(Clearwisdom.net) "The old forces don't dare to oppose our clarifying the truth or saving sentient beings." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston")
My trip to Eastern Europe (from Russia to Iceland) has deepened my understanding of the importance and urgency of clarifying the truth. It also allowed me see the mighty power of clarifying the truth in rectifying the overall situation. Clarifying the truth is important and urgent not only because many people yearn for the truth but also because of the fact that many obstructions have occurred and continue to exist due to incomplete understandings of the truth by the people involved. Of course, it is essential to study the Fa well and give high priority to sending forth righteous thoughts while clarifying the truth. Otherwise, it will be hard to reach a pure state and to have the compassion and profundity required by Fa-rectification while clarifying the truth.
Many people of the world have already come to know that the moral essence of Falun Gong is the one of peace, tolerance and nobility. However, why do people, at critical moments, still have many concerns and take unwise actions with regard to Falun Gong? Many incidents have indicated that besides the fact that the evil is interfering with and manipulating human beings, an obvious and major reason is that we have not clarified the truth deeply enough in terms of both scope and depth. When people don't know the truth, it is easier for them to be interfered with by bad elements from other dimensions. In order to help them establish righteous thoughts and create a bright future, clarifying the truth has become very urgent. At the same time, we practitioners' mindset and thinking toward clarifying the truth need to become more mature and enriched as soon as possible.
On my journey, I met many kind-hearted people. Some didn't know about Falun Gong at all. Some only knew about the persecution but yearned to know more about Falun Gong. Some fully agreed with the principle of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance" but were afraid to show their support for Falun Gong. Many things I encountered made me think things over. If we had sufficiently clarified the truth before the journey to Germany, would the German police and people have helped us from their hearts and own initiative? If we could have done this before going to Iceland, would the Icelandic government have been able to avoid making the wrong decision to ban Falun Gong practitioners? Falun Gong has become a well-known "group." It's understandable for every government and intelligence agency to pay attention to us. However, how many countries and governments currently do not have sufficient understandings of us? While we clarify the truth to Chinese people, we should not neglect to help Western countries to further learn about Falun Gong. Otherwise, the evil will take advantage of our omissions and seize the chance to poison the minds of the ordinary people in Western societies with lies and create obstructions for the Fa-rectification.
Another issue that has stimulated my thinking is that some statements in articles published on our Dafa websites are incomprehensible to everyday people. Some practitioners pointed out whether we should avoid using words that are impossible for everyday people to understand, such as "sending forth righteous thoughts," "eliminating the evil" and so on. Master has taught us to look inside ourselves from the standpoint of the Fa when encountering any matter. Then when we encounter issues like this, aren't there hints for us to become more steadfast and advance more diligently in terms of looking at things and breaking through our human notions? In order to validate Dafa and save more sentient beings, we should pay attention to our words and actions and not casually talk about an issue as sacred as eliminating evil with righteous thoughts. Some words that aren't taught in the Fa should not be used, nor should specific names be mentioned. We should pay attention to cultivating our speech. Our Dafa websites are visited by different kinds of readers. There are practitioners from China and overseas in different cultivation states, ordinary people with different mentalities, and the evil people. What should or should not be said must be taken into careful consideration. We should consider objectively the type of readers we are targeting and the possible social effect we want to achieve.
On the other hand, if we avoid all the topics that everyday people may not understand, then we would lose the balance and go to extremes. For instance, everyday people cannot comprehend many of the supernormal phenomena and principles of cultivation, but we should still publicly discuss topics of common interest concerning cultivation and Fa-rectification. This is because cultivation and Fa-rectification cannot be limited by the capacity of ordinary people's understanding. Therefore, I think there are issues about our paying full attention to our words and actions, as well as what our starting point is and how to reach a balance. When we keep in mind our historic mission of saving sentient beings, knowing that people with various states of mind are watching everything we say and do, and when we have enough compassion for people, we should be able to express our discussion of Fa principles and supernormal phenomena appropriately. We would therefore not need the editors of Dafa websites to diligently correct our omissions in our articles or even avoid necessary discussion entirely.
As a matter of fact, there are many things in our society that cannot be fully understood by everyone either, such as many fields in science, religion or the arts. However, when people accept a certain matter at a general level, they will try to study or learn about that which they do not understand regarding that field, rather than simply denying it. When people respect a field of science but do not understand it, they will think that this field is so profound and their own knowledge about it is too limited, rather than rejecting it as something "weird." Do scientists deny their own research results simply because people don't understand it? No. The scientists may consider having some introductory seminars as circumstances allow, but will never lower the research down to the introductory level, since they know their research is way beyond public knowledge. Similarly, if we Dafa practitioners treat everything with righteous thoughts, we should know the answer. Nothing in the human society should be used as a reason to deny Dafa and cultivation, since Dafa cultivation is supernormal in and of itself. The key is how to overcome everyday people's limits of understanding using our benevolence in clarifying the truth, and help them to build up their righteous belief and thoughts towards Dafa.
This is just a reminder to all of us that although we have done a lot in clarifying the truth, there is still much room for improvement. We also need to be more mature from the Fa's standpoint in our own thinking. This way, we can meet Master's requirement of keeping "righteous thoughts and righteous actions" and keep up with the Fa-rectification process better as a whole.
Studying the Fa well, clarifying the truth and sending forth righteous thoughts are the three treasures Master has given us to fulfill our responsibility of saving sentient beings. We cannot neglect any of them.
I wrote down these thoughts in a rush; please point out anything inappropriate.