(Clearwisdom.net) From the reports on Minghui net and the incidents of persecution of the practitioners near me, I have realized that it is very dangerous if practitioners cannot get rid of the heart of pursuit and this pursuit will provide excuses for the old forces to persecute Dafa practitioners. For years the old forces have been trying to find omissions among practitioners so when they see that practitioners have hearts of pursuit, they send in dark minions to destroy practitioners' righteous faith. One practitioner I know was arrested three years ago while she was distributing truth-clarifying materials. She was sentenced to three years in jail. When she was released, I found to my dismay that she had renounced her faith. From her arrest to her deviation from the Fa, I saw her heart of pursuit - the heart of doing things, the heart of seeking consummation and the heart of seeking accumulation of merit and virtue. The old forces thus found excuses to persecute her. When in tribulation, if a person was in pursuit of something but he couldn't get it, then he would complain and produce the heart of hatred.
In "Towards Consummation" published on June 16, 2000, Master said:
"Studying the Fa with attachments is not true cultivation. Yet during the course of cultivation a person may gradually become aware of his fundamental attachments, rid himself of them, and thus meet the standard for a cultivator."
Driven by the human notions that have been formed life after life, we pursue the things we long for during our cultivation. We have done quite a few things during these years of Fa-rectification period. None of us will admit that we are not genuine practitioners. But do we study the Fa with attachments? Do we really reach the standard for a cultivator Master requires us? If all of us have reached the standard, then the persecution would not exist today. The evil would of itself no longer exist. From our individual cultivation point of view, if one gets rid of his fundamental attachment, his tribulations will become less and less and the environment around him will become better and better.
Many of our practitioners have attachments that Master hasn't mentioned yet: pursuit of fame, attachment of doing things, heart of doing big things, pursuit of blessings, pursuit of consummation, pursuit of accumulation of merit and virtues...... And some practitioners still try to hide those attachments and find excuses not to get rid of them.
In "Towards Consummation", Master said:
"Do you know that one of the biggest excuses the old evil forces use at present to persecute Dafa is that your fundamental attachments remain concealed? So in order to identify those people, the tribulations have been made more severe."
For all those years of persecution by the old forces, our losses have been great. Some practitioners have been persecuted to death, some are detained, some are sentenced, some become destitute and homeless, some lose jobs and families.
Fa-rectification has reached this stage, the evil forces have become powerless. But some of our practitioners have still been arrested and persecuted. Practitioners wrote articles and put forward their analysis of why the persecution happened - it was because practitioners had pursuit, attachment of showing off, attachment of doing things... The lessons were huge and the losses were big. We have cultivated up to today yet we are not able to recognize the attachment of pursuit which is hidden down deep inside us. Failing to recognize the heart of pursuit is a demonstration of irresponsibility to cultivation, to Dafa and to oneself. It must be that our main consciousness was unclear and controlled by demons so we entered the net cast by the demons. When this practitioner was arrested and pushed into the police car, she felt that her body in another dimension entered into a big cloth bag and she heard a voice maliciously said to her: "We've been waiting for you to come!"
Master repeatedly mentioned in Zhuan Falun that we should discard the attachment of pursuit. Now the Fa-rectification has come to the stage to completely dissolve and clear the old forces and the meddling deities in the religious circles that interfere the Fa-rectification. Only when we rectify ourselves can we completely clear away and dissolve the evil old forces and the stronger can our righteous thoughts become when we are sending forth righteous thoughts. There is an old saying which goes like: "Do good things without caring about the rewards", which means people do good deeds but seek no rewards. In cultivation we should do more like "gain naturally with no pursuit" and "the more we pursue the less we get". So we should take this matter seriously and let go of pursuit. It is a matter of whether we are responsible to our cultivation and to our own life. We should no longer allow the evil to continue its persecution. We should get rid of every heart of pursuit and not provide any elements for the evil to persecute us, especially those of us who handle Dafa materials. Dafa practitioners have different responsibilities and have different attachments. The evil hence uses different methods and ways to persecute us and persecutes us to a different extent. Their purpose is to cause us to fail in our cultivation. So we should really cultivate ourselves and clear away evil. We shouldn't wait for other practitioners to point it out for us, and when they do point it out to us, we must not be reluctant to let it go. This is a very serious matter.
The above is just my understanding and I put it forward to share with practitioners.