(Minghui.org) I'm a Falun Dafa practitioner from China. Looking back over my cultivation path, I feel that every bit of progress I've made is due to Master’s compassion and guidance. Words cannot express my heartfelt gratitude towards Master over the past decade. I can only share my little experiences with fellow practitioners, to bear witness to the power of Dafa and Master’s compassion. I would like to share my experience of using the Rescue Phone platform for truth-clarification over the past year.
I. Participating in the Phone Call Project
I felt that joining the phone call platform is vital in clarifying the truth to the departments in China that are involved in the persecution. We need to expose the evil and save people. Directly talking to those who are carrying out the persecution helps reduce the pressure on fellow practitioners in China. Taking advantage of the relatively relaxed environment outside of China, we are able to accomplish things that practitioners cannot do in China.
When I lived in China and was persecuted, I did encounter police who still had a conscience. I saw sympathy in their eyes. I felt they wished to know more about Dafa but could not openly ask. I once saw a police officer pick up a pamphlet about Dafa and read it carefully, but quickly put it away when he heard approaching footsteps. At that moment, I felt great compassion for those who participated in the persecution. I have seen it myself, that when we do not bear any grudge towards the persecutors, they do not become hostile. There are even officers who are hostile to other prisoners but treat Dafa practitioners with respect.
I believe that we should have righteous thoughts, and not have negative thoughts about the persecutors. We need to view them as lost souls being used by the evil. With this frame of mind, we'll be able to awaken their conscience and free them from the Party's control, stop them from persecuting practitioners, and then we can save them. This will also help create a better environment for mainland practitioners to directly clarify the truth to the persecutors.
With this in mind, whenever I encounter difficulties or conflicts during these phone calls, I remember that I'm here to save people and I need to persevere.
II. Getting Rid of Human Attachments When Making Phone Calls
People who've worked in China's public security departments for a long time are resistant to listening to the truth because they have been deeply influenced by the Party and are directly involved in the persecution. We encounter a variety of reactions such as being cursed at, sarcastic remarks, people who beat about the bush, people who fake grievance, etc. My human notions and attachments are also exposed when I talk to them. Only through constant Fa study, and identifying my attachments am I able to get rid of the attachment and further purify myself.
Master said, “Although they have found several dozen deceivers—dregs of humanity—to put on this disgraceful act, just by having your heart unaffected you will be able to handle all situations.” (“Eliminate Your Last Attachment (s)” in Essential for Further Advancement II)
I realized that the vulgarity of the person I am speaking with will only affect us if we have human notions and attachments. Once we get rid of these notions and attain the standard of a true cultivator, will we more effectively save people.
When I call someone who begins swearing, I constantly remind myself to get rid of my argumentative nature, my ego and my resentment towards them. I change my resentment to sympathy. I remind myself that people are lost, create karma and harm themselves. When I change my mindset, the other person immediately changes as well.
I recall a follow-up call I made with a prison guard who had verbally abused me many times before. This time, he moderated his tone and asked: “You never get tired of calling? Where are you from?” I responded: “I am calling you from a thousand miles away just to share with you an absolute truth, yet you scold me endlessly. Have you cooled down and enough to wonder why I do this?” I told him about the warped thinking of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), how the Party is unable to differentiate kindness from evil or good from bad. I told him that the Party is using him and his colleagues as tools to destroy humanity, and ultimately, themselves.
I explained that other than our respected Master Li, no one in the world cares or is truly saving people. I reminded him not to participate in the persecution but also to try to stop his co-workers from participating, as the persecution is a sin. I talked with him about China's divine culture and also about karmic retribution. I said that not only should he not participate in the persecution, he should also protect imprisoned practitioners. He agreed in a solemn tone and said that he knew what to do in the future and thanked me for talking to him. I told him the importance of the police quitting the CCP using their real name, and that it's important to not harm any practitioners after denouncing the CCP. He agreed.
We chatted for over forty minutes and when we finally bid farewell, he told me to feel free to call him anytime.
I was moved to tears after hanging up. Without the guidance and blessing of Master, I would not have been able to change this man's mentality so drastically.
Master said, “Compassion is an enormous energy, the energy of righteous gods. The more compassion that is present, the greater this energy becomes, and it can disintegrate anything that is bad. This is something that has never been taught, be it by Shakyamuni or cultivators of the past. The greatest manifestation of shan is compassion, and it is an expression of tremendous energy. It can disintegrate all that is not right.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2009 Washington DC International Fa Conference”)
There are of course times when I do not have righteous thoughts when talking with people. I recall one phone call to a police officer. He responded courteously, and seemed to agree with what I said about the Party. He mentioned that the CCP would self destruct and also said that he would not harm practitioners. I was overjoyed and thought that he'd accepted the truth. I later learned that this police officer was persecuting practitioners. When I called him back to talk to him again, he was outraged and responded with vulgarity.
