts: They (detained practitioners) are Dafa disciples and Master is taking care of them. No one else is qualified to mess up the situation.
Several reasons could contribute to a practitioner's arrest or detention—sometimes, it's his or her own shortcomings while other times, it's problems with the group as a whole.
We know that practitioners should break though barriers and form one body. But this is easy said than being done. Nonetheless, we need to let go of ourselves, work well with each other, and coordinate. We have seen good experiences and serious lessons on this.
Hiring Lawyers
Mater said during lectures that we could hire lawyers to represent detained practitioners. But some practitioners went ahead and hired lawyers without some serious thought. I think we should do better on this.
Needless to say, lawyers can facilitate the process of visiting detained practitioners, asking their situation, and communication with other parties. Therefore, they are supposed to be appropriately compensated – 500 or 1000 yuan per visit with detained practitioners is not unreasonable.
However, if we were to sign the entire contract with the lawyers, it would mean that we have agreed with proceedings of the practitioners' case. In other words, we are acknowledging the persecution in our mind.
We can hire lawyers for legal services or consultation, but we cannot rely on them too much. Otherwise, we may forget our role. On the other hand, our dependence may make the lawyers very greedy. We have seen cases where lawyers used similar defense statements over and over again, and did not really spend time on the cases. Therefore, we need to create an environment for the lawyers to do their part well so that we are truly responsible for them and ourselves during these cases.
Above are my personal opinions. Please point out anything inappropriate.
Category: Improving Oneself
