PureInsight | December 1, 2008
[PureInsight.org] I have noticed a phenomenon: whenever I hear news of the persecution, my human side is stirred up. I feel the threat of the evil either far away or nearby. Therefore, I always unintentionally consider my own safety first and think about how to protect myself. Usually, I send forth righteous thoughts more intensively and pay attention to righteous thoughts and righteous actions. However, my starting point is to prevent myself from being persecuted. This thought is sometimes very subtle, but very often it is the first thought I have.
This isn’t right! Isn’t this putting myself as the top priority? The safety of other practitioners and reducing the damage to saving sentient beings are not treated as top priorities while they should be. This self-protection is selfishness, which is a very serious problem but is very difficult to notice! How can one have righteous thoughts and actions while at the same time holding onto selfish thoughts? It sounds ridiculous! Selfishness has no way of fitting into righteous thoughts and righteous actions!
This doesn’t belong to our original divine being. This is just a human notion. Of course, at the human level, this notion can’t be blamed and human beings can’t live without it. However, as Dafa practitioners, we need to get rid of it unconditionally because it is not a divine notion and it is incompatible with “selflessness and altruism.” Since it is not a divine notion, we have to discard it, otherwise how could we step forward from humanness while being attached to selfishness?
I was very shocked after I realized this because I didn’t notice it before. Actually, I never thought about it that way. So I asked myself, “Have I really let go of life and death? If I have, how come I still think about my own safety first? How come I feel that the threat from the evil’s persecution is so strong? Those thoughts shouldn’t be there.” Human notions are so stubborn that when it is time for Dafa practitioners to discard them, practitioners don’t even realize their existence. Practitioners also cannot tell that these notions are against principles at a higher level.
Master said, “Haven’t I said this before: lives of the future do things for others' sake, not for their own? This process is exactly one in which such qualities are forged in you, so you can't think about only yourself. What is it that you fear? Just about everything, it seems” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York”). We are being forged to be selfless beings, so we need to discard the attachment of selfishness in time, otherwise we won’t meet the requirements Master has set.
The notion of self-protection is related to the attachment of fear after all. Since I didn’t let go of life and death, I was still afraid of evil. Why did I pay so much attention to the persecution? Because my human attachments were so strong. Among these attachments, the attachment of fear was number one! Although the cause is quite simple, to some practitioners, it is very difficult to get rid of this attachment. It often happens that the stronger the human attachment, the more severe is the persecution. This is because the old forces want to “test” the thoughts of Dafa practitioners. Self-protection is one of those human thoughts.
Under the reign of terror by the evil CCP, ordinary people’s righteous thoughts have degenerated so they regard those thoughts as normal. This is very sad. On the other hand, people are afraid of the CCP’s persecution. Most people’s fear is very strong. My relatives and my friends already know the truth, but they think it is too dangerous to clarify the truth. So, they keep telling me: “You need to learn to protect yourself. If you can’t protect yourself, how can you talk about other things?” In fact, their “self-protection” means “don’t clarify the truth.” When ordinary people know the truth, they can be saved. With regard to their other thoughts, those are not important for now. Ordinary people don’t know the Fa principles. They don’t know what this persecution is about, so if we think about things from their perspective, of course that conclusion is a human’s conclusion. But we are cultivators, if we have such thoughts, that is absolutely wrong. Very few practitioners stay at home for the sake of “self-protection,” or use some human ways or other “clever” ways to try to avoid the persecution. There is no doubt that these actions would be the manifestation of strong human attachments and not having an understanding of the Fa. In fact, it is even easier to be persecuted as a result of staying at home. Of course, we don’t acknowledge the persecution. But it has happened. It is because the evil saw the human thought of “self-protection” that the evil grabbed something to use against those practitioners. The evil is beyond the human level, so how can those human ways help? Practitioners sharing on Minghui.ca said holding on to righteous thoughts and performing righteous actions is the safest course of action. That’s quite right. Of course, our righteous thoughts and righteous actions are not for the purpose of protecting ourselves, but are the state practitioners should have. Under this state, we are the safest. We are not vulnerable ordinary people. We have Master’s care and protection. As long as we can have righteous thoughts and do the three things well, who can and who dares to persecute us? So once we have the thought of self-protection, that is an attachment and it becomes a burden.
It is also related to the issue of safety. Being mindful of safety and security in order to avoid the persecution is necessary. But the standpoint of this mindset is very important. If the standpoint is with regard to yourself and you worry about your own safety, you will fall into the human thought of self-protection. On the other hand, if you are careless with regard to safety and you don’t even consider other practitioners’, that is irrational and that is not righteous thoughts and righteous actions. Also, it is very dangerous.
Human beings’ limited abilities and selfishness make them think self-protection is a part of their life and a basic instinct, while a divine being who has all the divine powers will not and should not have such a thought. A god of the colossal firmament gives full consideration to guarding the truth and taking care of his sentient beings. How could he consider protecting himself? It would be an insult to him to even discuss it. Of course, due to their selfish nature and limited wisdom, the old forces wanted to arrange the Fa rectification in order to save themselves, but they didn’t know that what they did actually interfered with Fa rectification. Their thought of saving themselves is doomed to destroy themselves. This is an unavoidable manifestation of the old universe after it has degenerated amidst the old Fa principles of formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction.
We don’t sink into the narrow boundaries of self-preservation. We are to save the colossal firmament and sentient beings, and not protect ourselves. That’s why Master and the Gods chose us. That’s why we dare to come to the human world, which is full of evil, to assist Master in rectifying the Fa at the risk of being unable to return to heaven forever or losing our life. In the human world during so many lifetimes, we have developed deep and stubborn human thoughts and notions. Self-protection is one of them. Now, we are walking the last leg of the divine path of cultivation. In order to step out of humanness completely and accomplish the last leg of our path, we must completely abandon all selfishness including self-protection!
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2008/10/14/55394.html