I reflected upon myself, as everything happens for a reason on our cultivation path. After searching within, I realized that I had the attachment to zealotry when he agreed with me. I thought that I was better at clarifying the truth than others. I realized that I was complacent and wanted to show off. I was furious when I found out that he'd misled me. I wanted to call the person and rebuke him; my sense of revenge surfaced. At that moment, there was no compassion; all I wanted was to vent my frustration; to use the same culture of the evil CCP; to fight evil with evil.
I realized that the root cause was my sense of pride. I would not allow others to despise me. I then felt remorse that my human attachment had prevented the police officer from being saved. I asked for Master’s forgiveness and to arrange for another practitioner to save this man. This incident has left a deep impression on me. It exposed all my human attachments, and also reminded me to be rational, calm and always to look at things from the other person’s perspective. Only with such compassionate thoughts, are we able to awaken the conscience of people.
After that incident, I reflected on every call I made, to see if there was any information that I lacked for truth clarification, or if my thoughts were aligned with the requirements of Dafa. If I realized that my thoughts were inconsistent with the requirements, I would quickly eliminate that which was incorrect. After continuously removing my human attachments, I felt the environment improve when I make phone calls.
Master would constantly enlighten me, reminding me to readjust myself according to the requirements of a Dafa cultivator when clarifying the truth to people.
For example, there are cases where we do not have the contact information of a specific department carrying out the persecution in mainland China, and we need to find the contact from the local security department. I used to have a negative thought that since the phone calls were made online, the recipient would become defensive and would not provide us the information as they would know that we were practitioners calling from abroad. After I studied the Fa, I realized that this was my human notion.
Master said, “What's important for cultivators is righteous thoughts. When you have strong righteous thoughts, you are able to withstand anything and do anything. That's because you are a cultivator: someone who is on a divine path and who is not controlled by the factors of ordinary people or low-level principles.” (“Teaching the Fa in the City of Los Angeles,” 2006)
I told myself: I must remember Master’s teachings. With more righteous thoughts, I'll get rid of more human attachments. In reality, I did manage to get a lot of information which I previously thought impossible. Just as I was preparing my experience sharing article, I was asked to contact the judge who was persecuting a fellow practitioner. I intended to ask for the judge's office and fax number. Since I did not have any negative thoughts this time and said that I needed to reach the judge urgently, I was not only given his office number, but the mobile contact to reach him directly.
Looking back at my experience over the past year, I thank Master for His constant enlightenment and for giving us an environment to continuously improve ourselves while saving people. Every phone call reflects a different situation and exposes our human attachments.
Cultivating Oneself on the Phone Rescue Platform
Calling the rescue phone line had became my major truth-clarification activity. In the past, I did not bother about the operations of the platform, and never thought that I could help in any area. One day a fellow practitioner told me that they needed help, and asked if I could help with two shifts. I agreed. Later, a coordinator on the afternoon shift mentioned that the staff from the afternoon shift are mostly new practitioners, and to ask for my assistance to support and guide them. I obliged.
Initially, I thought that I was able to put away my self-perception and wholeheartedly assist fellow practitioners. However, my xinxing was put to test immediately. I was unable to just concentrate on my phone calls. I needed to spend more time to understand each case, to distribute the cases to fellow practitioners on the platform, to take care of fellow practitioners on the platform, and to organize experience sharing and feedback after the calls. I felt that my time was wasted and symptoms of my human attachment surfaced. I felt that due to my experience on the platform, I was able to judge others and had the thought of changing other people to suit my concepts.
I was very frustrated and could not search within myself. I kept on looking at the faults of others. The evil magnified my human attachments and created more conflicts with fellow practitioners on the platform. Finally I told a coordinator that I needed time off from the shift duty to do my own phone calls. I stop visiting the platform for two weeks. It was not until a fellow practitioner reminded me that we might have interference, and there were less cases for phone calls recently. I was guilt-stricken as I realized that I was in the wrong. The evil is afraid of practitioners working together and finds ways to destroy our unity by manifesting our human attachment to discourage us. Our compassionate Master once again sent a fellow practitioner to enlighten me when I was lost, and to find my personal attachments.
Master said, “When you're attached to emphasizing your things you are too caught up in it and the Gods watching above can't stand it. Even though you keep claiming it's for the good of Dafa, and that "my approach is good" and can reach such and such goal--and maybe that really is the case--still, we shouldn't have attachments that are too much like ordinary people. If you can really do that, all the Gods will say, "This person is truly remarkable." It's not like Gods see that your idea worked and then they raise your level. Instead, they only raise your level when they see that your understanding of it has improved. This is a truth in the Righteous Fa.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A.”)
I saw my selfishness and that I only wanted people to carry out tasks according to my personal liking. If there were conflicting ideas, I would not listen to others. Thankfully, Master's teachings guided me. I realized my problem, and was able to overcome and get rid of my attachments.
I am now back on the rescue platform but no longer doing any shift schedule or playing the host for the platform. I will try my best to coordinate on the platform.
Thank you Master! Thank you fellow practitioners!
Presented at the 2013 Malaysia Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference
