On Killing

Killing is a sensitive subject. We have a strict rule for practitioners: practitioners can’t kill. Whether it’s the Buddhist system, the Daoist system, or the Qimen practices, it doesn’t matter which discipline or which school it is, true cultivation disciplines are absolute about this: no killing. There’s no two ways about it. That’s because killing causes some huge problems afterwards. We’ve got to explain this to you in detail. In the original Buddhism, "killing" mainly referred to killing people, which is the most serious type. Later on, large creatures, large livestock, and other creatures that are pretty big were also considered serious. So why have they taken killing so seriously in the cultivation world? It’s been said in Buddhism that if lives that shouldn’t die are killed, they become lonely souls and roaming ghosts. And it was those beings that the old saying about "releasing souls from purgatory" referred to. If those beings aren’t freed from purgatory, they suffer from hunger and thirst, and it’s awfully tough for them. That’s what Buddhism used to teach.

We say, when a person does something bad to somebody, he’ll give that person a lot of virtue as compensation. That’s what we’re referring to when we talk about people taking things from others in normal situations. But suddenly ending a creature’s life, be it an animal or some other being, that generates quite a lot of karma. "Killing" used to refer mainly to killing people, and that generates a pretty big amount of karma. But killing an average creature isn’t minor, either, and it directly generates a lot of karma. A little bit of tribulation is arranged at different levels, and this is especially so for practitioners in the process of their cultivation, that’s all your own karma, they’re your own tribulations, and they’re placed for you at different levels to help you improve. As long as you improve your character you’ll be able to get through them. But if so much karma was suddenly piled on, how could you get through it? With your character, you really wouldn’t be able to handle it, and that might be the end of your cultivation.

We’ve found that when a person is born, many, many him are born at the same time within a certain range of the space of this universe. They look the same, have the same name, and do things that are more or less the same. So, they can be called part of his whole being. This causes a problem, then: if one of the beings (and this goes for other large animals’ beings, too) dies all of a sudden, and the him in all other dimensions haven’t finished the course of life that was originally arranged, and they still have a lot more years to live, then the person who died will fall into a situation where he has no resting place, and he’ll float around in the space of the universe. People used to believe that he’d be a lonely soul or roaming ghost, that he’d suffer from hunger and thirst, and it would be awfully tough. And maybe that’s true. We can say for sure, though, that we’ve seen he is in a terrible situation, and that he’ll keep waiting until the him in every dimension have finished their courses of life, and only then can they find their final resting place together. The longer the time, the more he suffers. And as he suffers more, the karma that causes his suffering will be continually piled onto the person who killed him. So think about it, how much karma would that put on you? That’s what we’ve seen with abilities.

There’s another thing we’ve seen. When a person is born, his whole life is already laid out there in a specific dimension. Meaning, where he is in his life, what he’s supposed to do, and so on—it’s all there. So who arranged his life? It’s obviously done by higher beings. For example, in our ordinary world, after he’s born, he’s in a certain family, he goes to a certain school, and when he grows up he works at a certain company, and through his work he establishes contact with people from every walk of life. That tells us that the overall design of the whole society is arranged like that. But, because that being suddenly died and isn’t following the original, specific arrangement anymore, and things have changed, that higher being won’t let whoever disrupted it off the hook. Let’s think about it: as cultivators, we need to cultivate up to high levels, but if that higher being doesn’t let him off, would you say he can still cultivate? Even some masters’ levels aren’t as high as the higher beings who arrange these things, so even his master runs into disaster, and he’s cast down. Then think about it, is that an ordinary problem? That’s why it’ll be really hard for someone to cultivate after he does that kind of thing.

Now out of all our students who cultivate Falun Dafa, there might be some people who’ve fought in times of war. Wars are a state of affairs brought about by major changes in the overall celestial phenomena. You were only one small part of those affairs. If nobody made a move under changes in the celestial phenomena, it wouldn’t bring about that state of affairs in the ordinary world, and it wouldn’t be called a change in the celestial phenomena. Those things change based on larger changes, so you can’t be held totally accountable for that thing. What we’re talking about here is the karma that’s brought about when you insist on doing bad things to benefit yourself, or to get ahead, or when something of yours is on the line. So when it comes to changes that affect the entire, large space, and major changes that involve the state of society, those aren’t your fault.

Killing will generate a lot of karma. So some people are thinking, "So I’m not allowed to kill things now, but I do the cooking for my family. If I don’t kill things what’s my family gonna eat?" I’m not going to get into the specifics of that. I’m teaching the Law to practitioners—it’s not like I’m just randomly telling ordinary people how to live their lives. When it comes to specific things, just evaluate them based on the Great Law, and do what you think is best. Ordinary people can do whatever they want, that’s ordinary people’s business. There’s no way everybody can truly cultivate. But practitioners should set their sights on high standards, so these are requirements set for practitioners.

Human beings and animals aren’t the only ones with life in them, plants have it too. All matter appears in the form of life in other dimensions. When your Third Eye reaches the Law Vision level, you’ll discover that stones, walls, or whatever will all talk to you and greet you. Now maybe some of you are wondering, "Then the grains and vegetables we eat all have life in them… And what should we do when flies and mosquitoes get into our homes? In summer they bite us and it doesn’t feel good, so we’ll have to just watch them park there and bite us? We’ll have to just watch flies land on our food, since we can’t swat them? That’s gross." I can tell you that we shouldn’t just kill things on a whim or without a reason, but we can’t be like overcautious goodie-goodies either, and always focus on those petty things, like being so afraid of stepping on ants that we hop all over the place when we walk. I’d say it would be so tiring for you to live that way. Wouldn’t that be another attachment? If you jumped around when you walked, sure, maybe you wouldn’t crush any ants, but there’d still be a lot of microorganisms that you’d step on and kill. At the microcosmic level there are tons of smaller beings, like fungi and bacteria, and maybe you stepped on them and killed a bunch. Then we might as well just call it quits, right? We aren’t trying to be that kind of person. We couldn’t cultivate like that. We should focus on the big picture and cultivate openly and with dignity.

We human beings should have the right to sustain our lives. So our living environment has to meet the needs of human living. We can’t intentionally harm anything, but we can’t be too restricted by those trivial things, either. For example, the vegetables and grains people grow all have life in them, but we can’t stop eating and drinking just because of that. How would you be able to practice then? We should look at the big picture. For example, if you’re walking and some ants and insects run under your feet and get stepped on and killed, then maybe they were supposed to die, since you didn’t harm them intentionally. There’s the issue of ecological balance among organisms and microorganisms, and when there are too many of them they’ll spread unchecked. We talk about cultivating openly and with dignity. When there are flies and mosquitoes in our homes we can drive them out and install screens to keep them from getting in. But if you can’t drive them out sometimes, it’s okay to kill them. If they bite people and harm people in people’s residences, of course we should drive them out. And when they can’t be driven out, we can’t just watch them bite people there. You’re a practitioner so it’s not a problem for you, you’re immune to them. But your family members don’t practice, they’re ordinary people, so there’s a concern about getting a contagious disease. So you can’t just watch them bite your kid’s face and not do anything about it.

I’ll give you an example. There was a story about Shakyamuni during his early years. One day in the forest Shakyamuni wanted to take a bath, so he asked his disciple to clean the bathtub. His disciple went there and saw that the bathtub was covered with bugs, and that if he cleaned it the bugs would be killed. The disciple came back to tell Shakyamuni that the bathtub was covered with bugs. Without looking at him, Shakyamuni said, "Go clean the bathtub." The disciple went to the bathtub and found that he didn’t know where to begin, since the bugs would be killed if he started cleaning it. He circled around it once and headed back, and asked Shakyamuni, "Venerable teacher, the bathtub is covered with bugs. If I clean it I’ll be killing them." Shakyamuni took a glance at him and said, "What I asked you to clean was the bathtub." The disciple suddenly got it and cleaned the bathtub right away. That illustrates a point: we can’t stop taking baths because of insects, and we can’t look for other places to live just because of mosquitoes, just as we can’t tie up our necks and stop eating and drinking because grains and vegetables have life in them. That’s not the idea. We should keep these things in perspective and cultivate openly and with dignity. It’s fine as long as we don’t harm living things on purpose. At the same time, human beings need to have their living spaces and living conditions, and these need to be maintained and protected. Human beings need to sustain their lives and live normally.

Some fake qigong masters used to say that it’s alright to kill on the first and the fifteenth of the lunar month, and some even said that it’s alright to kill two-legged animals, as if two-legged animals aren’t alive. If killing on the first and the fifteenth doesn’t count as killing, what would you call it then, digging dirt? You can tell that some qigong masters are fake just by their words and actions, by what they say and what they want. Usually the qigong masters who say those things and do those things are possessed. Just look at the way those qigong masters who are possessed by fox spirits eat chicken—they wolf it down and don’t even want to spit out the bones.

Killing doesn’t just generate a serious amount of karma, it also has to do with the question of compassion. Shouldn’t we cultivators have compassion? When our compassion comes out we’ll probably see that all sentient beings are suffering, that everyone is suffering. You’ll come to see that.

On Eating Meat

Eating meat is another sensitive subject, but eating meat isn’t killing. You’ve studied the Law for quite a while now, but we haven’t asked you to stay away from meat. As soon as you walk into a lot of qigong masters’ classes they’ll tell you that you can’t eat meat anymore. You might think, "Just like that I’m not allowed to eat meat? You’ve caught me off guard." Maybe what’s cooked at your house today is chicken or fish, and it smells pretty good. But you wouldn’t be allowed to eat it. Religious cultivation is the same—they forbid eating meat. That’s also taught in the usual Buddhist practices and in some Daoist practices—no eating meat. We aren’t asking you to do that here, but we do teach about this. And what do we say about it? Our way of practice is one where the Law refines the person, and in practices where the Law refines the person, certain states will arise from his gong and Law, so in the course of practicing, different cultivation states come about at different levels. So one day, or after I finish the class today, some people will experience this state: they can’t eat meat, and it smells bad to them, and if they eat it they’ll want to throw up. It’s not that you’re forced by somebody not to eat meat or that you hold back from eating it, it comes from within. When you reach that level your gong will take effect in a way that makes you unable to eat meat. You’ll throw up if you actually swallow it.

Our veteran students all know that this state will come up in Falun Dafa cultivation, and that different levels correspond to different cultivation states. There are some students who have a pretty strong desire to eat meat, they have a strong attachment to it, and they can usually eat a ton of meat. When other practitioners find meat unpleasant they don’t, and they can still eat it. So what’s done to have them get rid of that attachment? Their stomachs will ache if they eat meat, and won’t if they don’t. That will happen, and it means they shouldn’t eat meat. Will our practitioners have nothing to do with meat from today on? No, it’s not like that. So what do we make of it? When you can’t eat meat it truly comes from within. And what’s the purpose? In monastic cultivation when they force you not to eat meat, it’s actually for the same reason as our induced state of not being able to eat meat: it’s to get rid of that desire and attachment people have to meat.

Some people can hardly force down what’s on their plate if it doesn’t have meat in it. That’s an ordinary person’s desire. One morning, as I passed by the back entrance of Triumph Park in Changchun, three people came out of the entrance, talking loudly. One of them said, "What kind of qigong is that—it doesn’t let you eat meat! I’d rather lose ten years off my life than give up meat!" What an intense desire. Now think about it, shouldn’t that kind of desire be removed? It definitely should. What a person does in the cultivation process is remove his different desires and attachments. To spell it out for you, if the desire to eat meat isn’t removed, isn’t that an attachment that hasn’t been removed? Could you cultivate to Perfection? So as long as something is an attachment it has to go. But it’s not that you’ll never be able to eat meat again. Not letting you eat meat isn’t the point, the point is to not let you have that attachment. If you get rid of that attachment during the time when you can’t eat meat, you might be able to eat it again later on, it won’t smell bad, and when you eat it, it won’t taste that bad. So at that time you’ll be able to eat it, and it won’t be a problem.

When you’re able to eat it again, your attachment will be gone, and your desire for meat will be gone. But a big change will happen: when you eat meat again, it won’t be that tasty, and when your family cooks it you’ll eat along with them, and when your family doesn’t cook it you won’t miss it, and when you do eat it, it won’t taste really good anymore. That cultivation state will appear. But cultivating among ordinary people is so complicated. If your family always cooks meat, after a while you’ll think it tastes really good again, and the cycle will repeat itself. That cycle could even repeat itself a number of times while you’re cultivating, and all of a sudden you won’t be able to eat meat again. When you can’t eat it, don’t eat it—you really won’t be able to eat it, and if you eat it you’ll throw up. When you’re able to eat it, eat it. Just let it happen naturally. The point isn’t to eat meat or not to, what’s key is to get rid of that attachment.

You go pretty fast in our Falun Dafa discipline. As long as you improve your character, you’ll be able to break through each level quickly. Some people aren’t too attached to meat in the first place, so they don’t really care whether there’s meat or not. For those people it will pass after a week or two, and their attachment will be whittled away. For some people it lasts for a month, two months, three months, or maybe even half a year, and only in extremely special cases is it more than a year before they can eat meat again. That’s because meat is now a main part of the human diet. But full-time monastic cultivators still shouldn’t eat meat.

