PureInsight | March 25, 2002
Most people tend to be able to see both the good and the bad sides of most things, with the exception of empirical science. They regard it as the only science, the perfect, invulnerable absolute truth. In fact, it is not so. Empirical science has brought people convenience and comfort, but it is not the only science. It is not perfect and has negative impacts as well. Therefore, we should not follow it blindly. Many insightful, accomplished scientists and philosophers have recognized this. For Falun Dafa practitioners this is also obvious and of no surprise. This point becomes clearer when talked about in the context of religions. “Usually religions teach people to believe spiritually so as to achieve material transformation, whereas science tells people to perceive materially so as to elicit people’s spiritual trust and support.” (From Falun Buddha Fa – Lecture at the Conference in Europe). What has allowed empirical science to usurp the role of religion and made people trust, protect and worship it? The answer is “tools.” The following is my personal understanding that I would like to share with everyone.
1. Empirical science has produced tool worship.
Things that modern people are strongly attached to, regardless of whether they are for daily use, to eat, to wear or to play with, can be generally called tools. The entire earth is occupied by commercial tools, office supplies, instruments and devices, and toys – it is virtually a “forest of tools.” People’s minds are filled with concepts in the context of tools, and they use such concepts to distinguish good and bad, gain and loss, poor and rich, strong and weak, and noble and plebian, based on purely the number and quality of one’s tools. Nothing is more attractive than the most useful tools and tool-like objects. People’s pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy are controlled by tools. Their hearts for distinguishing right from wrong and goodness from wickedness are weakened, distorted, covered up or even killed off. However, no matter what, people can’t realize that this intoxicating forest of tools is not a true cozy home but a great church of tool worship, a school with reform school classes that aliens set up in hopes of changing human bodies into means for making clones. The human bodies of this cycle were created in the image of gods. These bodies were originally made for them to be worthy of listening to Dafa. However, they have become raw materials for “cloning” under the control of aliens. To face the universe’s great Fa – “Zhen-Shan-Ren,” (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance) “the great way without form” that “directly targets one’s mind,” the old forces of the universe have adopted their degenerate notions and made long-term, thorough preparations. They have made systematic arrangements to interfere with the Fa-rectification in the name of participating in the Fa-rectification and testing Dafa and Dafa disciples. Upon entering the modern time period, the old forces started to use and connive with aliens who had tried in vain to steal human bodies on earth, concentrating and enlarging humans’ weak points, manipulating people to fabricate and spread the theory of evolution and atheism. They systematically carry out “tool worship” in the name of science and aggressively criticize everything beyond empirical science as “superstition” and “false science.” Therefore they arbitrarily suppress everything beyond empirical science. In doing so, they attempt to block and kill off humans’ righteous beliefs, replace people’s faith in gods and Buddhas with empirical science, and dispel people’s yearning for heaven and the next life. They use karma and degenerate notions of pursuing and worshiping various tools to seal off and bury people’s main consciousnesses, the innate pure and true nature that Dafa aims to save. This constantly strengthens people’s attachment to and dependency on tools, causing gradual regression of humans’ original capabilities and further leading people towards deviation, deterioration and destruction. The spread of the theory of evolution and atheism has filled the wide conceptual gap between humans and animals, totally opened up humans’ sentimentalities and desires, and anointed the whole endeavor with the name of scientific exploration. “Clothing, food, shelter and transportation come first,” and “eating is a top priority.” To put it simply, “living is the first priority,” “food and clothing come first,” “comfort is happiness,” and “pleasure-seeking is joy.” In this way, the purpose of life seems to be absolutely clear, and there is no need to think about it. What’s left is simply how to live this life, a matter of reaching this goal with tools. People will be able to make use of all available tools, including weapons, to find the “happy life,” thus going down the path of fulfilling desire. In this way, an invisible equals sign has basically been drawn between “spiritual belief” and “self-interest,” between “truth” and “strength,” between “aspiration” and “enjoying personal gain,” and between “happiness” and “wealth.” Due to the increasing expansion of demand, people have increasingly leaned toward tools, and tools have finally changed from something to respect to something to worship. Tools have finally reached the status of “God.”
Tool worship on the one hand leads people to fall into making use of tools to change and desecrate the environment and endlessly exploring how to improve existing tools. In this fashion, people create karma and become exhausted from too much work. On the other hand, it makes people lose de (virtue, merit) while falling prey to excessive material and psychological pleasure in this world, thus becoming too happy to remember their homes. At the same time, excessive invention and use of tools has caused waste of resources, as well as the pollution and destruction of the environment. Furthermore, this has driven the degeneration of human society’s structure and lifestyle. This is to say that the more dense this “forest of tools” is, where aliens continue to exploit the humans’ weaknesses, the more severely people are suppressed and sealed in. In this Dharma-ending period, the entire earth is like a ball of karma. People come into the world with karma built upon karma, while everything has fallen out of compliance with the requirement of the universe’s great Fa, Zhen-Shan-Ren, in this dimension. Everything has degenerated and become deviated. The tools designed with degenerate notions and built with degenerate material are against Zhen-Shan-Ren, and they in turn control people’s thoughts and limit and poison them. More and more people are firmly trapped in the “maze of tools.” It is hard for them to get out on their own, so they worship and rely on tools more and more.
