(Minghui.org) After reading the Minghui Editorial “Giving Speeches Amounts to Disrupting the Fa” ( http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2013/5/8/139268.html ), I remembered a sharing meeting I attended a few years ago.
It was in 2009 in a city in southern China. I went with local practitioners to a meeting that was attended by about 30 Dafa practitioners. I was a bit surprised by the size of it and felt rather excited.
However, I was really shocked later on by the form and content of the meeting. First of all, the organizers of the event suggested that we burn incense. When I saw that there were so many people in a small room with the door closed and only one window slightly open, I advised against it, as it would make the air in the room more stuffy. To my surprise, the few practitioners who organized the activity got very angry and said I was there to interfere with what they were doing. After some discussion, it was decided that we would have the sharing meeting while burning the incense.
The meeting mostly consisted of a female practitioner talking about how she clarified the facts in a labor camp and how she managed to get out of it within a short period of a few months. When she finished, a male practitioner continued and talked basically about his persecution experience in the labor camp. While he was talking, a few others also shared bits and pieces, but nothing of any importance. At that time I felt it was really unnecessary to hold a meeting for such sharing.
Of course it was necessary for the main speaker to share the precious experience of how Dafa disciples held strong righteous thoughts and acted righteously in the detention center, but I felt it was inappropriate to organize a meeting especially for such sharing, because Dafa disciples should not have been put into the detention in the first place. Even though some practitioners were sent there and they clarified the facts to people, it was Master who turned the situation around and made use of the persecution. To organize such a meeting to tell others how well one did in detention gives people the feeling that one should be prepared for being sent to a detention center. Dafa disciples should not be in those places in the first place. For Dafa disciples who live a normal life and still enjoy personal freedom, they should pay more attention to how to avoid being persecuted and how to effectively clarify the facts to people safely. The female practitioner did not look within to check her own problems and understand why she was arrested in the first place and only talked about how well she did in detention. It was said that she had been invited to give many speeches already before our meeting. In retrospect, she could have written a sharing article about her experience, and there was really no need to organize so many practitioners to attend such meetings.
What surprised me even more was that many practitioners who went to the meeting had little awareness of safety. They took their mobile phones with them and left them on outside the meeting room. While the meeting was going on, the phones kept ringing one after another. I could not believe what I was seeing: It was really dangerous!
I left the meeting a bit early as I saw it unnecessary and not safe either. Not long after the sharing meeting, about two or three months later, the main speaker was said to have been arrested again, and one of the main organizers of the meeting, a female practitioner, was also arrested together with another female practitioner. Their arrests were not because of the meeting, but had some thing to do with their impetuous state of mind and their lack of safety awareness.
I'm sharing this for the purpose of encouraging practitioners in China to become more rational and mature. From the standpoint of safety, it is not advisable to organize sharing meetings with many people attending while the persecution is still going on. Obviously such activities are irrational with little consideration given to safety. From the sharing perspective, if one truly has some good experience and truly wants to help other practitioners, he/she can share their experience through other channels without organizing such large meetings. The Minghui website provides us the best platform for sharing on the Internet. Either as individuals or a group of practitioners, if you have good experience in Fa-rectification cultivation, you can submit an article and publish it on the Minghui website. It will immediately benefit countless practitioners. Isn't that much better than sharing it with just a few dozen practitioners at a time? This way time and resources will be saved and it is more effective for us to improve together.
Personally, I think those who are keen to go here and there to share their own notions instead of sharing their views on the Minghui website do not hold righteous thoughts, but are good at talking; they go around and share with those who are not cultivating solidly to satisfy their human attachments and think they are better than others. As for each of us genuine practitioners, we should be more rational and be able to distinguish what is righteous from what is not. Of course there are some projects we run in secret to avoid persecution and evil interference and they need to be discussed in person. But as they are secret, there is no need to call a big group of people to share and discuss. Such things are quite easy to distinguish.
The above are only some personal thoughts. Please kindly point out anything improper.