Let’s talk about how Buddhism looks at eating meat. The earliest, original Buddhism didn’t prohibit eating meat. Back then, when Shakyamuni led his disciples in cultivating diligently in the forest, there definitely wasn’t any precept that banned meat. And why wasn’t there? Because when Shakyamuni taught his Law 2,500 years ago, society was backward, and some regions had agriculture while others didn’t, there weren’t many cultivated farmlands, forests were everywhere, and grain supplies were awfully tight. The people had just emerged from a primitive society and they lived mainly on hunting, so in a lot of regions they mainly ate meat. So to have his disciples give up human attachments as much as possible, Shakyamuni didn’t let them have any contact with things like money or material things, and he led them in begging for food and alms. They ate whatever other people gave them, since as cultivators they couldn’t choose their food. And the food that people gave them probably would have included meat.

Some foods actually were dubbed taboo back in the original Buddhism. So taboo foods go back to the original Buddhism, but nowadays people say meat is what’s meant by "taboo food." But the truth is, taboo food back then didn’t mean meat. It was about things like onions, ginger, and garlic. And why did they call those things taboo? Even among monks there aren’t many people who can explain it today, and that’s because a lot of them don’t truly cultivate, and there’s a lot they don’t know. What Shakyamuni taught was called "Precept, Concentration, Wisdom." "Precept" was about doing away with all ordinary people’s desires. "Concentration" was about cultivators cultivating with utter calm of mind while meditating, and being in total stillness. So anything that interfered with that, or that blocked their cultivating, was considered serious interference. And if somebody ate onions, ginger, or garlic, they’d give off a strong odor. Back then monks meditated in forests or caves in groups of seven or eight people in a circle. If somebody ate those things, it would produce a strong, pungent odor that would affect other people’s meditation and their ability to become still inside, so it would seriously interfere with other people’s practice. That’s why there was that precept. They considered those foods taboo and made them off limits. A lot of beings that are developed from the human body through cultivation get really bothered by such foul odors. Onions, ginger, and garlic can also stimulate a person’s desires, and when you eat a lot of them you can get hooked. That’s why they were considered taboo.

In the past, a lot of monks who’d cultivated to very high levels and who were Unlocked, or semi-Unlocked, also knew that in the cultivation process precepts don’t matter, that when a person gets rid of the attachment it turns out that physical item doesn’t have any effect, and that what really interferes with a person is the attachment. So past generations of high-level monks also saw that the question of eating meat isn’t what’s key. They knew that what’s key is whether he can get rid of the attachment, and that if there’s no attachment it doesn’t matter what a person fills his stomach with, anything’s fine. A lot of people are used to that, since that’s how they’ve been cultivating in monasteries all this time. And it’s no longer just a precept, now it’s a chartered rule in monasteries, so they definitely can’t eat meat, and people are used to cultivating like that. Let’s talk about monk Jigong, for example. They’ve really put him in the spotlight in literature, since monks are supposed to abstain from meat but he went and ate it. They’ve made him out to be unique. But the truth is, it’s just that after Jigong was driven out of Lingyin Monastery food naturally became a real problem for him, and his survival was at stake. He’d eat whatever he could get his hands on to fill his belly. He just wanted to fill his belly and he wasn’t attached to any specific food, so it didn’t matter. He’d cultivated to that point, so he understood that truth. Jigong actually only ate meat a few times, maybe once or twice. As soon as somebody mentions monks eating meat, writers get interested, since the more sensational the subject, the more people want to read about it. Art needs to be larger than life, as they say, so they publicized it. The truth is, when you really get rid of that attachment it doesn’t matter what you fill your belly with.

In areas of Southeast Asia and Southern China, especially in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces, some lay Buddhists don’t say they cultivate Buddhahood—it’s as if the phrase "cultivate Buddhahood" was old-fashioned. But they say they’re vegetarian, or that they don’t eat meat. What they mean is that they’re vegetarian, and by virtue of that they’re cultivating Buddhahood. They take cultivating Buddhahood to be something that simple. You’re saying you can cultivate into a Buddha just by being vegetarian? You know, that’s only one kind of attachment people have, it’s just one desire. So you’re only getting rid of that attachment, that one attachment. But you also need to get rid of jealousy, competitiveness, being overly happy, showing off—all kinds of attachments. People have so many attachments. You have to get rid of all your attachments and every kind of desire, and only then can you cultivate to Perfection. So just by getting rid of that attachment to eating meat, you can cultivate into a Buddha? That’s not the right idea.

So when it comes to eating, it’s not right to be attached to any kind of food, not just meat. Some people say, "I just like to eat this." Well, that’s another desire. A cultivator doesn’t have that kind of attachment when he gets to a certain point. Of course, we’re teaching a high-level Law and what we’re teaching is based on and integrates different levels. There’s no way to achieve that all at once. If there’s a certain food you just want to eat, when you truly cultivate to the point when that attachment should go, you won’t be able to eat it, and when you do eat it, it won’t taste right. Who knows what it’ll taste like. Back when I used to put in time at a company, the company’s cafeteria was always losing money. Later on it went belly up, so everybody brought their own lunches. It was a pretty big hassle hustling and bustling to prepare food in the morning before going off to work. Sometimes I’d buy two steamed buns and a piece of tofu in soy sauce. You’d think such light things would be alright, but it still wasn’t okay to eat them all the time—that attachment had to go. As soon as I saw tofu my stomach would go sour and I wouldn’t be able to eat it. It was to keep me from getting attached. Of course, that only happens when your cultivation hits a certain point. It doesn’t happen at the beginning.

Buddhists make a point of not drinking alcohol. Ever seen a Buddha holding a wine jug? Never. I’ve said that if you can’t eat meat, it won’t be a problem to eat it again later on after you get rid of that attachment by cultivating among ordinary people. But after you quit drinking alcohol you shouldn’t drink again. Don’t practitioners have gong in their bodies? Gong of every kind and shape. Some abilities manifest at the surface of your body, and they’re all pure. As soon as you drink alcohol, "whoosh—" they leave your body instantly. At that time you’ll have nothing on your body, they can’t stand that smell. Drinking is a nasty habit because it can really throw off your reasoning. So why do some Great Dao practitioners drink in their cultivation? Because they aren’t cultivating their master souls, and they drink to numb their master souls.