Some people think that the persecution of Falun Gong is making a fuss over a trifling matter. They surely shouldn’t make such trouble. However, this matter is not trivial. “Western science has come to its extreme end.” (From “Limitation of Modern Science and Extensiveness and Profundity of Buddha Law” in Zhuan Falun Volume II) Things turn into the opposite when they reach extremes. It is impossible for those negative and deteriorated factors that deviated from Zhen-Shan-Ren and have been accumulated over a long period of tool worship not to emit bad odors and toxins. When Dafa is spread in the human world, the contrast between righteousness and wickedness, and between good and evil is stark. Evil is jealous and scared upon discovering that it is being restrained and obstructed. Its agents therefore play tricks and make trouble. When they later found out that they would be eliminated during the Fa-rectification, they became even more rampant and began their desperate struggles before dying. However, what people have realized more and more clearly is that “Those who attack goodness are bound to be evil.” (From “Rationality” in Essentials for Further Advancement)
2. Tool worship causes both people’s ideas and external objects to be transformed into tools.
“When we run into problems, we often look outwards – ‘why are you treating me this way?’ – and feel that we’ve been treated unfairly, instead of examining ourselves. This is the greatest and most fatal obstacle for all living beings.” (From Falun Buddha Fa - Lecture at the Conference in Singapore) Humans are at a low level and very selfish. This is the most glaring weakness of humans. “In the eyes of ordinary people, whoever can display his abilities is high.” (From “Saving people and Preaching the Law without Giving any Performance” in Zhuan Falun Volume II) “Fighting and contending are taken as joy” by people (From “Cultivating in Maze” in Hong Yin). It is exactly this fatal weakness that tool worship has concentrated on and made use of. Through the tools being made sacred, they are strengthened and pushed to an extreme, which has caused people to look blindly for external factors, struggling and fighting with the external, and further transforming their ideas and the external objects into tools. People start to treat everything outside of them, including social organizations and other people, as tools. They either see everything as “mine” for direct use, or see them as “for public use,” “yours” or “his” and think of a way to get it for their own usage. On the other hand, they will use tools to ward off those who would harm or destroy their tools. As a result, people manipulate, scheme against and deceive each other, taking each other as enemies. In this way, relationships among people have become more and more strained. The phenomenon of tools being made sacred and external objects being transformed into tools has seeped into every corner of society. The general form of social structure and various social organizations are becoming more complicated and being transformed into tools. The traditional social structures that had families as its basic element have been ruined beyond recognition, and the entire society is filled with palaces and arenas for tools. The world has been integrated into one body, society transformed into a market, occupations industrialized, work units run as enterprises, and people with capabilities have been turned into “human property.” The worship and pursuit of tools are instilled into children at an early age. This influences everyone, including various institutions and enterprises, politicians, government officials, soldiers, social groups, villages and towns, and religious organizations. Each social element and society as a whole, lifestyles, and social mentalities have all been transformed into tools. The biggest hope in one’s life is nothing more than having “a good job,” while this so-called “good” means no more than how well a tool can be used with high proficiency. Obviously, the meaning of “one can accomplish what one’s heart wishes” has also changed.
It is even worse now that the world has entered the market economy. Social relationships and conflicts have been made more complicated and confusing by tools. They become very difficult to mediate and reconcile, causing people to worship tools even more deeply and with profound respect and humility. The practical mentality has spread unchecked. “Seeking truth from facts” has changed into “seeking practical benefit in everything.” After the saying “money is everything” was severely criticized, other sayings emerged. Now they claim that “money isn’t everything, but it absolutely won’t do not to have any” and “money can buy anything.” People see everything as a rake for gathering money. “For money, various things that are offensive to Heaven and reason have appeared correspondingly.” (From “Mankind in the Ending Period of Catastrophe” in Zhuan Falun Volume II) People “compete for a tiny bit of personal gain; the thoughts they have and the tricks they use are very vicious.” (From “Transformation of Karma” in Lecture Four of Zhuan Falun) They do not honor loyalty, take advantage of friends and strangers alike, rob openly and steal in secret, harm, deceive, kidnap and trick others, murder for money and do all sorts of bad deeds. Think about it. What is money? It is the most useful tool. In essence, it should be good enough to have sufficient money to live on. However, in the eyes of the devoted followers of “tool worship,” all tools are “sacred.” Then, how can pure words persuade them to stand up when they kowtow to the most useful tool – money? What is power? Transforming power for the public into personal tools is an “achievement of the highest order.” Once a person considers power as his own “treasure chest” and “money tree,” with such a greedy mind, how can he not try to grab more whenever he gets a chance? What is the supreme power of a country? It is the main switch of the state machinery. Once the evil people who even ignore gods turn the country into their own personal belonging, what scruples can they not resort to with such dark and evil minds? What kind of wicked tricks can’t they play? What kind of murderous measures won’t they take? Some people have wondered how “public servants” can be so cruel to millions and millions of “masters.” That’s because the title of “public servant” is nothing more than a mask.
The transformation of ideas and external objects into tools has caused people to give up self-control completely, no longer examining themselves honestly. They indulge in self-delusion while being swept away in the powerful torrent of declining morality and help to intensify the waves themselves. Some people are not totally like that because the traditional moral standard still has an effect on them. However, the standard has already gone down. These concepts are completely out of tune with the selflessness and altruism, looking inwards, and gaining things naturally without pursuing them, as discussed in Dafa. They eventually lead to nothing more than tool worship.
(To be continued)
Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/2/8/13707.html
