(Clearwisdom.Net)
Since 1999, overseas Falun Gong practitioners have walked through a tortuous path to understand what they should do and how to do it in regard to clarifying the truth to people. Now, Teacher's Fa-rectification is in the final stage. Wherever we haven't positioned ourselves, it will be taken advantage of by the old forces' dark minions and the Communist evil specter. In order to eliminate interference and avoid losses, besides clarifying the truth on our own initiative, it is also important to take time to look inwards and cultivate oneself.
The Associated Press (AP) incident has revealed the inclination that many overseas practitioners have while clarifying the truth, which is to talk more about Falun Dafa's beauty instead of talking about the persecution; and still less, to talk about the staged Tiananmen self-immolation. They thought that, in the peaceful environment, people would be scared off after listening to unpleasant topics, or thought that promoting Falun Dafa means that we should only talk about how peaceful it is and how beautiful the meditation is. Actually, if we look at the root of it, it is because it is easy to talk about the beauty of Dafa. Because it is easy and comfortable for people to hear pleasant topics, it is not likely to cause unhappy results. That is to say, some practitioners treated clarifying the truth as something that they wanted to get done, and they chose an easier path.
For the past several years, had we clarified the truth to the media from the perspective of truly saving them and letting them break free from the evil's lies, the AP would not have acted as a mouthpiece of the CCP in the case of that article, with many Western media reprinting the AP's report. Actually, the practitioners in some other counties have been deeply and comprehensively clarifying the truth to the media in their countries, and persisting in their efforts. As a result, those media outlets didn't follow the AP in exerting a negative effect.
Year after year, through many activities, we have been pushed forward considerably, but we never discussed whether or not each of us has cultivated human attachments away deep in the heart. Without a common understanding after improving, whenever a new thing happened, our human attachments would be exposed to varying extents. Recently, after the Nine Commentaries were published, many practitioners' words and actions presented themselves in the same old way -- willing to distribute the Nine Commentaries because it was easy and people would like to accept it. In addition, while conducting activities, some practitioners also took people's response as their criteria for success.
I believe there is a subtle issue beneath all of this. Trying to clarify the truth along with people's attachments, in my understanding, means that Dafa practitioners should fully consider ordinary people's attachments and resolve their obstacles in accordance with their attachments, so that they could listen to and accept the truth about Falun Dafa and the persecution. This is totally different from catering to ordinary people's notions -- if we just have the ordinary people feel good and accept it, it is actually getting involved in ordinary people's things such as pursuing some political ideals or giving publicity to a happier lifestyle would easily arouse their sympathy. But that is not what we Dafa practitioners should do fundamentally. Doing things that way, we are not clarifying the truth but simply engaging them in politics and leading a comfortable life.
By taking advantage of the AP incident, we can not only strengthen our efforts to clarify the truth to the media from all angles, but also dig out our attachments hindering our cultivation and saving the world's people. In the final analysis, whenever one does something, improving oneself from cultivating and understanding the Fa principles are really the cultivated actions of Dafa practitioners.