Some people are so hooked on alcohol that they value it as much as their lives, some others are fond of alcohol, and others have drunk so much they’ve gotten alcohol poisoning. If there’s no alcohol they don’t even want to eat, and they can’t get by without a drink. We practitioners shouldn’t be like that. Drinking is definitely addictive, it’s a desire. Alcohol stimulates a person’s addictive nerves, and the more a person drinks, the worse his addiction. You’re a practitioner, so let’s think about it, shouldn’t you get rid of that attachment? That attachment has to go. Some people might be thinking, "There’s no way. I meet with people all the time," or, "I do public relations, and I meet with guests all the time. It’s not easy to get things done without a drink." I’d say that’s not necessarily true. Usually when people do business, especially when they do business with or deal with foreigners, you might ask for a soft drink, he might ask for mineral water, while another person might want a beer. Nobody’s about to pour it down your throat or anything—you pick your own drink, and drink whatever amount you want. And there’s even less of that among well-educated people. That’s usually how it is.

Smoking is another attachment. Some people say that smoking can give them a lift. I’d say you’re only fooling yourself, really. Some people have a cigarette when they’re tired from working or writing something and want to take a break. They think they’re more alert after smoking. But that’s not how it really works. It’s just because they had that moment’s rest. People’s minds can give them the wrong impression and create a kind of illusion. So afterwards a concept really forms, and a wrong impression develops, so that you have the sense smoking gave you a lift. But it didn’t at all, it doesn’t have that effect. Smoking doesn’t do the body one bit of good. If a person has smoked for a long time, when a doctor does an autopsy he’ll find that his trachea is all black, and even the insides of his lungs are black.

Aren’t we practitioners trying to purify our bodies? We want to keep purifying our bodies, and keep moving up to higher levels. So what are you putting that in your body for? Isn’t that the opposite of what we’re trying to do? Besides, it’s another strong desire. Some people do know it’s bad, but they just can’t quit. I can tell you that it’s actually because they don’t have the right thoughts guiding them, so it’s not easy for them to just up and quit. See yourself as a cultivator, and treat it as an attachment today and try to quit, see if you can quit. If you really want to cultivate I urge you to quit smoking today, and I guarantee you can quit. In the field of this class nobody thinks of smoking. If you want to quit, I guarantee you can quit, and when you next pick up a cigarette it won’t taste right. Reading this talk in the book has the same effect. Of course, if you’re not interested in cultivating, then that’s fine, and we won’t stop you, but if you do want to be a cultivator I think you’d better quit. I’ve given an example before: have you ever seen a Buddha or a Dao sitting there with a cigarette dangling from his mouth? How laughable! Now that you’re a cultivator, what is it you’re trying to achieve? Shouldn’t you quit? That’s why I’m saying that if you want to cultivate you’d better quit. It harms your body, and it’s a desire—it couldn’t be further from what we cultivators have to do.

Jealousy

When I’m teaching the Law I often talk about jealousy. And why is that? Because jealousy is really intense in China, so intense it’s become natural, and people can’t sense it in themselves anymore. So why are Chinese people so intensely jealous? There’s a reason. Chinese people were strongly influenced by Confucianism in the past, and their personality is pretty introverted. When they’re angry it doesn’t show, and when they’re happy it doesn’t show. They make a point of polite restraint and enduring things. Since it’s been so deeply ingrained, our people have developed a very introverted personality overall. Of course, there’s something good about this, because a person like that is smart but unassuming. But it has its drawbacks, and it can bring about bad situations. Here in the Age of the Law’s End especially, the negative side of it is even more obvious: it can make people’s jealousy worse. If somebody has good news and lets other people know, they’ll get incredibly jealous right away. If somebody gets an award at his company or somewhere else, or if he gets something good, he won’t dare say a word about it because other people will get upset when they hear about it. Westerners call this "Oriental jealousy" or "Asian jealousy." The whole Asian region has been strongly influenced by Chinese Confucianism, and this jealousy is everywhere to some degree, but only in our China is it so intense.

This is somewhat related to the absolute egalitarianism that we used to practice. "If the sky falls, everybody dies together, after all; everybody should share equally in anything good; when there’s a pay hike, everybody should be entitled to the same share." The logic seems right—everybody is being treated the same. But how could they be the same? They do different jobs, and they fulfill their responsibilities to different extents. You see, there’s a law in this universe of ours, called, "no loss, no gain." To gain something, you have to lose something. Ordinary people say, "No work, no gain. More work, more gain. Less work, less gain," and that a person who makes more sacrifices should gain more. Back when absolute egalitarianism was practiced, they said that people are all born the same, and that it’s things after you’re born that change you. I’d say that idea is too absolute, and anything so absolute is wrong. Why are some people born male and others female? And why are there differences in their looks? Some people are born with sickness or disfigured, so they’re not all the same. When we look at it from a higher level, a person’s whole life is laid out there in another dimension, so could people be the same? Everybody wants to be equal, but if something isn’t part of your life, how could you be equal? People aren’t the same.

The people in Western countries are more extroverted, and when they’re happy it shows, just as when they’re angry it shows. That has its pros and cons, like a lack of ability to endure. These two personalities stem from different values, and they lead to different results when people do things. With Chinese people, when a person is praised by his superior or given something good, other people get upset. When a person gets a larger bonus, he’ll quietly slip it into his pocket and not let anybody know. Nowadays it’s even hard if you’re Employee of the Month—"You’re Employee of the Month and you’re so good at your job, you should come to work early and go home late. Why don’t you do all this work? You’re doing so well, and we’re not good enough..." People use biting sarcasm. Even being a good person is hard.

It’s totally different outside China. For example, a person’s boss thinks he did good work today, so he gives him a little bit of money as a thank you note. He excitedly counts the bills one by one in front of everyone, "Wow, the boss gave me so much money today." He happily tells other people about it as he thumbs through the bills one by one, and there aren’t any consequences. In China when somebody gets a bonus, even the boss tells him to quickly tuck it away and not let anybody see it. Outside of China, when a kid gets a hundred in school, he runs home shouting with joy, "I got a hundred today! I got a hundred!" He runs all the way home from school. A neighbor opens his door and yells to him, "Attaboy Tom!" Another person opens her window, "Hey Jack, great job!" If this happened in China it’d be pretty bad. "I got a hundred! I got a hundred!" The kid runs home from school yelling. Before one of his neighbors opens his door, he begins to fume in his home, "What’s the big deal? It’s just a hundred. What’s he got to brag about! Who hasn’t gotten a hundred before?" These two different ways of thinking bring about different results. So that can stir up jealousy, and people then get upset when something good happens to other people, instead of being happy for them. That’s what happens.

Some years ago absolute egalitarianism was practiced, and it really messed up people’s thinking and values. I’ll give you a specific example. Let’s say there’s this person who thinks nobody at his company is as good as he is, and that he’s good at whatever he does. He thinks he’s just something else. He thinks to himself, "If they ask me to be factory director or manager, I can do it. I could even handle a higher position. I think I could even be Premier." Maybe his boss says he’s really capable and good at whatever he does. And maybe his coworkers say this guy is really capable, too, that he knows his stuff, and that he’s got talent. But there’s somebody in his work team or who shares an office with him, and this guy can’t do anything well or can’t ever come through, and one day this incompetent guy gets promoted to a supervisory position. He isn’t promoted, and that guy even becomes his boss. So he thinks it’s just so unfair and he can’t get over it. He goes around to everyone trying to do something about it, fuming and burning with jealousy.

