PureInsight | January 28, 2002
The article “The Competitive Mentality during Cultivation” published on the PureInsight web site on January 17, 2002 reminded me of some past experiences of mine.
I was one of the people who helped to care for Zhao Xin. During the last six months of her life, many Dafa practitioners went to take care of her at different times. Some practitioners even rented a place near Haidian Hospital where Zhao Xin was staying so they could post Dafa flyers and take care of Zhao Xin at the same time. Some practitioners went to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Gong and fought for unconditional release of all practitioners with their lives after they were arrested and placed in detention centers. Immediately after they were released, they would come back to take care of Zhao Xin. Some practitioners broke their legs after jumping out of windows when the policemen besieged them. They came with a walking stick to take care of Zhao Xin. There are countless such touching stories.
Taking care of Zhao Xin was mundane work. We frequently wiped her face with warm towels. Although she was not supposed to have any feeling below her neck due to the damage from her paraplegia being so great, she just didn’t feel comfortable in the muscles and bones inside of her body. She wanted to be wiped with hotter and hotter towels. Sometimes even when the hands of the helper were burned with the hot towels and we saw the skin on Zhao Xin’s face was wiped red and became very thin, she still wanted to be wiped more and more. Another thing to help Zhao Xin was to shake her arms. She had no feelings in her arms in the sense that she couldn’t feel it when you touched her hand or pinched her skin. But she still felt there was pain inside of the bones of her arms. She would feel better after we shook her arms. What we did was to raise her arm, bring them up all the way to the position of Chong Guan, and then bring them down. We needed to shake both arms. Later on, as Zhao Xin felt worse and worse, practitioners who took care of her had to shake her arms much more frequently. This was hard work. Other work included feeding her food and water, and talking to her to cheer her up. Certainly she didn’t smile a lot. She suffered so much that it was difficult for her to smile. One usually got no response when one made a joke or talked to her gently to comfort her. She also lost control of her bowels. She could excrete at any time, and we had to clean it up right away. Her mother and sister were busy taking care of her during the daytime, often skipping lunch. Her father collapsed in grief over what had happened to Zhao Xin and was hospitalized in the hospital of the Industrial and Commercial College. Therefore some practitioners cooked dishes and others delivered the meals to the hospital. Whenever there were no chores to do, the practitioners who helped to care for her would sit in the hospital room quietly reading the books. It was quite lonely. Yet, what I have mentioned here is less than one percent of the real difficulties and pains that practitioners felt in their hearts while taking care of Zhao Xin.
This was the second half of the year 2000. Practitioners actively took part in many Dafa activities, such as going to Tiananmen Square to appeal, making banners, putting up banners, printing Dafa materials, posting flyers, resisting fake scriptures, communicating with practitioners from outside of Beijing, asking for the release of fellow practitioners from detention centers, and so on. The practitioners did these tasks on a grand and spectacular scale, and were so absorbed as to forget to eat and sleep. Then some practitioners began to choose what they should do: either take care of Zhao Xin or do the “real” Dafa work. Many practitioners thought either consciously or unconsciously that taking care of Zhao Xin was doing a favor for Zhao Xin as an individual, and doing the Dafa work mentioned above was really and truly working for Dafa.
Subsequently some practitioners chose to go to Tiananmen Square to appeal, hang banners, post flyers, and so on. One practitioner made that choice first, and others followed. Gradually more and more practitioners were arrested; fewer and fewer people were available to take care of Zhao Xin. Only a few practitioners were left to help in the hospital at night. We often saw Zhao Xin’s mother sitting on a stool and snoozing wearily against the wall, or sitting with Zhao Xin alone with a heartbreaking look on her face.
I am not saying that those practitioners shouldn’t have gone to Tiananmen Square, hung banners, or posted Dafa flyers. Neither am I saying that taking care of Zhao Xin was more important than going to Tiananmen. Everyone had to set priorities, but the fact of the matter is that most people chose to do what they thought was the “real” Dafa work.
The article “The Competitive Mentality during Cultivation” brought something to my mind. I feel that certain practitioners seem to have “too high of an ambition” as young people in the ordinary society who know little about the hardship and suffering in life do. There is a Chinese saying, “The things that the young people think of are the things that are in the clouds.” What I am referring to here is that state of mind and not the actual age of the practitioners. It is certainly good to be really diligent in the course of cultivation, and having the feeling of “numerous surrounding mountains look small once I arrive at the peak of the highest mountain and look around” is definitely a good thing. However, I feel that some practitioners seem to have paid too much attention to superficial appearances and placed too much emphasis on their own positions and roles during cultivation.
Everyday people pursue material gains and fame endlessly. Putting aside the talk of cultivation, even those honest and sincere everyday people yearn to lead lives where they can look back without any shame or regret and enjoy a peaceful feeling in their hearts. But very few people can achieve that. When looking back at the time that I took care of Zhao Xin, I still cannot maintain a peaceful mind over certain things. If I could have overcome more difficulties, I would have done better. But she is already gone, and regret serves nothing.
I think that practitioners should get rid of the pursuit of superficial fame or self-interest. When we do Dafa work, it is already very hard to do our best in the things that we have to do already. If that is the case, we should not go pursuing other things.
Moreover, while some practitioners were communicating in fluent English with powerful congressmen in Western countries, some others were wiping off the vomit for Zhao Xin. Aren’t those two things equally magnificent and touching? If we use ordinary people’s standards to compare who was more impressive or who had more people that wanted to follow their footsteps, aren’t we contaminating the righteous thoughts and behaviors of all practitioners with our own attachments?
Just as Master said at the Washington, D.C. International Conference in July 2001: “You are one body, just like Master's gong--of course you and gong aren't the same thing, I'm just giving an example. It's just like my gong, which does different things at the same time--some of it is continuously charging through the immense cosmos with tremendous force into the microcosm, toward what's higher and broader; the force is so massive and the speed is so fast, transcending all times as it rectifies the colossal firmament. Some of it, after this charging, eliminates the sinful karma of the beings at different levels and balances all the interwoven relationships among beings at different levels. Some of it assimilates beings, and some of it is repositioning beings. It's doing different things even at the beings' most microscopic levels, at every level. Some of it does things in low dimensions, some of it protects the students, and some of it is clearing out the evil--every facet of my gong is doing these things. In other words, one body doesn't necessarily do one thing. But no matter what you do, you need to be worthy of being called a Dafa disciple.”
“Answering Questions at the Lecture in Yanji” in Explaining the Fa of Zhuan Falun has the following question and answer:
“Q: Is the Original Heavenly Master (yuan shi tian zun) the highest god in the universe?”
“A: Actually this is ordinary people’s thinking. It is in itself disrespectful”…
No, gods don’t think who among themselves are better or worse than others. They only have the concept of “heavy” and “light.” We are assisting Master with the Fa-rectification in the human world, so we shouldn’t let our attachments drag us down and become heavier. We should quickly give up our attachments. Only then could we do better to assist Master in the Fa-rectification.
Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/1/14/13340.html
