Righteous Thoughts and Unrighteous Thoughts

My name is Emily, and I’m 23. Here I’d like to talk a little about my understanding and experiences with righteous thoughts and unrighteous thoughts.

Teacher has said that “Dafa Disciples’ Righteous Thoughts are Powerful,” and he’s also said in Zhuan Falun that “human thoughts can generate a substance,” and “mind and matter are one thing.” We’ve all heard some of the wonderful stories about how powerful Dafa disciples’ thoughts are in eliminating evil (their thoughts which control their supernormal abilities), and Teacher has told us explicitly that we have the capacity to do that. In the section in Zhuan Falun on Kaiguang, or Consecration, however, he also talks about the negative effects that can come when people—especially practitioners—have bad thoughts. Of worshipping Buddha statues he says, “It will be particularly dangerous if a practitioner goes to worship it.” Why? One reason I see for that is that practitioners’ thoughts have energy are especially powerful—in terms of having both good effects and bad effects.

Here I’d like to share a few thoughts about my experiences with both righteous and unrighteous thoughts—and the different outcomes they bring.

Part I: Reciting Master’s Verses

First Example: One day I had a particularly difficult time concentrating during the five minutes when we send forth righteous thoughts and recite Master’s verses. Afterwards I thought about why that was. What I realized was that every single one of the thoughts that came up and interfered with my Fa-rectification work was related to a deep or long-term attachment that I still had. During the righteous thoughts, I was thinking about what we’d have for dinner, about a cultivator I look up to too much, about Dafa work, about worries, about others’ shortcomings, and about pain in my legs. The evil had taken advantage of these gaps and defended itself against my rectifying thoughts. Some of my main attachments came to the surface—I could trace every single one back to an attachment that I’ve failed to eliminate. This really helped me realize for my own self what Teacher has said about our attachments and level hindering the effect of our righteous thoughts. I realized even more that our righteous thoughts aren’t just a matter of performing well during those 5 minutes, but are directly linked to our cultivation. And any omission can be a gap for the evil to enter or continue to reside.

I thought of what Teacher says in “Dafa Disciples’ Righteous Thoughts Are Powerful,” quote, “The most severely persecuted ones are precisely those students who harbor attachments.” I had attachments, so during the righteous thoughts, the evil was able to use them against me and interfere with the Fa-rectification.

Second Example: A more positive example was one Saturday a few hours before we were to send forth righteous thoughts at 5 o’clock. Dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and I was thinking that the evil had come to do battle with the Dafa disciples. I naturally sent forth, “The Fa rectifies the Cosmos, the Evil is Completely Eliminated.” Right after I did that, the sky cleared and the sun shone. That time my thoughts were pure and determined, and not mixed in with selfish human things. Thus, they had power.

Part II: Righteous Thoughts in Our Daily Life

As I mentioned, I’ve learned that we need to have righteous thoughts at all times. Now that we’re in the period of Fa-rectification, the stakes are higher and the evil is more vicious. The importance of having a righteous mind is not the same as it was in the past. Now, it’s Dafa at stake, and people’s lives at stake. We have to guard our thoughts at all times, and cultivate ourselves diligently to prevent the evil from stepping in.

Based on Teacher’s Fa that “mind and matter are one thing” if we always think that we’re bad, not good enough, have shortcomings, and aren’t diligent, or that this reporter is against Dafa, that we’re afraid X will happen, this computer has problems, or this person isn’t going to accept a flyer, won’t that, too, become more of a reality due to the power of our thoughts? I bet these kinds of thoughts are exactly what the evil wants. In contrast, I’m sure that thoughts like “I can pass this test, or that person isn’t allowed to damage Dafa,” and other positive, optimistic, and righteous thoughts are what can destroy the evil.

Here are two examples of what I just mentioned above. The first is a negative one, and the second is a positive one.

