(Clearwisdom.net) After I was released from prison, the local police immediately came to my residence and asked, "Are you still practicing?" I replied, "Yes," but with some fear in my heart.
Some fellow practitioners think that, to avoid further persecution we should avoid answering the question or handle it cleverly. But others do not agree with this. They believe that these replies will make the police think that we have given up on practicing due to fear and that we should answer, "Yes, I still practice." Some practitioners make the case, however, that such an answer will cause the police to monitor them, and thus affecting Fa-rectification.
At the beginning I felt that both sides were reasonable, but I have new thoughts about this after I carefully studied Master's lectures.
I think that the key issue is the mind. If you have fear in your heart, you have a loophole no matter how you answer the question; the evil knows this very clearly. This fear is an attachment that we should let go of. If we put safeguarding Dafa first, then we are people who are walking along righteous paths with dignity, and the persecutors are the ones that should be afraid.
With this as our standpoint, it would be easy for us to answer the question mentioned above: no matter how we reply, it will frighten the evil.
For example, a fellow practitioner said that when she had to answer such a question, she fully despised it and thought: "What I do is the most righteous! What right do you have to ask me about my thoughts?" So, she asked rhetorically, "What do you want to know by asking me this question? If it is your supervisor who instructed you to ask this, you should have first asked his or her intention. Only after you let me know clearly about the intention, can I start to think about whether to answer your question or not." The policeman was stunned and tongue-tied.
Therefore, I think that no matter how we answer the question, we should put our minds on the Fa.