PureInsight | December 30, 2002
A recently published Pure Insight article entitled "A Group Discussion on How to Form One Body" raised the following issue, "Recently, some practitioners have spent a lot of time clarifying the truth. This caused dissatisfaction among their family members who are not practitioners. In the past, we responded to these issues by reprimanding those practitioners for not taking the responsibility to rectify their family environment. Some practitioners were overcome by the tremendous amounts of pressure. Needless to say, their cultivation practice and truth clarification work were undermined as a result. Those with family problems were reluctant to open up their hearts to other practitioners." This is truly a problem that many practitioners are facing.
For Dafa practitioners to maintain a harmonious relationship with their non-practitioner family members is something that relates to a wide range of issues, including various complex and intricate predestined and karmic relationships between them. There is no standard model for family relationships or solutions; therefore, one cannot handle family relationships with one common solution. It really requires us to study the Fa persistently and truly cultivate ourselves to elevate our mind nature before we can have a clear insight into the root cause of a family problem. The following is merely my general understanding of family problems. I will not address any specific case.
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Teacher said, "Human society is also a level created by the Dafa, so within this level there are bound to be standards of existence that the Fa has at this level for sentient beings, as well as principles for human conduct at this level. However, the Three Realms are the reverse of everything in the cosmos, so the Fa's principles have also provided beings at this level with reversed principles suitable for the existence of everyday people, such as conquering the world with military force, the victor governing the country, acquiring food by killing, the strong being heroes, and so on. Along with concepts of a good person, a bad person, war, etc., all of these things have given rise to ordinary humans' principles and human understandings. All of these are wrong when judged by the righteous Fa-principles at high levels in the cosmos. So a cultivator needs to let go of all the notions and principles of everyday people, and only then can he cultivate to a high level and break out of the Three Realms, the reverse of the cosmos. But if everyday people also reverse all these understandings and use the righteous Fa-principles of high levels in the cosmos to set requirements for and evaluate humankind or everything in the Three Realms, then the Three Realms would be governed by the righteous Fa-principles, human society would cease to exist, and the human condition would no longer be there, either; it would be a world of Gods, and, along with this, human illusions and the opportunity for humans to cultivate would disappear. That isn't allowed to happen, because high-level beings' garbage has to drop down, and human society is the garbage dump of the cosmos. For the beings here to exist, there has to be a way of existence for this level, which is also requirements and conditions for existence that Dafa created for the sentient beings here." (From "Dafa is All-Encompassing" in Essentials for Further Advancement II.)
From the perspective of the Fa, man can be divided into two categories: Dafa practitioners and everyday people. But among everyday people, there is a special group of people. They are the family members of Dafa practitioners. The family members of Dafa practitioners are different from the rest of everyday people because they are constantly under direct and indirect influences from Dafa practitioners in the process of the Fa-rectification.
Prior to the Fa-rectification period before the Jiang regime started to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, Dafa practitioners' families had witnessed both the physical and spiritual transformations in Dafa practitioners. They have also witnessed how Falun Dafa raised the levels of morality and virtue in Dafa practitioners. Therefore, they enjoyed the harmony and peace that Falun Dafa brought to the practitioners and the entire families. Those were the benefits that they were happy to see.
In contrast, during the Fa-rectification period, Dafa practitioners need to assist Teacher to rectify the Fa and fulfill their historical mission bestowed upon them in this unique historical period of time. In the midst of fierce battles between the righteous and evil, Dafa practitioners' family members will unquestionably undergo various degrees of pressure from the evil old forces. Some of them have endured a tremendous amount of pressure. Those Dafa practitioners' family members who are not cultivators are everyday people carrying everyday peoples' sentiments. When the pressure from the evil old forces exceeds their tolerance levels as everyday people, they give in to the persecution in order to protect their personal interests. Naturally the pressure that they are unwilling to bear, or eliminate, shifts to Dafa practitioners. I believe that the misunderstandings from family members, as well as family conflicts, are representations of the shifting of pressure from non-practitioner family members to Dafa practitioners in the human realm.
The root cause of family conflicts is the old forces' evil persecution. As Dafa practitioners, we must deny the old forces' persecution, or their so-called "tests," from the root. But how do I personally regard the issue of family conflicts in the human realm? First, I don't think we should blame Dafa practitioners' families and relatives for not being righteous, since everyday people can be easily manipulated by higher-level beings. Second, I don't think we should blame Dafa practitioners for not being able to rectify their family environments, either. If we could try to regard the issue of family conflicts from the perspective of the Fa, we might be able to display more compassion and understanding toward our fellow practitioners and their families and relatives than we did in the past.
In this unprecedented Fa-rectification period, the Fa is positioning all beings based on their respective attitudes toward the Fa. The Fa will certainly bring enormous blessings to those families and relatives of Dafa practitioners who are not practitioners themselves but have nonetheless stepped out in bravery to safeguard the Fa. In fact, I think that those who have done so have already surpassed everyday people. They have positioned themselves higher than everyday people because they have manifested strong righteousness and have harmonized with the laws of the new universe. It is very likely that the origins of their lives are quite extraordinary.
How should we respond when Dafa practitioners' non-practitioner families fail to safeguard the Fa? I don't think we should expect Dafa practitioners' non-practitioner families and relatives to always meet our expectations of Fa-rectification. For example, I don't think we should expect them to support Fa-rectification without any complaint no matter what happens, and we shouldn't reprimand them for "being manipulated by the evil" or warn them uncharitably that "they will soon face evil retribution" when they fail to meet our expectations. If we criticize our non-practitioner family members and fellow practitioners in an uncompassionate manner and mentality in the name of rectifying family environments, wouldn't we be mentally beating and torturing our families and relatives in the same way that the old forces persecute Dafa practitioners with attachments in the name of helping their righteous thoughts surface? Wouldn't we be the ones who have truly deviated from the righteous Fa and sided with the laws of the old universe?
Perhaps we should often encourage ourselves by remembering the following when there is pressure from our non-practitioner families: There will always be pressure. But as we expand the capacities of our hearts, the pressure will become relatively trivial.
The key is whether we can truly take the Fa as the teacher or become deceived by delusions.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/11/24/19373.html