Let me tell you this truth, a truth ordinary people can’t grasp: maybe you think you’re good at everything, but it’s not in your destiny, while that person isn’t good at anything but it is in his destiny, so that guy gets the managerial position. We don’t worry about what ordinary people think, because those are just ordinary thoughts. In the eyes of higher beings, society just develops according to the specified patterns of development. So what a person does in his life isn’t arranged based on his talents. Buddhism talks about karmic retribution, and that things are arranged according to your karma, so no matter how capable you are, if you don’t have virtue you might not have anything in this life. You think that somebody isn’t good at anything, but maybe he has a lot of virtue, so he becomes a high-ranking official or gets rich. Ordinary people can’t see it, so they always think they should do what they’re fit to and supposed to do. So they fight tooth and nail for things all their lives, they feel badly hurt, they think life is hard and tiring, and they always think things are unfair and they can’t get over them. They can’t enjoy their food, they don’t sleep well, and they get really discouraged and hopeless, and by the time they’re old they’ve ruined their bodies from head to toe, and all kinds of health problems come along.

So we cultivators should do that even less. We cultivators always let things happen naturally. If something is yours, nobody will take it away, and if something isn’t yours, you won’t be able to get it even by fighting for it. Of course, that’s not absolute. If it were that absolute, there wouldn’t be a question of people doing wrong. So in other words, there could be some unstable factors. But you’re a practitioner, so under normal circumstances you are looked after by your teacher’s Law Bodies. If other people want to take your things they won’t be able to budge them. So that’s why we just let things happen naturally. Sometimes you think that something is yours, and other people tell you it is, when in fact it’s not. So maybe you think it’s yours but it turns out it’s not. That will reveal whether you’re able to let it go. If you can’t let it go it’s an attachment. That method has to be used to get rid of your attachment to personal gain—that’s the idea. Ordinary people can’t grasp this truth, so they compete and fight when there’s something to gain at stake.

Jealousy is incredibly strong among ordinary people, and it’s always been really evident in cultivation circles, too. People who do different qigong practices get all in a huff over the idea of somebody else being good. They go off about such-and-such practice being good, and go on about such-and-such one being bad—they make all kinds of comments. As I see it, they’re all at the level of healing and fitness. Most of those practices that fight with each other are brought about by spirit possession and they’re a mess, and they don’t even care about character. Suppose someone has practiced for over 20 years but hasn’t had any abilities come out, while another person gets them soon after he starts. He’ll think it’s unfair, and he won’t be able to stand it. "I’ve practiced for over 20 years but I haven’t developed any abilities, and now he’s got them—what abilities has he got?" He’ll be furious. "He’s possessed, he’s got qigong psychosis!" Or when a qigong master holds a class, some people sit there in a huff, "Pfff, what kind of qigong master is he? I don’t want to listen to any of the stuff he talks about." Sure, maybe that qigong master doesn’t talk as well as he does, but what that qigong master talks about are the things from his own practice. That person will go and learn anything, and he’s got a big old pile of completion certificates. He’ll attend any qigong master’s class, and sure, he knows a lot—he knows more than that qigong master. But what’s the use? Those are all just about healing and fitness. The more he’s filled with them, the more jumbled and complicated his messages get and the harder it is for him to cultivate, it’s just one big mess. Real cultivation teaches you to commit to one practice, and you don’t go off course at all. But this problem also shows up among true cultivators who don’t admit that other people are good and don’t get rid of their competitiveness. They’re likely to get jealous.

Here’s a story for you. In Canonization of the Gods, Shen Gongbao thinks that Jiang Ziya is old and inept. Yet Honorable Divine of the Origin asks Jiang Ziya to grant titles to the Gods. Then Shen Gongbao thinks it’s unfair, and he can’t come to terms with it. "Why was he asked to grant titles to the Gods? See how powerful I, Shen Gongbao, am—I can put my head back on my shoulders after it’s cut off. Why wasn’t I asked to grant titles to the Gods?" He gets incredibly jealous, and makes trouble for Jiang Ziya all the time.

In Shakyamuni’s time the original Buddhism did involve abilities, but nowadays nobody in Buddhism dares to talk about them. If you talk about abilities they’ll say you’ve gone crazy. "What abilities?" They don’t acknowledge them at all. And why don’t they? Monks these days don’t have a clue. Shakyamuni had ten great disciples, and he said Maudgalyaayana was number one in divine powers. Shakyamuni also had female disciples, and one of them, named Uppalavanna, was number one in divine powers. When Buddhism spread to China it was the same, with each generation having lots of accomplished monks, and when Bodhidharma came to China he rode on a reed to cross the river. But as time has gone by, divine powers have been rejected more and more. The main reason is that people such as senior monks, presiding monks, and abbots in monasteries don’t necessarily have a great base. Sure they’re abbots or senior monks, but those are just ordinary people’s positions. They’re still cultivating, too, only they do it full-time, while you cultivate at home part-time. You just have to cultivate your mind, whether you can succeed in cultivation or not. That goes for everyone, and it won’t work even if you fall short just a bit. But a junior monk who cooks the meals doesn’t necessarily have a small base. The more hardship the junior monk goes through, the easier it is for him to become Unlocked. While the more comfort the senior monks have, the harder it is for them to become Unlocked, since there’s the issue of transforming karma. The junior monk always works his fingers to the bone and exhausts himself, so he pays off his karma quickly and he reaches Enlightenment quickly. And maybe one day he’s suddenly Unlocked. With his Unlocking, or Enlightenment, or his semi-Enlightenment, his divine powers come out. All the monks in his monastery come to consult him, and everybody is impressed by him. But then the abbot can’t take it. "How am I supposed to be the abbot now? What Enlightenment? He’s gone crazy. Get him out of here!" And they drive him out of the monastery. In the course of time, it’s come to be that nobody in our Han region who practices Buddhism dares to talk about abilities. Look at how powerful Jigong was—he moved tree trunks from Emei Mountain and threw those logs out of the well one after another. But in the end he was thrown out of Lingyin Temple just the same.

