Mr. Li Hongzhi is the founder of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa). The practice combines meditation and gentle exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
After Mr. Li introduced the practice to the public in China in the early 1990s, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people started practicing. Since then, the practice has spread to more than 100 countries around the world. Despite this, in China, the practice has been subjected to extreme persecution by the Chinese Communist Party.
The following article has been translated from Chinese and was originally published on Minghui.org.
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A Wake-Up Call
Compassion is expressed in this world through love and kindness, and these are qualities that those who practice Dafa should always radiate from within. There is something I have recently been thinking about. I’ve called upon you to help rescue lives, but the state of mind that you have when doing things to achieve this, such as when you raise awareness among people on your own or perform with Shen Yun, shouldn’t be limited to just those moments. Rather, you should maintain a state of mind of uplifting people’s souls and hold on to this sense of purpose as you go about things at your workplace, wherever it may be. This is especially true for those of you who are involved in various media platforms. There have been cases where others can’t even sense in you the compassion that someone leading a spiritual life should have. Or your commentaries on situations or events are based on your personal inclinations, which shouldn’t be. You are here to help rescue lives on a spiritual level, and you should be gauging things in light of Zhen, Shan, Ren—being true, kind, and forbearing. What you write and say should, at a minimum, help steer people in a direction that will ultimately elevate their souls.
A rather serious issue is that some of you are often making personal attacks on important figures in government. But we are here to help people elevate spiritually and deliver them from danger, not make enemies. Truth be told, you shouldn’t be launching personal attacks on anyone, no matter how bad the person may be (with the exception being the Chinese Communist Party’s sinister, now-deceased despot, Jiang)—and particularly not on important figures in the United States’ two major political parties. Everyone is here for the Way, and all, on some level, are awaiting deliverance from this world. Yet personal attacks tend to breed strong resentment. And once that kind of intense feeling has formed, it is hard to undo. So how are you going to get through to people, in that case? And what’s more, doing that is likely to cause retaliation. Haven’t there been plenty of lessons along these lines? Most of us are outsiders here, and we aren’t deeply rooted in this society. We came here to escape persecution by the CCP, moreover. So we should be grateful, for the United States has opened its arms to us.
When you write or speak, you should do so with the intent to help others elevate spiritually, and do so with love for your fellow man. Every Dafa practitioner—and not just those in the media—should ask themselves whether they are doing what someone who does spiritual practice in Dafa ought to. I can’t help but feel worried, looking back at how you’ve done. Many people have been lax in their spiritual practice for quite some time, and have been going about things just like anyone else in the world. That is hardly the spiritual state of someone who practices Dafa, right? You really need to take this problem seriously. Many of you who are involved in various media platforms need to start connecting your work with raising awareness and helping to free people from danger to their souls. If your only aim is to increase your click rate, that’s hardly the spiritual state of a Dafa practitioner. You are wasting large amounts of the limited time that is meant for rescuing people in these final days! You are going to regret that one day! A Dafa practitioner’s responsibility is to bring people out of peril, but if you carry on like this, your compassion is going to completely wither away! How is that anything like someone who leads a spiritual life? Think about the things that have happened: How could they not be related? There are higher beings protecting Dafa practitioners. When things go wrong, isn’t it a divine warning? Why haven’t you snapped out of it? And if something goes terribly wrong, isn’t it a matter of divine punishment? If you no longer have compassion in you, if you’ve lost sight of your responsibilities and mission, and have even forgotten about your spiritual goals, then you are bound to be just like everyone else in this world. And if the lines between Dafa practitioners and others are blurred, what will become of you as a group? Is that not frightening? And yet we are beings shouldering the greatest responsibility in the universe!
I have always taught that you should not be involving yourselves in politics in the role of a Dafa practitioner, nor get involved in rivalries between political parties. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both just worldly entities. Every individual is someone whom the divine wants to save from this world. You have no business thinking that you will only try to help individuals who belong to one political party, and not the other. They are all my people! I as well as multitudes of divine beings wish to save them! It’s a different story, of course, if on some level a person doesn’t want to be saved. But as Dafa practitioners, you cannot pick and choose. Each and every person is divine by nature, and everyone came to this earth to learn about Dafa and gain deliverance.
Also, when you are commenting on things [with your media platforms], you should focus your discussion on the matter at hand, not on the individuals involved. Perhaps some individual handled something wrong in some regard, but is great with things in other regards. Some people’s thinking and beliefs are rather different, but it doesn’t mean they are bad people. To be able to regard anyone and everyone with compassion, to have love for all people, really isn’t something the average person can achieve. Harder still is it to have a sense of compassion toward all living things in everything you do. But that is something practitioners of Dafa have to be able to do! Spiritual development is a process, and so what I described might not be doable at the moment for those who are newer to the practice; but with time, as you develop further in your spiritual practice, you must manage to do that. Veterans of the practice need to do this now. This is something dictated by your historic mission, and it is something that every Dafa practitioner who aspires to spiritual greatness must achieve in their practice!
Your Teacher,
Hongzhi Li
June 6, 2024