First Example: We had been having problems with our cordless phone, and the battery wasn’t lasting long. I was out grocery shopping one night, and Matt was at home on a Dafa teleconference. When I walked in the door and saw Matt in front of me on the cordless phone, my first thought was “Uh-oh, Matt’s on that phone. What if the battery runs out again?” Then I immediately sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the thought, or substance, I had just created. But it was too late—a few seconds after I had the first thought, the phone battery ran out, and Matt was almost cut off from his Dafa teleconference. It seemed like a coincidence, but obviously it wasn’t. So I thought about why that happened. I realized that the evil had taken advantage of fear in my mind, and had capitalized on that to damage Dafa and interfere with Fa-rectification work. This fear was surely a result of my attachment to focusing too much on others’ shortcomings and incompetence, and on the negative impact those shortcomings can have on Dafa. If I had rooted that out in my cultivation, the evil would have had no opening. My thought wasn’t righteous at that first moment because there was a gap in my cultivation where the evil could enter—and it seized the opportunity immediately.

You saw in my earlier example about when we’re sending forth righteous thoughts that at the time when the evil was most threatened, what did it do? It used my attachments to prevent its evil arrangement and actions from being stopped. Here in this example with the phone, it again took advantage of my attachments in order to disrupt Dafa. I mentioned part of the following quote from Teacher before, but here I’ll continue it. He wrote, quote, “The most severely persecuted ones are precisely those students who harbor attachments. The more fearful they are inside, the more the evil will specifically go after such students.” I had fear in my mind, and the evil attacked. That led to the phone being broken during important Dafa work.

Second Example: One day I was studying the Fa before lunch. We had decided to order Chinese food for lunch, and I was going to go pick it up. There’s a Chinese restaurant in Swarthmore that we often order from and eat at, and that’s where we ordered from that day. Before going I was thinking that I felt sorry we hadn’t brought truth-clarifying materials to the people at that restaurant before (though we’d been going there for years), and that we hadn’t talked to them about Dafa. I though that wasn’t good, and wondered how I could make up for it that day. I thought, “Maybe I should bring some flyers to them,” or “Maybe I should wear my Dafa T-shirt,” but for some reason neither of those seemed appropriate at the time. I happened to be wearing a Tsinghua University T-shirt that day (which is a university in China), and the T-shirt had Chinese characters on it. I thought, “Maybe this T-shirt will be enough, maybe it will help start a conversation and I’ll be able to clarify the truth about Dafa to them.” Then I let it go, and didn’t have any intention about it. I walked into the restaurant, said my name, and was paying for my food when the man checking me out said, “Hey, where’d you get your shirt from?” I immediately thought, “This is an opportunity.” I told him, “Oh, my husband studied Chinese there. We’ve both studied Chinese. Actually, he was supposed to study there for a year, but then when the persecution of Falun Gong began, because he’s a Falun Gong practitioner, he felt he needed to leave. So he came back to the States so that he could tell as many people as possible about the atrocities he witnessed while he was there.” “Really? When was he there?” “In the summer of 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began. It’s been going on for two years now, you know, and it’s terrible…” And our conversation continued. I was able to tell him about the awful things Matt saw there, and about my good friends who’ve had family suffer in China. I told him about James’ brother and about Ying’s, too. He was surprised and saddened by that. He had been a bit confused before about Falun Gong and what’s happening in China, and he understood the situation much better as a result of our talk. He seemed to side very little with the Chinese government in the end. I talked to him calmly the whole time, and the whole conversation was very natural.

I know that this happened because I had righteous, compassionate thoughts at that time, and because I had a sincere wish that these people wouldn’t be poisoned by the evil. And of course this happened because of Teacher’s mercy, too. I had been studying the Fa right before I went there that day. When you’re in the Fa, you constantly keep your mission and role in this Fa-rectification in mind—then you’re be able to recognize these things when they come up. If I hadn’t been studying well or thinking about Dafa, that seemingly ordinary opportunity might have passed me by, or probably wouldn’t have come up at all. If we look at things from the perspective of the Fa all the time, a lot of these opportunities will come up, and more people will be saved. But we have to study the Fa diligently, and always regard ourselves as Dafa disciples.

The above is just a little bit of my limited understanding. Please let me know about anything you think was inappropriate.