I want to say a few fair words

From an outsider in China

23rd January 2002

During last year’s Spring Festival, the CCTV [Chinese state television] released a piece of news: on the eve of Spring Festival, someone committed self-immolation in the Tiananmen Square for the purpose of attaining enlightenment! It was reported that they were “Falun Gong practitioners!” That shocked me! There hadn’t been a self-immolation incident in our county before. Only the foreigners, out of dissatisfaction with the government, would protest in the way of self-immolation. This year on the eve of January, CCTV broadcasted another piece of frightening news saying someone killed his wife and mother in order to send them to the World of Bliss. Also, according to the CCTV, “they were Falun Gong practitioners!” These two incidents put me into delusion:
teaching people to kill themselves and others? Among the many millions of people who practise Falun Gong in our country are quite a few members of the communist party, veteran revolution members, veteran officials, intellectuals, medical personnel, etc. I was curious why these people could all be so foolish?

This made me become quite willing to know what Falun Gong was all about. They said the book “Zhuan Falun” is the essential textbook for Falun Gong practitioners, the only guideline for cultivation practice. I thought the answer to my question could be found in this book. But most of the copies were burned to the ground. It was hard to find one.

Not long before, by chance I was able to buy one from a bookstand at a high-price. I read the book with my doubts. Afraid of missing the subject of the book, I read it twice straight away and was surprised to find out that it was a good book. Throughout the whole book, it tells people to be good people, to value virtue and to do good deeds; and asks cultivators to cultivate their minds and bodies on the basis of Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance). It particularly emphasizes that when conflicts or problems arise one should search within himself and not to blame their faults on others. On page 140 it reads: “as practitioners, you will suddenly come across conflicts. What should you do? You should always maintain a heart of compassion and kindness. Then, when you run into a problem, you will be able to do well because it gives you room to buffer the confrontation. You should always be benevolent and kind to others, and consider others when doing anything. Whenever you encounter a problem, you should first consider whether others can put up with this matter or if it will hurt anyone. In doing so, there will not be any problems. Therefore, in cultivation practice you should follow a higher and higher standard for yourself.”

Throughout the whole book, there isn’t any information to teach cultivators to commit self-immolation or kill others in order to attain enlightenment. On the contrary, the book has one paragraph, which mentions the issue of killing as follows: “the issue of killing is very sensitive. For practitioners, we have set the strict requirement that they cannot kill lives. Whether it is of the Buddha School, the Tao School, or the Qimen School, regardless of which school or practice it is, as long as it is an upright cultivation practice, it will consider this issue very absolute and prohibit killing—this is for sure.” The author has such a strong attitude toward killing, then should we blame him for any specific cultivator who happens to kill himself or others? Can we say Falun Gong “destroys lives”? If a patient doesn’t listen to a doctor’s advice and then he causes some problems, can we blame it on the doctor? A proverb says: if mindset is not righteous, true scripture will be misread. I believe, to everything, we should seek truth from facts and that we shouldn’t rely on pragmatism. Only by doing so, can we tell right from wrong. Otherwise, there will be the suspicion of condemning somebody by always trumping up a charge. It also confuses people. If we rely on CCTV’s logical definition, then we could never understand the true matter. For example, if a renowned university has a few bad students (some of them kill themselves) should we renounce the renowned university? People die in the hospital everyday, should we renounce the doctors and hospitals? According to the newspaper’s report, there are two hundred thousand people who commit suicide yearly in the whole country, who should be blamed? Right now, in our country, we have sixteen million mental patients, ranking mental illness as the second highest disease in the country. So many people are unhappy, depressed and suffer from mental troubles, who should take the responsibility?

An indifferent attitude toward issues concerning the majority of people will end in big catastrophes. There are too many lessons, which should be learned from the Great Cultural Revolution. A sage said: power is the key to short-term successes but reasoning is the key for the long-term. The ancients said: only an able and virtuous man convinces people. Adopting a forced oppression is a manifestation of weakness, which won’t stay for long.

Translated from http://www.yuanmingeurope.net/articles/4714.html