Jealousy is very serious, because it directly impacts whether we can cultivate to Perfection. If jealousy isn’t eliminated, all the thoughts you’ve cultivated become fragile. There’s a rule: a person who doesn’t get rid of jealousy while cultivating cannot achieve a True Fruition—he definitely won’t achieve a True Fruition. Maybe you’ve heard people say that Buddha Amitabha mentioned going to Heaven with karma. But that won’t happen if you don’t get rid of jealousy. You could fall a little short in some other way, go to Heaven with a little karma, and cultivate further. That’s possible. But that’s definitely not possible if you don’t get rid of your jealousy. Today I’m telling practitioners: stop turning a blind eye to your problem. Your goal is to cultivate up to higher levels, so you have to get rid of jealousy. That’s why I’ve singled it out.

On Healing

I’m bringing up the topic of healing, but it’s not to teach you to heal. No true cultivator of Falun Dafa may heal people. As soon as you do healing, my Law Bodies will take back all the Falun Dafa things that your body carries. Why do we take this so seriously? Because it’s something that damages Dafa. Not only does it harm your own health, but some people just itch to do it again once they’ve healed something, and they’ll grab whoever they see to treat them and show off. Isn’t that an attachment? It will have a serious impact on your cultivation.

A lot of fake qigong masters have capitalized on the desire to heal people that ordinary people get after they learn qigong. They go and teach you those things and claim that sending out qi can heal. Isn’t that a joke? Yours is qi, and his is qi—and when you send out qi it’s going to heal him? Maybe his qi will actually overpower yours! One qi can’t suppress another. When a person develops gong in high-level cultivation, what he emits is high-energy matter, which can definitely heal and suppress illness, and it can have a restraining effect. But it can’t remove it from its root. So to truly heal something, a person needs to have abilities if he’s going to completely heal it. There’s a specific ability for healing each health problem. I can tell you that there are over 1,000 kinds of abilities just for healing health problems—however many kinds of ailments there are, that’s how many abilities there are for healing them. If you don’t have those abilities, it doesn’t matter what fancy tricks you do, it still won’t do the job.

Some people have made a mess of the cultivation world in recent years. Of the qigong masters who came to the public to truly heal people and keep them fit, or of those qigong masters who came to the public to pave the way at the beginning, who taught people to do healing? All of them either healed you themselves or taught you how to cultivate or tone up your own body, they’d teach you a set of exercises, and then you could heal yourself by exercising on your own. Later on, fake qigong masters came to the public and made a foul mess of things. Anyone who wants to heal people is just asking to get possessed, no question about it. In that environment back then there were some qigong masters who did healing, but that just happened to match the celestial phenomena back then. But it isn’t an ordinary person’s skill, and that couldn’t last forever. It resulted from changes in the celestial phenomena at the time, it was the product of that time period. Later on, when people got into solely teaching others to do healing they were totally out of line. Could an ordinary person heal somebody after learning it for just three to five days? Some of those people claim, "I can heal this illness, that illness..." I’m telling you, all of those people are possessed. Do they know what’s latched on their backs? They’re possessed, but they don’t sense it, and they don’t know it. They think it’s pretty good and that they’ve got special abilities.

Real qigong masters have to go through years of grueling cultivation to achieve that. Then think about it, when you give somebody a treatment do you have that kind of powerful ability to eliminate that karma? Have you ever received any true instruction? Can you really heal somebody after just a couple days of learning? Can you heal with your ordinary person’s hands? All the same, those fake qigong masters have taken advantage of your weaknesses. They’ve taken advantage of people’s attachments. "Aren’t you trying to heal people?—Okay!" So they hold treatment classes specifically to teach you healing techniques, like that qi-needle stuff, that light therapy stuff, that discharging and supplementing stuff, that acupressure stuff, that so-called grabbing method—they’ve got lots of fancy names for that stuff. They’re just trying to get their hands on your money.

Let’s talk about the grabbing method. Here’s what we’ve seen. Why do people have health problems? The root cause of their problem and all their misfortune is karma, that black-matter karmic field. It’s yin in nature, and it’s something bad. Those bad beings are also yin in nature, they’re all black, and that’s why they can come onto the body—the environment suits them. That’s the root cause of people’s health problems, it’s the chief source of them. Of course, there are two other forms. One of them is really, really small, high-density tiny beings. They’re something like a cluster of karma. The other is as if it’s transported through a conduit, but it’s pretty rare, and all of it is accumulated through the generations. That also happens.

Let’s just talk about what’s most common. When a person has a tumor somewhere, an infection somewhere, a bone spur somewhere, or whatever, in another dimension there’s a being crouching at that place. In a deep dimension there’s a being there. A typical qigong master can’t see that, because the usual supernatural abilities can’t see it, and they can only see that the person has black qi in his body. Wherever there’s black qi there’s illness—they’re right about that. But, black qi is not the root cause of the problem. Instead, it’s a being in a deeper dimension, and it’s that being that produces the field. That’s why when people talk about expelling and purging black qi, you can go ahead and purge away!—it’ll regenerate in no time. Some beings are strong, and soon after it’s expelled they’ll drag it back. They can retrieve it themselves. Blindly treating away won’t do it.

People with supernatural abilities see black qi there, and they consider it pathogenic qi. What doctors of Chinese medicine see is the energy channels blocked there, that qi and blood are blocked, that the energy channels are congested. What doctors of Western medicine see is the symptoms of an ulcer, tumor, bone spur, inflammation, or whatnot—these are the forms it takes here in this dimension. After you remove that thing you’ll find that there’s nothing in the body over here. You’ll see that the slipped disc or bone spur is immediately healed after you remove that thing and wipe out that field. You can take another X-ray and there won’t even be a trace of the bone spur. The root cause was that thing which was at work.

Some people claim that you can heal people after three to five days, and they teach you the grabbing method. Show me your grab! Human beings are the weakest while that being is fierce, it controls your mind, plays you like a puppet on strings, and can even take your life easily. You say that you can grab it. How could you grab it? You can’t get a hold of it with your ordinary person’s hands. When you flail your hand around over there, it ignores you and it even laughs at you smugly. It thinks your grabbing aimlessly is pretty funny. But if you really did reach it, it would hurt your hand instantly, and that would be a real wound! I’ve seen people before whose hands had nothing physically wrong with them, and by any examination there wasn’t anything wrong with their bodies or wrong with their hands. But they just couldn’t lift their hands, and they dangled there, limp. I’ve come across people like that. Those bodies of theirs in other dimensions were injured, and that’s true paralysis. When that body of yours is injured of course you’re paralyzed. Some people have asked me, "Teacher, am I able to practice? I had a sterilization operation," or they say they had something removed. I tell them, "None of that matters. Your body in that other dimension hasn’t had an operation, and when you practice it’s that body that functions." That’s why I just said that when you try to grab it, you can’t touch it and it’ll ignore you. If you did touch it, it might damage your hand.

