PureInsight | September 2, 2002
“Everything in the world came for this Dafa, was formed for Dafa, and was created for Dafa,” from “Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. International Fa Conference” 2002 in Guiding the Voyage.) While we apply all resources or tools of the common world to do sacred work for Fa-rectification, if we cannot manage to constantly think of the needs of “Fa-rectification” from the Fa-perspective, or if we cannot take a holistic approach to consider things, we might fall into an everyday thinking mode to allocate resources or to use tools. Although at times results are obtained, things are not done as purely and majestically as they should be. Furthermore, the resources or tools intended for the needs of Fa-rectification might even turn around to restrict us (due to their own deviation). “Law” is only one of the millions of resources or tools available to us in the human world. Even when this discussion is about this particular “tool,” it is by no means intended to prove that law is more special than anything else.
Avoiding it – the under-and-over-use of legal tools
While handling legal issues concerning Dafa work in the last couple of years, I feel that practitioners have used the following several approaches. One approach is an unwillingness to deal with the tool that is “law,” which is deemed as something for everyday human society. The practitioner does not know how to apply or deal with the law, more or less feeling that observing the law is a restriction or some sort of hindrance. When approached this way, there can be cases when the law is broken despite the fact that practitioners can change the way that they approach the issue fairly easily in the future to follow the law. Still the practitioner ignores the law, thinking the risk of being reported is small, and ventures ahead as long as possible. That is not the right thing for a practitioner to do. Even among everyday people, honest ones do their best to observe rules whether others report them or not. Another approach is willingness to deal with the tool of “law.” However, a practitioner does not know much of law and listens to hearsay, or misinterprets without context, or only accepts what suits him. Others are also willing to face the tool of “law” but with individual opinions on adapting to the law. They tend to mix their personal understandings of Dafa with the knowledge of everyday law, using the righteous Fa principles to guide everyday law experts on how to apply the law. When everyday law experts’ opinions do not conform to what they think, they then ignore the experts’ opinions. On the other extreme, there are also a large number of practitioners who are willing to abide by the law, but as soon as they know of some legal restrictions or run into some legal hindrance, they completely stop in their tracks without thinking about it further, thus being confined by the tool of law. As a matter of fact, all the above behaviors are no different from the thoughts and stubbornness in applying the law seen among everyday people who do not know law. Only everyday people generate stubbornness in applying the tool of law to protect their personal interests. If we delete the word “law” and replace it with another everyday professional skill or tool, similar behaviors have been observed as well. Under the surface of the tool of law, similar to what is observed when we use a skill or tool, our attachments are revealed and different understandings surface regarding harmonizing the Fa in the human world.
Crack the puzzle of the tool and apply the “tool of law” while conforming at maximum to everyday situations
There are deep inner meanings behind many principles that the ancient people used to follow. Modern men with low moral standards have distorted or discarded those principles. In spite of that, we have still successfully applied many cultural values and principles inherited from history in clarifying the truth, which enabled kind-hearted people to appreciate the purity of Dafa and the facts, that Dafa disciples are being persecuted. Likewise, law has its role. “Law” starts with the assumption that certain people have evil nature and imposes law over that nature. In the process of law-making, many deviated principles have been retained, though this tool offers the minimum norms for behavior commonly accepted in countries ruled by law. If we do not try to understand the legal regulations concerning our Dafa work (such as slander, human rights, and copyright), we are not able to apply this tool with rationality, or to balance the potential positive and negative effects of this tool on everyday people. We must not rely on the thoughts of the tool (thoughts of the law) to do Dafa work but rather learn and understand this tool in the capacity of a Fa-rectification cultivator. If we do this, then we are able to correctly apply our knowledge and the tool in such a way as to facilitate everyday people's understanding us, and thus indeed validating the Fa among everyday people.
We should not oppose or resist, like some everyday people, tools and knowledge that do not appeal to us, but rather we should place our heart righteously to understand the content and restrictions of the tool, and should apply it correctly and at a maximum to validate the Fa, as in cases like protecting human rights violations, freedom and reputation, or we should apply the principles or methods that everyday people can understand to demonstrate the weak points, the deviated parts of these tools, because these professional tools have their restrictions. Sometimes the restrictions we are confronted with are related to our xinxing. Above all, “law” is only one of the myriad of ways or tools. When “law” seems to constrain us, it simply means that we have a problem in this area, which then tells us of the need to clarify the truth in the area (it does not mean that it has to stop us from doing Fa-rectification work. Let’s pretend that we have submitted a request and we are told that according to legal regulations our request can’t be granted. But then through our truth clarifying effort, it is possible that the request is in the end granted and we in turn enjoy the protection of the law). Furthermore, in applying everyday professional skills, practitioners naturally exchange ideas relating to the Fa. The professional/technical aspects, though, should be trusted to everyday or practitioner professionals. If one does not know the basics of the tool or of the skill and keeps ignoring the tool or develops one’s own theory, or semi-ignorantly applies the positive Fa-principles to explain things to everyday people, as in the case of explaining things to non-practitioner law professionals, or gives specific directions how to use the tool, one tends to get stubborn like an everyday person using the tool, wasting time and effort, amounting to an unnecessary waste of Dafa resources. Even worse, one may ignorantly say things everyday people would not understand who then take it as a lack of knowledge or common sense, which leads people to hold negative opinions of the practitioner. This can unintentionally bring losses to Dafa.
Make the tool better to expose the evil
When practitioners raised this point saying that a certain thing is not a legal issue, but an issue of the heart, or of persecution, or of what is righteous or non-righteous, my understanding is that an everyday person’s immediate reflection is to see a legal issue when he sees a [persecution-related] law suit, and rightfully so. This response is not wrong on the part of an everyday person. What we urgently need to do is to further clarify the matter, in detail, namely that this is a legal issue within a much larger moral issue; specifically, it is an illegal act in which a legal tool is abused to persecute human rights!
Jiang Zemin persecutes Dafa and Dafa disciples, claiming to have followed the law by doing so. In essence, even from the angle of the law, his persecution is against the law in his own country. Many of his actions, this way or that way, are against the law. The same applies to the prosecution in Hong Kong. In the absence of sufficient evidence, the judicial system and police authorities abused their publicly entrusted powers. It is illegal to find people who are innocent to be guilty, to render unreasonable judgment upon false arrest, and give the innocently accused party no chance for redress, disregarding all presentation of evidence which would have cleared the accused. If we present this mockery of justice in a rational and factual manner, then everyday people will likely understand the truth behind this encompassing legal issue, because we are familiar with and thus do correctly apply everyday people’s knowledge and tools to facilitate truth-clarification, and everyday people are then able to see the truth of the persecution. If we immediately tell everyday people that this is not a legal issue but a political persecution, my understanding is that this tool of law has missed its opportunity to be correctly used and of serving the validation of the Fa.
Any everyday knowledge, skills, resources and tools in the human world can be appropriately applied to validate the Fa at the human level, even though some of these tools are very much deviated, restrictive, and rough. They can be corrected, as long as they can be applied righteously to serve the Fa, to enable people to understand Dafa, and to save sentient beings.
Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/8/16/18152.html
