Some Thoughts about the Deaths of Senior Practitioners

Recently, several senior practitioners in my city passed away. One of them died on the way to meet with another practitioner. I would like to share some of my thoughts regarding this.

I know a practitioner who was sent to a forced labour camp by the local 610 Office in 2001. A physical examination revealed that he was in the end-stages of liver cancer. The labour camp did not want to be held responsible for his death and so sent him back home. After returning home, the practitioner did not treat the cancer as an issue at all. He ate when it was the time to eat, he drank water whenever he wanted to drink, and he clarified the truth wherever he went.

When the 610 Office found out that he was not having any health problems, he was arrested and sent to the labor camp again. However, another physical examination confirmed that had advanced liver cancer and that he would only live for at most one or two months. Thus, he was sent home again.

After the second time he returned home, the head of the 610 Office kept him under surveillance because he did not look like a cancer patient at all. The 610 Office agent even took the practitioner to the county hospital to get another medical opinion, but the diagnosis was the same: late stage liver cancer. The 610 Office had to release the practitioner. After three or four years, the head of the 610 Office happened to meet the practitioner in the street and said, "Look what you have done. You have covered all of the utility poles with Dafa posters!

Seven to eight years have passed and this person is still healthy.

Then why have some practitioners suddenly passed away because of diabetes or even without any known illness? Master mentioned in Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Europe:

"Some people truly weren't attached to anything after they realized that they had obtained this Fa. Lying in his sickbed, this person thought: 'I'm dying, yet I have the chance to read something like this. I truly regret that I didn't read it any earlier!' He didn't think about using it to heal his illness. He simply made the best use of his time to read the book. He said: 'I won't live for long. I'd better hurry up and read the book, hurry up and read it. I'll read it as much as possible and as many times as possible in the years or days I have left.' During this process, however, he unwittingly became able to leave his sickbed, his tumours disappeared, he was able to walk, he was able to stand up, and he suddenly discovered that he felt unburdened from head to toe. The hospital re-examined him and found that his cancer was completely cured.
Master has talked about the selfish nature of the old universe. In Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland Master stated:

"As a matter of fact, for cultivators in the past to say, 'I'm doing such and such,' 'I want to do such and such,' 'I want to obtain such and such,' 'I'm cultivating,' 'I want to become a Buddha,' or 'I wish to attain such and such,' none of that was outside of selfishness."

However, now Master is leading us to cultivate to such a state that we can "consider others first, so as to attain the righteous Enlightenment of selflessness and altruism." ("Non-omission in Buddha-Nature" in Essentials for Further Advancement).

When what you have done is for yourself, for instance, if you are thinking, "I should read more and I should send forth righteous thoughts more; otherwise, Master will no longer look after me. What if I die? My kids have not gone to the college yet!" In my opinion, if you are in such a state, it is not useful no matter how actively you study the Fa. The reason is that your starting point is not for the sake of being responsible to the sentient beings and the Fa. You are doing it for your own losses and gains.

If you can really let go of life and death, you will not treat this as an issue, but rather think, I will just do what I should do as a Dafa disciple. Life and death do not matter at all. Master stated in "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York:"

"If a cultivator can truly let go of [the fear of] death, then that death will forever be far removed from you."

I think if Dafa disciples can truly have that thought, they will not die. Actually, Master made this very clear in Fa lectures a long time ago. A person with a serious illness cannot stop thinking about the illness. What is in his or her thoughts is just the fear. Are there those kinds of practitioners among us? The things you are attached to every day are just the things of everyday people. What you think about are gaining things for yourself, and you haven't let go of them. I feel that the standard of this kind of practitioner allows him to be persecuted by the old forces.

I also know a senior practitioner in his 70s. Once he stumbled for no reason and passed out. His wife is also a practitioner and almost seven years older. She thought, "My husband must have been very tired. He is so tired that he passed out. How could anything bad happen to a cultivator!" She then pulled him up into the bed, covered him with his quilt, and went to do whatever she was supposed to do. The next morning the old man woke up as if from a normal sleep and felt fine. Later, he said to his wife, "I passed out. Were you not scared?" His wife answered, "What should I be afraid of? Aren't you a cultivator?" Because of such simple thinking, nothing bad actually happened.

Master mentioned that cultivators should be diligent. Master wants to take us to a high level. We truly should be strict with ourselves at every moment and do everything according to the requirements of the Fa, not to mention that the lives of many senior practitioners should have long been finished. Their extended lives should not be spent in a meaningless, everyday person's way. We should really treat cultivation seriously.

This is just a little of my own understanding that I would like to share with fellow practitioners. Please point it out if anything is not on the Fa.