To support the country’s large-scale qigong events, I took some disciples with me to participate in the Asian Health Expos in Beijing. We stood out above the rest at both Expos. At the first Expo, our Falun Dafa was pronounced the "Star Qigong." At the second Expo, there was such a huge crowd at our booth we were swamped. There weren’t many people at other booths, but our booth area was packed. There were three waiting lines: there were so many people in the first line that by the end of the early morning all the slots for the first half of the day were gone; the people in the second line were waiting to register for afternoon treatments; and the people in the other line were waiting for my autograph. We don’t do healing, so why did we do that? It was to support the country’s large-scale qigong events, to contribute to that cause. That’s why we participated.

I divided my gong among the disciples who I brought along. Each of them got a share, and they were energy clusters composed of over 100 abilities. I sealed their hands, but still, some of them suffered bites to the hand that broke the skin, caused blisters, or made them bleed, and that even happened a lot. Those things are so fierce. You think you’d dare to touch them with your ordinary person’s hands? Besides, you couldn’t reach them—it won’t work without those abilities. That’s because in another dimension they know what you want to do, and they know it as soon as you think about it. When you try to grab them they’ll have already run off. The moment that patient steps out the door, it will get back on him instantly and his health problem will return. To subdue it you need an ability where you extend your hand and "Bam!" pin it there. After it’s pinned, we have another ability that used to be called the Great Soul-Catching Method, and that ability is even more powerful. It can pull out a person’s whole master soul, and instantly that person won’t be able to move. That ability targets specific things, and when we grabbed we specifically aimed at those things. You know how that Tathagata Buddha aimed the bowl in his hand at Monkey King, right, and you know how big he is, and still it shrunk him instantly. That’s what the ability can do. It doesn’t matter how large or how small the being is, in one fell swoop it’s caught in the hand, and right away it turns tiny.

Also, you can’t stick your hand into a patient’s flesh to grab it and bring it out. That would throw people’s thinking in the ordinary world into disarray, and there’s no way that’s allowed. You can’t do it even if you have the ability. The hand a person reaches in with is his hand in another dimension. Let’s say somebody has heart disease. When you move your hand toward the heart to grab, your hand in another dimension goes in and immediately snatches it. Then your outside hand grabs, and the two hands close together and then it’s in your hand. It’s so fierce, sometimes it moves in your hands and tries to drill into them, sometimes it bites, and sometimes it even screeches. It looks small while you cup it in your hands, but if you release it it’ll become pretty big. It’s not something that just anyone can have an effect on. Without those abilities you can’t do a thing to it—it’s not nearly as simple as we think.

Of course, that form of qigong treatment might be allowed to exist in the future. It was always around in the past. But a condition has to be met: the person must be a cultivator, and then he can do that out of compassion for a few good people while he is cultivating. But he can’t completely eliminate their karma, he doesn’t have enough benevolent might, so their tribulation is still there and it’s only the specific ailment that’s healed. An ordinary, lesser qigong master isn’t somebody who has attained the Dao in cultivation. He’s only able to postpone it for them, or maybe he transforms it—maybe he transforms it into other adversity. But he might not even know about the deferral process himself. If what his practice cultivates is the subordinate consciousness, then it’s done by his subordinate consciousness. The practitioners in certain practices might be pretty famous, but a lot of big-time qigong masters don’t have gong—their gong grows on the bodies of their subordinate souls. So in other words, that’s allowed during cultivation, because some people stay at that one level, and they practice for over a decade, or even several decades, without getting past that level, so their whole lives they’re giving treatments. Since they are at that level they’re allowed to do that. But disciples who cultivate in Falun Dafa absolutely cannot do healings. You can try reading this book to a sick person, and if he can accept its contents, it can heal him, but how effective it is depends on how much karma he has.

Hospital Treatments and Qigong Treatments

Let’s talk about how hospital treatments and qigong treatments are related. Some doctors of Western medicine don’t believe in qigong, and you could say that’s true for most of them. Their version of the story goes, "If qigong can heal people, what do we need hospitals for? Why don’t you just replace hospitals! Your qigong can heal people with bare hands and without injections, medication, or hospital stays, so why don’t you just come take over our hospitals?" Those ideas make no sense. Those people aren’t being rational. Some people don’t know what qigong is about. The fact is, qigong treatments can’t be like ordinary people’s healing methods—it’s not an ordinary person’s skill. It’s something higher. And are higher things allowed to disrupt the ordinary world on a large scale? A Buddha’s capabilities are just awesome—with the wave of a Buddha’s hand all of the human race’s sicknesses could vanish. Then why don’t any Buddhas do that, especially when there are so many of them? Why don’t they have mercy and heal you? Because that’s just how the ordinary world is, and birth, aging, sickness, and death are just a fact of life, they all have causes from the past and are karmic retribution. If you owe a debt you have to pay it off.

If you heal someone, it’s the same as violating that rule, as letting people do bad things and not pay for them. How could that be alright? People who are cultivating are allowed to treat patients out of compassion when they aren’t powerful enough to fully solve the problem. You’re allowed to do that because your compassion has come out. But if you were really able to solve that kind of problem, and solve it on a large scale, that wouldn’t be allowed. Then you’d be seriously damaging the way of things in the ordinary world, and that’s not allowed. That’s why replacing ordinary people’s hospitals with qigong flat out won’t do. It’s a higher Law.

If you went and started to put up qigong hospitals all over China, supposing that was allowed, and all the great qigong masters got involved, think about it, what would that look like? That’s not allowed, because people all maintain the way of things in the ordinary world. When qigong hospitals are put up, when qigong clinics, rehab centers, and health spas are put up, once those are put up, those qigong masters’ healing abilities drop dramatically, and the results of their treatments go downhill right away. Why? Because they’re doing ordinary people’s things. It has to be on par with the Law for ordinary people, it has to be at the same level as the normal human condition, and the effectiveness of treatments has to be the same as that of hospitals. So their treatments go downhill, and they start talking about how their treatments need several sessions. That’s usually how it goes.

Whether qigong hospitals are put up or not, nobody can deny that qigong can heal. Qigong has been spread in society for a while now, and a lot of people really have met their goal of getting healthy and fit through practicing it. Whether the ailment was postponed or shifted by a qigong master or however it was treated, whatever happened, that ailment isn’t there right now. So in other words, you can’t deny that qigong can heal. Most of the people who see qigong masters for treatments have unknown or hard-to-cure health problems. Hospitals can’t cure them so they go to qigong masters to try their luck, and lo and behold they’re cured. The people who manage to get cured at hospitals don’t see qigong masters. That’s how people looked at it, especially at the beginning. So qigong can heal, only it can’t be done like other things in the ordinary world. Large-scale disruption definitely isn’t allowed, but doing it on a small-scale, or doing it quietly and not making that big of an impact, that’s allowed, though it won’t completely heal the ailment, for sure. The best way for a person to heal himself is to do qigong exercises.

