The Mentality of Doing Things is the Hidden Cause of Many Mishaps and Difficulties

People in modern society are used to living a busy life, doing one thing after another, and they regard being busy as an important sign of living a full and meaningful life. It is as if being busy means one has fully applied one's ability and talent, and one's life is not being wasted. Based on this mentality, many people pursue a busy life, and would feel lost if they were not busy. In fact this is a degenerated notion, a sign that particularly shows people are being controlled by the degenerated notions brought about by the modern sciences. It is not the normal state of mind bestowed upon humans by gods, and the mentality of doing things plays an important role in driving and maintaining this degenerated state. I would like to share my view with fellow practitioners with the following examples.

1. The fundamental cause for the constant mishaps at material sites in Mainland China

There are many Internet sites and material sites in Mainland China, and people involved are all very good Dafa disciples who volunteer to shoulder the responsibilities of downloading, making and printing Dafa materials. However there has been a constant stream of incidences of sites being sabotaged, and they all follow a very similar pattern.
There have been many discussions on the Internet about why we should pay attention to the safety issue and how to guarantee safety. My feeling is that the reasons have long been clearly discussed, and even the specific methods have been repeatedly emphasised. Moreover, the main body of the involved practitioners is very good, so it is impossible that they do not understand what the safety issue means. Then why is it that many very good material sites, after a period of smooth operation, began to accumulate problems, and practitioners involved became slack in Fa-study, in reading articles on Dafa website's, and in cultivating their hearts and looking within?

This situation continued until things went wrong with practitioners being arrested one after another, which further implicated many other materials sites, causing many more practitioners to be arrested and forced to undergo brainwashing. Why is it that despite the repeated emphasis on studying the Fa everyday and repeated warnings on the safety issue there are still so many practitioners who have turned a deaf ear to all this?

I can see that the mentality of doing things is the hidden cause for these problems and the repeated losses we experienced. Moreover, practitioners involved often failed to view the mentality of doing things as harmful so that it could serve as a warning against further loss, and when they look inward, they would usually mention it briefly in passing with some obvious superficial reasons. Such an attitude has in fact nourished and indulged the mentality of doing things.

Although from the perspective and standards of today's people the mentality of doing things is not as dirty and ugly as some other attachments, yet as cultivators we can see that the mentality of doing things in other dimensions must be extremely demonic and degenerate in nature, and if we are not vigilant it can directly mislead and sabotage our work in saving people.

The Fa teaches us to "gain things naturally without pursuing them," ("Learning the Fa" from Essentials for Further Advancement) "Do but pursue not --Often stay in the Dao." ("In the Dao" from Hongyin, unofficial translation) We should pay attention to the process of saving people instead of pursuing superficial and specific results. However, the mentality of doing things is doing just the opposite and encourages people to seek a grand and dynamic scale of the process as well as specific goals. It encourages people to stubbornly adhere to their own ideas and even to deviate from the teachings of the Fa and ignore the fundamental principles in cultivation in order to pursue a state that suits their own notions and habits of doing things. In the end when one has completely fallen into the mindset of pursuing things like everyday people, the old forces would come and viciously "test" you, and you have at last created your own loopholes and hurled yourself willingly into the capturing net.

2. Overseas practitioners doing media work treat Master's teachings of the Fa as normal news materials

Recently some overseas practitioners reported Master's teachings of the Fa like everyday people's hot news, which are yet to be officially published on Minghui Net and yet to be included in Master's Fa lectures. As cultivators we must think it over with a calm mind. We all know that such words are not scriptures that have been checked and agreed by Master, and therefore they do not have much practical meaning for our current comprehensive and in-depth truth clarification, even less are these words officially published through proper channels. Then why is it that we have such a big loophole? The mentality of doing things has played a big role in this. Huge attachments to doing things make people forget the solemnity and sacredness of the Fa, and pursuit of doing things and the show-off mentality make people forget the sacredness and greatness of Master. During the current Fa-rectification process and when Falun Gong has attracted worldwide attention, we should be even more careful so that the old forces do not have any gaps to take advantage of.

I would like to mention another thing in passing that in the past there have been situations where practitioners in various places and professional teams were not strict enough, for example they used Dafa music "Pudu" and "Jishi" as dance music; printed "Truth- Compassion-Forbearance" and "Falun Dafa" on the cover page of truth-clarification materials or on book marks for handing out. Master said that "Pudu" and "Jishi" are Dafa music. All veteran practitioners know that these two pieces of music are different in nature from other songs and music pieces composed by Dafa practitioners and that the dance movements choreographed by practitioners themselves can not at all display the immense, long-standing, solemn and stirring profundities of Dafa music, and they also know the fundamental difference between "Falun Dafa" and "Falun Dafa is Good" (the former is Fa and the latter are kind words we use in saving people), but when we do things, we tend to forget about these and allow our mentality of doing things to control us, forgetting that Dafa disciples should always show respect to Master and to the Fa at all times.

3. Pursue other's recognition or specific goals in sharing and truth-clarification, creating obstacles for oneself and affecting results

Through four years of hardships, we Dafa practitioners all know that "clarifying the truth is extremely important." However when it comes to issues of how to understand this, how to cultivate ourselves, and with what state of mind to clarify the truth, there is much difference among practitioners.

One obvious problem we have as a whole is that we tend to treat sharing among practitioners and clarifying the truth to people in society as a means to pursue (may not be just one or two practitioners', but a small group's) goals of specific tasks. For example, the mentality of "I have explained the truth to you, so you should agree to do what I ask you to do" instead of clarifying the truth truly out of compassion from our hearts, without any pursuit. Because such a state of mind is hidden behind a front of "I'm clarifying the truth," it is often difficult for the practitioner concerned to detect its existence, but the objective situation and the fact that the old forces are still playing a role decide that our not-easily-detected attachments and obstacles will always be taken advantage of, forming long-term hindrance in our saving people.
There are many other manifestations and negative effects of the mentality of doing things, which I would not list here due to the length of the article. If fellow practitioners can calm down and measure ourselves by the standards of the Fa, look at the detours and difficulties we have experienced, perhaps you will see more obvious lessons resulted from the mentality of doing things.

The above are personal views based on the sharing with a few fellow practitioners, which I hope will serve as an inspiration so that we can do better what we should do as one whole body.

Chinese version available at http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200308/22878.html