There are also some qigong masters who say that hospitals can’t heal people, and they go off about the effectiveness of hospital treatments today. How should we put it… Of course, there are all sorts of reasons for that. The main one, as I see it, is mankind’s poor moral standard, which leads to all kinds of bizarre diseases that hospitals can’t cure and that medicine can’t do anything for. And then there’s a lot of fake medicine. All this stems from the world’s degenerating to this degree, it’s people’s own doing. Nobody should blame others for it, though, since everybody has added fuel to the fire. That’s why everybody has hardships in cultivation.

Some health problems can’t be detected at the hospital, even though the person really does have something wrong. And some people’s problems are detected but they can’t identify them—they’re things that haven’t been seen before, and hospitals lump them all together as "modern diseases." Can hospitals heal people? Of course they can. If hospitals couldn’t heal, why would people believe in them and go there for treatments? Hospitals are able to heal, it’s just that their treatment methods are at ordinary people’s level while illness is beyond the ordinary, and some diseases are pretty serious. So hospitals say that diseases should be treated at the early stages, since once a disease gets too serious hospitals can’t cure it, and a high dosage of medicine will poison a person. The level of today’s medical treatments is just like that of our science and technology, they’re all at the level of ordinary people, so their healing effectiveness is the way it is. And there’s one thing I have to clarify: what typical qigong treatments and hospital treatments do is postpone and shift the tribulation, the root cause of the health problem. They push it off to sometime later in the remaining years of your life or to the future, and the karma isn’t touched at all.

Now let’s talk about Chinese medicine. Chinese medical treatments are very close to qigong treatments. In ancient China, most doctors of Chinese medicine had supernatural abilities. The great physicians such as Sun Simiao, Hua Tuo, Li Shizhen, and Bian Que had supernatural abilities, and that’s all documented in medical texts. Yet those things, the essence, are often denounced these days. What Chinese medicine has inherited are only prescriptions, or experiences gained from trial and error. Ancient Chinese medicine was quite advanced. It was ahead of today’s medical sciences. Some people think, "Modern medicine is so advanced—CAT scans can examine the inside of the body, and we can do ultrasound, imaging, and X-rays." Sure, modern equipment is pretty advanced, but I’d say it’s still not as good as ancient Chinese medical science.

The physician Hua Tuo once saw a tumor in Emperor Cao Cao’s brain and wanted to open his skull to operate and take it out. When Cao Cao heard that, he thought that Hua Tuo wanted to take his head, so he locked Hua Tuo up. Hua Tuo eventually died in prison. When Cao Cao became sick he remembered Hua Tuo and went looking for him, but Hua Tuo was already dead. Later on Cao Cao did in fact die from it. So how had Hua Tuo known? He saw it. That’s a supernatural ability we human beings have, and it’s something the great physicians of old times all had. After a person’s Third Eye opens, from one side he can simultaneously see four sides of a person’s body—from the front he can see the back side, left side, and right side. He can also section it to look layer by layer, and, he can see through this dimension to look at the root cause of the health problem. Can modern medical means do that? Not even close. Maybe in a thousand years! CAT scans, ultrasound, and X-rays can also see inside a human body, but the machines are awfully bulky and those big guys aren’t portable, and they don’t work without electricity. The Third Eye, on the other hand, goes wherever you go and it doesn’t need a power supply. How could they be compared?!

Some people talk about how great today’s medicine is. That’s not how I see it. Ancient Chinese herbs could really get rid of sickness efficiently. A lot of things were lost as they were passed down, while a good number haven’t been lost and have been passed down as folk medicine. When I held a class in Qiqihar City I saw a street vendor who was pulling teeth for people. You could easily tell that he was from the South since he wasn’t dressed like a Northeasterner. He wouldn’t turn anybody away, he’d pull teeth for anybody who came along, and he had pulled a whole pile of them. His point wasn’t to pull teeth but to sell his chemical solution. The solution gave off strong yellow vapors. When he pulled somebody’s tooth he’d open the solution’s bottle and hold it next to the person’s cheek where the bad tooth was, and ask the person to suck in the vapors of the solution a few times. Barely any of the solution would be consumed, and he’d cap it and set it aside. Then he’d take a matchstick out of his pocket, and as he talked about his solution he’d just flick the tooth with the matchstick and it would pop out. It wouldn’t hurt, and there’d just be a few flecks of blood, but no bleeding. Just think about it, the matchstick would have broken if he’d used any force. But he used it to pop the tooth out with just a flick.

I’d say that some of the folk things that have been passed down in China actually beat Western medicine’s sophisticated instruments. Let’s see which works better. That person flicked the tooth with a matchstick and it popped out. When a doctor of Western medicine pulls a tooth, he first injects an anesthetic, he jabs all over the place, and the jabbing hurts badly. Then, when the anesthetic kicks in the doctor pulls the tooth with a pair of pliers. After all that pulling, whoops, the tooth might even snap off with its root still in there. So then he uses a big hammer and a chisel to dig it out, and the pounding scares you out of your wits. Then he uses this sophisticated instrument to drill into you, and it’s enough to make some people jump out of their seat. It really hurts, you bleed a lot, and you keep spitting out blood for a while. So whose would you say is better? Whose would you say is more advanced? We shouldn’t be looking at how the tools look, but at how effective they actually are. Ancient Chinese medicine was quite advanced, and it’ll be years before today’s Western medicine catches up.

Ancient China’s science was different from the science we’ve learned from the West in modern times. It took a different path and could bring about a different scenario. So we can’t use our current ways of understanding things to understand ancient China’s science and technology, because it focused on the human body, life, and the universe, they studied these things directly, so it took a different path. Back then school students put value in meditation, they emphasized good posture in sitting, and it was considered important to control the breathing and direct qi when they picked up their brush-pens. People in every line of work made a practice of clearing the mind and adjusting the breathing, and the whole society went by that.

Some people say, "If we’d taken the path of ancient China’s science, would we have the automobiles and trains we’ve got today? Would we be as modernized as we are today?" I’d say that you shouldn’t try to understand another way of life from the perspective of this environment. Your thinking and concepts need to undergo a revolution. Without TVs, people would have their own in their foreheads, and they could see whatever they wanted. They’d also have abilities. Without trains or automobiles, people would be able to sit there and levitate, and they wouldn’t even need elevators. It would bring about a situation in which society developed differently, and it wouldn’t necessarily be limited to that framework. The flying saucers of alien beings travel back and forth incredibly fast, and they can become large or small. The route they’ve taken is even more different, and that’s yet another scientific method.

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